In April 2012, I responded to a call for writers interested in a picture book anthology called Apocalypse for Kiddies. The editor, Lyn Midnight, aimed to create a children's book starring heroes and villains who survived the apocalypse in unusual ways.

I was thrilled to be paired with artist Cat Neligan (a.k.a. Catillest). Together we created a little candy robot who saved the Earth with her caramel when gravity suddenly ceased to exist.

As I toiled away on distilling our parable into three short pages, the tale morphed into a rhyming poem. Then Cat cranked out three crazy cool drawings to go along with the poem and our submission was complete by June 2012!

Here's the final product -- Annabelle Made of Caramel:

However, Apocalypse for Kiddies never happened. I don't know why. I waited patiently, assuming the project would eventually gel. But it didn't.

And that's fine! It's totally normal for an anthology project like this to fall apart. But rather than let this fun little story sit unseen on my computer, I figured I should at least unearth it... FROM THE VAULTS!!!