

Robert Lettrick.com
Author - Illustrator - Squirrel Whisperer
Current projects in various stages of completion.
Picture Books
The Runaway Vacuum
(32 digitally-painted pages.)
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The Brave Little Toaster meets Wall-E.
VacZoom 5000, a small, robotic vacuum cleaner, accidently slips through the doggie door and roams the neighborhood, enjoying the sights. But not all the sights are pleasant. The whole world is badly in need of cleaning. VacZoom realizes that with great suction comes great responsibility. It sneaks out every day while its owner is at work and continues its important mission. As word spreads of the determined robot, people gradually join in the cleanup effort. VacZoom gains a large following (a la Forest Gump during his cross-country runs.) But as the crowds grow ever larger, it becomes more difficult for VacZoom to navigate back to its docking station before its charge runs out. One day, it powers down in a patch of tall weeds a block away from home. A desperate search ensues and VacZoom is eventually found and returned to its owner. To ensure his robot never escapes again, the man screws the doggie door shut.
VacZoom returns to its normal routine of cleaning the house every day. Except now, when it’s finished, VacZoom sits quietly in front of the doggie door until its owner picks it up and returns it to the charging dock. VacZoom, no longer free to fulfill its ambitious purpose, becomes despondent. After careful consideration, its owner presses VacZoom’s off button.
When VacZoom awakes it discovers its owner has installed solar panels on its back so it will never run out of charge again. Excited, VacZoom rushes to the doggie door but is crestfallen to find it still sealed. Smiling slyly, the man opens the larger door wide, revealing a massive crowd of eager people with garbage bags and trash pickers in their hands. The little vacuum cleaner and its best friend head outside to join them.
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Middle Grade Books
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The Winter Bees
(Text to be accompanied by illustrations drawn in a travel journal style.)
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Holes meets Red Band Society.
Fourteen-year-old Wade is a smart kid with an aptitude for mechanics and math. He likes things that are orderly and that make logical sense. But there’s nothing sensical about his illness or about his parents decision to send away him to sick kid camp for the whole summer. Camp Bee Well, back-dropped by the Blue Ridge Mountains, is Wade’s worst nightmare: No Phones, no video games, and no robotics kits to assemble. There’s only one daily activity at Bee Well, and that’s beekeeping. In Wade’s mind, bees are the epitome of chaos. Ever since his diagnosis, Wade's had his fill of chaos.
Over time Wade discovers he has more in common with bees than he first thought and comes to appreciate their ingenious design and construction skills. But when someone close to Wade dies unexpectedly and the hives start to glow at night, he must come to terms with the possibility that not everything in life can be explained away with an equation or a formula. Sometimes miracles are real.
Doubling as an introductory lesson to the fascinating world of beekeeping, the Winter Bees is a heartfelt story of friendship, first loves, and last loves.
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Clarke’s Ark
(Heavily illustrated with fully-inked black & white drawings. See art samples 4-10 on the My Art page of the website)
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Last Kids on Earth meets Lost in Space.
When five kids awake from cryogenic sleep, they find themselves the sole human occupants aboard a massive star cruiser called the U.S.S. Clarke. The crew has mysteriously vanished and the ship’s computer files corrupted. Evidence suggests that while the kids slept, the ship survived some kind of attack. They have no clue why they’re aboard the Clarke or the Clarke’s intended destination. And the ship's robot is hiding in the crawlspaces and clearly has a screw loose.
Perhaps most worrisome of all is the Clarke’s cargo. At the heart of the cruiser is a massive nature preserve filled with hundreds of strange, alien animals, all in need of constant care.
The new crew of the Clarke will need to put their differences aside and work together if they’re going to solve the mysteries of how they got there and where they’re going. Hopefully they'll survive the journey, but with a planet-killing entity in hot pursuit of the Clarke, that may be easier said than done.
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PETS
Jurassic Park meets Goonies. First draft completed. Revising.
A genetic engineering company creates miniature versions of mythological creatures to sell as designer pets. A boy suffering a terrible loss reclaims his life with the help of his emotional support dragon.