AUTHOR PHOTO by Wendy Delsol

Like other participants in this blog, I, too, was surprised at how quickly I was asked for an author photo. Oops. And so much for anything professional. At the time, my husband was just beginning what is now a fairly serious photography hobby. He shot a few pictures, but I wasn’t in love with any of them. With time ticking away, I decided to cull through our massive computer file of family pictures. I came across one in which both my hair and smile passed muster. (The hair thing we can all relate to. The smile thing, well, I didn’t earn the childhood nickname gumby because I was green and bendable.) The picture was a group shot, but I knew with the wonders of technology I could crop it and even render it black and white. Above is the result and my author photo for STORK.

A few months later, I attended the national SCBWI conference in L.A. An add-on option of the conference was a published authors’ luncheon and individual photo shoots. The coolest thing about the resulting photo is that it was shot by poet and YA author Sonya Sones. (Those SCBWI types are excellent multi-taskers!) I think she snapped about ten shots to come up with the photo below. It’s probably my favorite current photo of me, and I used it for my adult novel, THE MCCLOUD HOME FOR WAYWARD GIRLS.

Not long after that, I needed another picture for the jacket of FROST, STORK’s sequel. (This is all within one calendar year, by the way.) I contemplated using Sonya’s photo again, but there was my husband with all his new—and expensive—camera equipment. One weekend, he took a few indoor and outdoor shots around our home. This is the one I eventually selected and is off our back deck.

And because STORK is a trilogy, I’ll soon need another photo for book three, TIDE. What does anyone think about this one????

Tee hee. And I am a Wendy after all.