Diane Thornton and Her Ridiculously Overtaxed Brain


DTs_brain72_100.jpg After too many years as a business owner, magazine art director, graphic designer, freelance editor and book designer, D. S. THORNTON now writes and illustrates to her heart’s content.

She has produced a children’s picture book (THE CAT WHO LOVED TRAINS) and two novels: In EVERYTHING YOU EVER HAD (adult literary), Moses Coates, a spirit stuck in an apartment house in Washington, D.C., is destined to relive a life left behind. For every time he attempts to leave the building, he is thrust back into his past. SMITHYTOWNE: THE CYLINDER OF STEEL (upper middle grade) follows fifth-grader Jerome Barnes as he protects an underground city, far beneath the local junkyard, where everything is made from junkyard parts—even the people. When it’s clear Smithytowne is in grave danger, it’s up to Jerome and his friends—one human, one mechanical—to protect it. [This novel recently made the semifinals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition (top 100 of 10,000 entries) and, based on the full manuscript, received a glowing review from Publishers Weekly. Woo hoo! Check it out: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001UG3ADC ]

Ms. Thornton has just completed MARVIN PLOTNIK AND THE SANDY RIVERS HILLTOP RANCH FOR WAYWARD YOUTH, JUVENILES AND YOUNG ADULTS (young adult), the story of ninth-grade graphic novelist Marvin Plotnik, whose trip to a ranch for troublemakers turns into a trip to another planet. With footnotes. It’s proved to be way more fun to write than any book ought to be. (Who says one-armed acrobats, Richard Nixon’s faux pas on the island of Muaango Pago, heroic Bhutanese monks and the space-time continuum can’t be fun?)

She has written travel pieces for the San Francisco Examiner (Hearst years), book reviews for the Peninsula Times Tribune and for personal clients. Her whimsical illustrations have appeared in Stanford magazine and on the walls of some of the better public restrooms nationwide. She lives just south of San Francisco on the craggy cliffs of Moss Beach, California, with a very nice husband and way way too much fog.

These pages reflect samples of her illustration and artwork, with an emphasis on watercolor, cartooning, and mixed media.

Reach her at dt [by inserting that handy-dandy ‘at’ symbol yourself, you can help her avoid being inundated by Nigerian investment schemes] thorntonhouse [you know what goes here] com

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