{"id":230,"date":"2012-06-25T00:25:17","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T04:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/?p=230"},"modified":"2012-06-25T00:25:17","modified_gmt":"2012-06-25T04:25:17","slug":"horton-the-housecat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/?p=230","title":{"rendered":"HORTON THE HOUSECAT"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Horton the Housecat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I once wrote an epic poem whose protagonist was one of my mother\u2019s cats. To allay my boredom during downtime at work I began to pair parts of the poem with thumbnail sketches. The project was longer than a comic strip but shorter than a graphic novel. I had a friend at the time who was literary agent and she told me that if I submitted the work to her as a manuscript that she would try to sell it to a publisher as a children\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

Before events ever got that far, I had to change the name of the cat: Horton was already taken by an elephant. Then, I was told the cat had to be fat. Then, I was told Horton\u2019s family needed a father. Then, I had to change the text from metered, rhyming poetry to prose. Then, I had to hand over the illustration duties to somebody who had a track record as a commercial artist. Then, I no longer recognized the product. After half a dozen editors pronounced the product dead on arrival, it did not bother me in the slightest when the agent pulled the plug on the project. I no longer viewed the book as being my own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I once wrote an epic poem whose protagonist was one of my mother\u2019s cats. To allay my boredom during downtime at work I began to pair parts of the poem with thumbnail sketches. The project was longer than a comic strip but shorter than a graphic novel. I had a friend at the time who … Continue reading HORTON THE HOUSECAT<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasseidman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}