Some books find you before you know you need them. Rosie Can't Choose was one of those.

The idea was born during one of my favorite guilty pleasures — watching vet shows. I found myself laughing at an imaginary conversation in my head: a household where the kids kept asking for pets like lemurs, skunks, and opossums. That whimsical little spark sat quietly in the back of my mind until the day my niece announced she was expecting — the first baby in our family. Suddenly I knew exactly what that story was meant to become.

My niece has always struggled with anxiety, and mental health runs deep in our family. So the pet-choosing chaos became something more meaningful — a story about a little girl whose big feelings make even the smallest decisions feel impossible. Funny, whimsical, and honest all at once. That is Rosie.

What I did not anticipate was that while writing a book about anxiety, I would spend the entire creation process drowning in it myself. I was racing to finish the artwork before my niece's baby shower — determined to surprise her and her husband with something made entirely from my heart. In the end, I handed them an unfinished proof with a promise: they will finish it together with their new little one, and when the final book is printed, they will hold the very first copy. Sometimes even the writer needs to be reminded that the best things cannot be rushed. Once I let go of the worry, the book began to breathe.

And breathe it did — though not before teaching me one more lesson. My first round of paintings used colors pulled from my niece's shower palette. It seemed like a loving choice, but the pages fell flat. Something was off. The colors were not telling Rosie's story — they were telling someone else's. So I went back to the beginning. Using a lightboard, I redrew every single illustration and repainted them from scratch — this time with intention. I created a color map: warm tones for Mama and Rosie's home environment, and cool blues and greens for Rosie herself. The shift was immediate. The pages came alive. The tone finally matched the message.

The Making of Rosie (For Future Authors)

Because my vision is affected by an eye condition, I have developed a process that works beautifully for both my eyes and my art. I begin by using AI as a compositional reference tool — not to create my illustrations, but to help me work out perspective, proportion, and scene layout, areas where my natural drawing instincts need a little scaffolding. From there, every single line is drawn entirely by hand. To accomplish this, I use Karen Campbell's drawing lessons and books immensely — I admit.

I draw almost every element of a scene individually and in isolation — enlarged far beyond its final printed size. A tiny book lying on the floor with animals on its cover, for example, gets drawn large enough that I can render every detail of those animals with precision. This layered approach means nothing gets lost in the final composition, no matter how small it appears on the page. The final image is scanned at 300 DPI, saved as a JPG file, then compiled in Canva, where I design all my books. 

For outlining the drawing, I use Pigma Graphic Archival Ink pens — primarily the .02, .05, and .08 sizes for linework, and the 1.0 for filling in the deep blacks of eyes and mouths. These pens are permanent and waterproof, which is essential. They will not bleed or muddy your watercolors with that dreaded brownish-black bleed that can ruin a painting.

Rosie Can't Choose is my first fully watercolor-illustrated book, painted entirely with Prima Confection Watercolor sets. My previous book, Searching for Hopper: Pawprints in Snow, introduced me to water-based media through Derwent Watercolor Paint Pencils — but Rosie pushed me further, deeper, and more colorfully into a medium I have genuinely fallen in love with.

I hope you can feel that love on every page.