The Ten Steps is a story by Jon Wei

 

The car almost drives itself. She could take her hands from the steering wheel, lean back into the seat and watch the passing, snow-deep fields, the occasional patches of scratchy oaks, the white houses against the white sky in the white distance, and lose track. A scattering of crows breaks the skyline off to the left, drifting haphazardly upward like bits of ash.
There is a muffled hissing. Her daughter, sitting in the seat next to her, is blowing her nose into a puff of tissue.
Very good, Lily thinks.
Jennifer has always been this way, neat, quiet - self-contained, even in her infancy. She rarely cried, rarely complained, was willing to amuse herself most of the time, with a rattle, a ball, her hands and toes; she had been almost disconcertingly distant...

Born in Chicago, IL, Albert Ugarte studied painting, drawing, and film animation at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Albert uses a bright palette of colors and plays heavily on pop culture icons to create his pictures. He has enjoyed considerable success as a professional illustrator and his art has already been featured on the covers of books and on national ad campaigns.

Albert also sells to private collectors and shows in galleries around Chicago.

He and Giles met as neighbors in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago and found they had a common love of the American Road and, in particular, a nostalgia for its psychedelic promise.

Albert created the Westing cover art, the Westing treasure map, the Hawkcatcher cover art, and the Westing W design.

If you would like to purchase Albert's art or contact him to tell him how badass he is, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Robert Louis Stevenson (b.1850-d.1894) was a Scottish writer who traveled extensively, spending his last years in Samoa. He has been widely admired by other writers (Hemingway, Chesterton among others) but he has generally been omitted from the canon on the grounds that he wrote children's stories (which is crap.) He is the first member of the Westing Family Press to be a ghost.