Walrus Droppings

4/1/2007 - Santiago deStroya

A year or two ago, when Talia and I were doing a lot more writing, SCBWI (The Society for Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators) had a writing contest where they told you about a bunch of characters and you had to provide the most creative names for them. For example: come up with a name for a baby vampire, a school bully, and a Spanish pirate captain. There were more than that, I forget them all, but I do remember those particular names: Bloodlette, Hector Pummel, and Santiago deStroya. We didn't actually stop at just the pirate captain: We ended up coming up with names for his entire crew, just for fun: Iago de Lumbago, Manuel del Instructiones, Inez Palmas, Juan Toledo, Oaxaca Louie, and Intu M'bele. Some time after that, I started sketching out the crew. I dug out the old sketches recently and have been revising and polishing them off. This here's the captain himself:

Santiago deStroya

(And for the record, we actually did place in the contest. Not first place, but somehwere up there.)

Anyhow, I'll post sketches of some of the other folks soon...