What a busy month for Pebble Prose!
To start off with some of the most exciting news, four of the Pebble Prose picture books are now available for sale at the Maui Cookie Lady shop in Makawao Town on Maui! They were sold there last autumn as well, but this restock now includes The Disappearance of Ellery Quartz.
Maui Cookie Lady is a magical sort of a place. If you are in the area, I hope you are able to take a peek inside!
The 3D printer was dedicated to the creation of a mass army of pebble christmas ornaments.
They were mainly made for personal use, but are available on Etsy too! If you pick one up, we’d love to see it on your tree!
The Adventures of Ellery Quartz: The Adventure of the Invisible Writer was published on May 15th, 2025. The cover was an homage to the original Ellery Queen, of which it parodied. Although I enjoyed the story‘s obvious references to the mystery genre, I was never pleased with how the book itself looked.
It’s a longer story, so when it was formatted it, it seemed like it would do better in a bigger format than the other Pebble Prose picture books. (Those are all small and square.) But the book’s size and cover felt home-made. And although the name of the story was meant to be a reference to the Ellery Queen 1975 television series — ‘twas a mouthful.
The other pebble books range in age groups. Winston and the Gnat is for younger ages, while The Guidebook for the Pebble Detective is for older kids. So even though The Adventure of the Invisible Writer is a longer story, it seemed like perhaps it in fact could be fine in the small, square format…
So, months after it was released, it was decided it would be changed!
It was reformatted and resubmitted and renamed. It was shortened to simply The Invisible Writer: featuring Ellery Quartz.
With the new name and new size, the cover had to change as well. I wanted it to still pay homage to what it was parodying, but not quite as literally as the old cover did. This time, it was inspired ever so slightly by the current reprints of the original series.
The Pebble Prose website was also given a small sprucing, and a few other little things were done here and there. It seems that without regularly scheduled Pebble Doodles, more time was actually spent with the pebble gang!
I’ve made some progress on non-pebble things too, but those projects must wait in the wings for now and be discussed at a proper time.
What shall December hold? Who knows for certain! All I know is that hot chocolate, Christmas films, and twinkle lights will all most definitely be involved.
— ht