**An Open Letter to Alexis Stewart:
Dear Alexis Stewart,
If you want to be friends with me, just ask. You don’t need to buy all of your Christmas and birthday AND Mother’s Day cards from me.
Friends Forever,
Fran
—
Whew! I’m glad I got that out of the way! Thanks to Mail Chimp, our email-blast campaign was full of success.
Wanna know what Mother’s Day card Martha Stewart is getting in 2016???
I’LL NEVER TELL!!!
Does my IQ have to be higher to understand Sci-Fi films?? 
As the credits rolled for Interstellar, I whispered, to myself, “whaaat???” Maybe I should have taken 100 classes to prep me? All of that technlogy and time-talk made me wish I was working on the new Zeichen Press catalog that Jen so agressively marked-up.
I’LL GET TO IT. As soon as I finish rewatching Mad Men.
And while I’m (not) doing that, The Intern
is gallivanting about in Italy like some sort of hippie. Well, let’s just see if you have a studio to come home to. (OMG, I’M KIDDING. Please come home. And bring us souvenirs.)
“WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT??”
~Fran Shea
These cards stopped me right in my (dog) poop-covered tracks:
Let’s be friends, Emily McDowell.
Too needy?
Dinah always makes such a big deal about choosing paper and envelope color for a new release.
First, she has Jen print a card:
And then she does this:
She is such a taskmaster.
Greeting cards would be better if they were huge. And I could wipe my feet on them.
And what better way to spread the Good Word of Zeichen Press than by emblazoning it upon the doormat of every doorstep for every home throughout the land?
High Cotton makes lots of things, for lots of people. And now they will make doormats for us. I mean, for you. They’ll make doormats for you. Designed by us.
…El Nińo. I know I’m supposed to be cursing Climate Change… I KNOW.
But how can I curse when meteorologists are predicting a warmer-than-usual winter??
I must embrace the phenomenon the way a mother embraces her wayward son.
IN OTHER NEWS, Jen and I chose 12 cards for the next release using darts, a cardboard cutout of Steve Buscemi, and our first-aid kit.
Here’s a teaser:
And because I always plan ahead, here’s a new Father’s Day card:
Farewell my Wintertime Prison… Springtime is the amnesty hors d’oeuvre and reminds all (in these Northern climates) of the duality of nature.
See the flattened squirrel on the bike path? (Why is it SO flat on a bike path? WHY??)
And see the lilacs in full bloom? (DO YOU??!! Face-meltingly beautiful…)
Hmm, people also think about baseball in the Spring? Right? How about a congratulations card for the bros?
(((flashback)))
My husband was on a business trip, and that meant it was time for one or more of the kids to get the stomach flu. Because we love tradition, the youngest barfed in her own bath water. While I was cleaning that up, and not to be outdone, the middle one inhaled and regurgitated his macaroni & cheese right back on the plate.
The older one slunk away.
While I was cleaning that up, and unbeknownst to me, the cat coughed up a slimy hair-ball. I stepped on it (barefoot).
While I stood on one foot, crying, the dog came over and licked it up.
The End
By age nine, I would delicately,
with my right hand, fold down the sharp fins of a Sunfish.
Why?
So I could use my left hand to insert the rusty pliars into the gasping mouth of my catch to retrieve the swallowed hook.
If I was lucky.
If I wasn’t lucky, I’d stare at my motionless bobber for hours.
*Some backstory: My older brother (third of eight) allowed me to fish with him if I did whatever he said, and didn’t cry. He was SERIOUS about fishing. I had glasses and greasy blonde hair.
**Some backstory about the backstory: My brother was born in September, and I was already a sprouted seed in our Mom’s belly by the next Summer.
I think I’ve used the bobber-watching metaphor before, but it is APT. Everyday, I wait for my agent to tell me to get the rusty pliars.
Why doesn’t he ever tell me to get the rusty pliars??
He just tells me to “hang in there.”
Oh, back to my Mom… She has 22 grandkids. This is her with the latest:
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!
I’ve heard that we are only prescribed challenges tailored to fit our deficiencies. I don’t really have any deficiencies so I’ve just been row-row-rowing my boat, gently down the stream.
But poor Jen spent the week hunting for bedbugs (that’s what she gets for going to Turkey) that turned out to be fleas. 
It took six flea-bombs and one hijab to properly fumigate.
Doesn’t Henry look ashamed?
Doesn’t Jen’s forehead look youthful?? I photoshop-botoxed it! AND saved her $200.
She’ll thank me later.
While she was busy meeting her prescribed challenge (I pray that she learned her lesson), *I* was busy nobly accepting rejections for The Book.
Eight rejections so far… twelve still unresponsive. But don’t worry about me, I LOVE waiting, and see rejection as an opportunity to grow as a person.
SPEAKING OF MOTHER’S DAY, here’s a new card:
Is that a true story??
They wouldn’t print it if it wasn’t true.
Sally Struthers says that for about four dollars, you can buy a Starbucks Caffé Latte Venti… In the Zeichen Press Shop, for just four dollars a day, you can bring laughter to someone who may or may not have been laughing.
The choice is yours.
NOW, visit the shop to see our new release for Spring! You can buy the rage-filled kitten, the generous old woman,
my kind of tea party,
Jen made me pull six cards from our line.
APPARENTLY, “they don’t sell” and don’t “make any money”.
But since when can you put a price tag on greeting cards??
Here are the cards, you can buy them from the shop until they are gone forever.
FOREVER.
This card was also on the list, but I refused to pull it because I’m not afraid of her.
I turned 42 (wtf?) yesterday, received 18 drinking glasses, a scallop taco from Sea Salt, and this:
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, I sent 20 little book samples to my agent…
So now he can go pitch them to 20 publishers.
I imagine his conversations go something like this:
Peter: Here’s a new little adult picture book by Fran Shea, owner of Zeichen Press in Minneapolis, maker of cards for people that like laughing.
Publisher Person: Let me put my eyeballs back in my sockets and write you a check for $1,000,000.
Peter: Very good.
END SCENE.
Oh, I also made a new Easter card. Don’t send me hate email like you did for my zombie Easter card. Jesus loves me, this I know for the bible tells me so.
Jen’s back!
Thank God.
She said she “missed ZP soooo much!”
ZP missed her too! To show her just how much, this rabbit (mascot) sacrificed and froze himself to the ground right in front of the gate she walks through to enter the ZP Headquarters.
ALSO, I wrote/designed a new cover for my book… Kara is busily drawing pictures while I bark directions at her. I’m sure she’s already made a voodoo doll of me.
I don’t blame her a bit.
No, no… don’t worry about me I’m fine! I actually enjoy imagining exotic travel. Who needs all of that packing and jet-lag… and those language barriers?… No thanks!
Jen is (still) in Turkey
(is she ever coming home??) and I am here.
See how I put my feet in the picture so that you can tell that I’m REALLY here?
My daydreams are broken only by Tib the Cat.
And the other inmates’ bickering.
But shouldn’t I embrace this opportunity during Lent for self-denial?
FINE.
Jen is in Istanbul (was Constantinople, now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople)
and I discuss cannibalism after a family dinner. “Apparently,” says Number One Son, “human meat tastes just like bison.”
And so on.
If this Winter ever ends (will it?? Did I just imagine warmer days??), students will graduate and I made a card for such an occasion: