Rick, creator of the collection, lives with his wife, Lynn, their four dogs, three cats, four llamas, and two goats (as of press time) in Jamestown, a small town in California’s Mother Lode. Both are retired: he, from a career as an educational planner and software entrepreneur; she, as a web applications developer. Lynn is a world-renowned watercolorist; her work can be seen at lynncornishwatercolors.com. After writing and tending the couple’s little six-acre homestead, Rick spends most of his time involved with bluegrass music…fiddling and singing, performing, and volunteering for the California Bluegrass Association (cbaweb.org). Wonder why an entire cartoon collection about all things bluegrass? That’s the reason.

The author spent his years immediately after college, and after he retired forty years later, writing short fiction. Information about his most recent collection of stories, Why I Never Lie and Nineteen Other Mostly True Stories, can be found at rickcornish.net. A second book, Why I Always Tell the Truth and Fifteen Other Mostly True Stories, will be in bookstores in 2018. This second volume would have been completed two years ago had it not been for an offhand challenge from a close friend who bet Rick he couldn’t create a cartoon a day for thirty days. The catch, of course, was that at least a few of them had to be funny. Upon reflection, he realized that cartoons, really, were nothing more or less than very, very short stories aided by a little bit of visual context; hence, he accepted the five dollar wager and two years later BLUEGRASS: Funnier Than It Sounds was at the publisher. (Did he win the bet? He’s not saying.)

Donna, the project’s illustrator, has spent her life in California’s South Bay and currently lives in Sunnyvale. Armed with a Bachelor’s Degree in art from San Jose State University, she began a successful career as a graphic designer and design manager for a number of concerns in Silicon Valley. After leaving the grueling pace of the high tech industry in 2014, Donna settled into retirement with a part-time assignment teaching watercolor at a local adult education agency, and not long after that she chanced to appear on Rick’s radar in his frantic search to find an artist to translate his cartoon concepts into the real thing. Linked up via a mutual friend, Rick and Donna struck a deal and, just like that, the 150 cartoons were given life. (Of course, it wasn’t just like that, not one bit. An enormous amount of talent and effort went into Donna’s wonderful illustrations, and even more effort in interpreting the strange and wondrous thing called bluegrass humor. When she’s not teaching or drawing banjos, Donna travels, adds to her Mickey Mouse collection, and cheers on the San José Sharks.