About IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS: They cause the mind to stretch. They create space for things to happen in. Also, occasionally they don’t stay impossible.

Jim Carrey was apparently homeless, living out of a van at one time. And he wrote himself a check for twenty million dollars, “for acting services rendered.” And he supposedly carried it in his back pocket everywhere.

Then along came the first Ace Ventura—widely panned by critics. But soon after a dismal box-office opening weekend, audiences started to grow unexpectedly, week by week. The story goes that after some research, marketing executives discovered that word of mouth was spreading like crazy—in elementary school yards. And fast forward a couple movies and Jim Carrey was being paid twenty million for his starring roles.

Relevant to this musing: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. Recommended reading.

In 2004, I dreamed of a big line of literary graphic novels. But I was a junior designer working in a cubicle. I carried around a little document envisioning an editorial home for comics authors, with all kinds of creator support, publishing in all three age categories, and some lofty goals to crack America open for a new kind of graphic novel—something very much like what First Second books has now become.

But back then, it was pretty much impossible to leap "from here to there." But  Now it’s a reality many authors and artists can inhabit with me. And a dozen years on, there are new impossible dreams on the horizon…