I’ve mentioned Nathan a couple times before. He is my friend from when we were missionaries for our church in Quebec. His latest book Calamity Jack, the sequel to Rapunzel’s Revenge (both written by Shannon Hale and her husband Dean Hale), hits shelves in a couple of weeks. My son, who has been enamored by Nate’s blog, recently interviewed him about his career.

Nate, the cool illustrator that he is, didn’t just answer the questions, he turned the whole interview into a comic series. Click here to read the first one. Then you can keep going back to his blog everyday to see his latest post in the interview.

When my kids and I met with Nathan the other day, my son learned a little about what it’s like to be a professional illustrator and author.  This is what he said:

“I had a fun time at Nate’s house. Nate showed me how he did the comics—he has a stylus and a computer board (Wacom tablet) so he can color perfectly and almost everything!  I also played with his son. He showed me some really cool lego creations! Later, we went back home. Nate is a very, very, cool guy.”

Oh, and before we do a review of Calamity Jack, we thought we’d just show you a peek of the book—a very small peek.  They didn’t even have many ARCs of it, so we feel really lucky to be able to read it this weekend. That’s Nate’s copy on the bottom there, that he lent us.  We’ll post about it in a day or two!