Charity Art Auctions Update: About the Shipping Charges

Here's a little note from Ron LeBrasseur, who contacted BlueLinePro about the high shipping charges on those sketch cards:

I was a bit surprised that each winning card bid would add a $7.00 S&H fee, so I emailed my contact and asked if it was possible to ship multiple cards in one envelope. The reply was encouraging:

"Hi Ron,

We do combine shipping. I think next year we may have to do some kind of flat rates due to the way e-bay list shipping cost. We can fit several ( 15-10 cards) in a small priority box for less than $5.00. Just e-mail us before paying and we'll adjust your shipping. Please pass this along to anyone else you know that's wanting to bid also. This was e-bays calculaotor not our.

Thanks,
Kim (Bluelinepro)

BCR Gallery Show & Book Launch Party

I'm not in this issue or the show, but I plan to be at the event following the Boston Comic Con.

BCR Charity Auction Cards

Via Ron LeBrasseur, here's a complete list of cards supplied to the aforementioned charity art auction by members of the Boston Comics Roundtable. On eBay, the cards are arranged in alphabetical order.

Roho:
BLUER
OUTLAW PIZZA
X-MEN STORM
DAREDEVIL
SILVERSURFER
SUPERMAN

Charles Snow:
BRANDI
EDNA
YOSHIMI

Aya Rothwell:
DRAGON
RING

Hyun Supul:
ROBOT / BIRD
ANIME GIRL
RESCUE RANGERS GADGET

Donna:
WONDER WOMAN
TITANS WOMEN

Cathy Leamy:
ANGEL GIRL
MAGIC BOOK

Dan Mazur:
FLIP
PENNY CENTURY
PRESIDENT OBAMA
GREEN LANTERN

James:
TITANS STARFIRE

Ron LeBrasseur:
HULK
FANTASTIC FOUR THING

Braden Lamb:
KITTY HAWK
ADAM STRANGE

Shelli Paroline:
STRONGEST MAN
FUTURAMA

Sketch Card Auction/Cancer Society Benefit

Comics2Games is running a charity sketch card auction to benefit The American Cancer Society. 34 pages of sketch cards to choose from, by lots of artists, both known & unknown. David Petersen, Neal Adams, Danielle Corsetto & more!

Old Articles Re-Posted

Two of the articles I originally published at Webcomics.com have just been archived at Comixtalk.com. These have been unavailable since Webcomics.com changed hands, which is a shame since I'm actually pretty happy with how most of my writing there turned out.

The two articles that just posted both look at the work of interesting experimental webcomics creators; so have a look at B. Shur's New Rocket and The Old Made New: The Static Comics of Daniel Merlin Goodbrey.

The rest of my Webcomics.com articles should be appearing over the next few days.

Miscellaneous Updates

• I will be exhibiting at Boston Comic Con next weekend.
  


• Page 13 of Gingerbread Houses posted yesterday.
  


• Had a great conversation with Shelli yesterday about the complete draft for our forthcoming book. It looks like I still have a LOT of work to do (which is not a surprise), but now I have a much clearer idea of the direction I'm headed in. And I think I know what to do with Sonny, the troublesome character I've been struggling the most to write.
  


• I got a peek at the new website that is in development for The Boston Comics Roundtable. Apparently, I've missed way too many meetings, because it's a far more ambitious project than I realized. I'm very excited, and I'm looking forward to contributing to the new site.
  


• The website revamp is moving along at a good clip, but I just took a look at my Links page, and man is that out of date. Half the things I have linked don't even exist anymore. So, I guess that's next on my to-do list.
  


• My second Emerson class, Writing the Graphic Novel II, just wrapped up. I still have to read and grade the final projects, but I should have a little more creative time available to me now that that's done. Still, I'll miss that class! I had some great students, and I always had fun working with them. I hope I get as good a group next year.
  

Website Update

Now that I've got this site functioning again, I've decided to move to a new webhost. Please be patient with any irregularities you might encounter as the new DNS settings take effect.

The Rule of Death

I just sent a copy of an old article I did on Daniel Merlin Goodbrey to be archived on Comixtalk, and it reminded me to get caught up on "The Rule of Death," Goodbrey's collaboration with Douglas Noble. An old west story about a man who dies, then changes his mind, and comes back. It's hard to describe beyond that, but it's so damn good. Read it from the beginning.

NEWW

I'm back from Webcomics Weekend.  The trip was a great time, nice and relaxed, with plenty of time for just chatting with friends.  Shared a couple of meals with old friends, like Bryant Johnson, Christ Shadoian, Dirk Tiede, T Campbell, and Cat Garza.  Got to chat briefly with Steven Withrow, Spike, David Malki !, Ryan North, Romantic, Chris Yates, Gary Tyrell, and Dorothy Gambrell, among a bunch of others that I'm probably forgetting (sorry!).  And made some new friends as well -- I met several lovely people from the Trees and Hills group in Vermont, and I had lovely conversation with Hilary Hatch, wife & business partner of Michael Poe.

My purchases were few: I picked up a copy of I Saw You and a pair of robot socks for Brandy.

One of the real highlights for me was when David Malki ! showed me the  illustration that will accompany my story in his and Ryan North's Machine of Death anthology.  I won't say who the artist is, since I don't want to pre-empt any official announcements, but she's a longtime webcomics stalwart, whose work I've admired for years.  I was delighted and honored, and I can't wait until everyone can see it!

The Eastworks building itself is an amazing space.  It would be a wonderful place to go to work every day, and made a nice venue for a small, low-stress convention.

So, about the scar...

I'm down at Webcomics Weekend, and today I received a little gentle chiding for not keeping my long-distance friends appraised of my health, especially since I recently acquired a fairly obvious scar in the middle of my throat. The story is that I did have a little touch of the cancer early this year, and had to have my thyroid removed, but it really wasn't a big deal. The kind of cancer I had is very easily treated through surgery, and once treated poses no long term risk to my health. From the time I found out about it, until the time I was done with it only lasted about three months. I'm perfectly fine now, so when you see the scar, don't worry about it.

But I do look sort of like someone tried to garrote me.

Website Improvements

It's not done yet, but I'm much happier with the state of this website now.  In addition to getting it to actually work again, I've also streamlined a number of elements and reorganized a few things.  I'm making more use of the automated pages on my WebcomicsNation page, in order to better integrate the two pages together.

One of the biggest changes I've made was to redo the front of my WCN page.  Gone is the disordered vertical list where I had no control over the order of the comics displayed (my least favorite of all my projects was consistently getting the most prominent placement).  Stories are now attractively presented (I hope) and grouped by theme.  My aim is to give readers better direction toward the stories they're most likely to enjoy.

There still more work to be done (including getting some kind of advertising back on the site), but in the meantime, feedback is welcome!

"Uncertainty" Process Images

Tym Godek shares some process images from our upcoming collaboration, "Uncertainty."

Webcomics Weekend

By the way, I will be attending Webcomics Weekend Saturday and Sunday.  I'm not sure how much time I'll be spending at the official events, as opposed to just touring Northampton, but I'll definitely be around.

33 (Belated)

In the past, I have always liked to post a long state-of-my-career post on my birthday, comparing my accomplishments over the year to the goals I’d set the previous year. And, of course, setting new goals for the new year. It’s been a couple of years since the last time I did this. (In fact, it’s over a year since the last time I blogged at all.) Since I’m starting the blog up anew, it seems worthwhile to begin with just such a stock-taking. Unfortunately, due to the breaking of my archive, I don’t have my last birthday post to compare against, but I think it’s still worth going over the achievements and progress of the past couple of years.

So, where do I stand?

• I published my first book, Character Design for Graphic Novels, co-written with Steven Withrow. But that’s old news now—the book is two years old, and well on its way toward out-of-print. Still, it’s offered many levels of satisfaction, as I’ve heard more than one instance of it being adopted for classroom use, both here in the states and abroad (Korea!).
  


• I’ve completed a couple of short stories in the past couple of years—Bring Your Daughter to Work Day and Lending Can Openers. A third story, How to be a Malcontent, is finished, but the artist and I are still deciding how we want to publish it. While I like the stories individually, as a body of work, these are pretty modest for two years’ worth of creative output. I definitely need to ramp things up in the coming years. Fortunately, I have two projects nearing completion right now that should do nicely.
  


• I have a second book in the works. Trouble Is is a full-on creative project, a young adult graphic novel. The book has an artist (Shelli Paroline) and a publication contract (SLG Publishing), so now it’s just a matter of turning it into a finished book. My part of this process is nearly done—I’ve completed the first draft and have already done some revisions. Once I get some reader feedback, I can start on final revisions, and should have a final draft well before the start of summer. Then it’s all in Shelli’s hands.
  


• I have a potential third book in the works as well. More a novella than a novel, Gingerbread Houses, illustrated by Edward Grug III, is currently updating at ModernTales.com. Technically, this should probably count as my second book, since it will be finished and public sooner than my project with Shelli, but since we don’t have a print publisher for it yet, it may be a little while before it becomes a physical object.
  


• And on top of the creative work, I also finally have a serious grown-up job: I teach college writing courses at Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology and Emerson College; my courses at the latter are all graphic novel writing workshops. Plus, I get hired for the occasional guest lecture at various local schools and libraries, which is incredibly fun to do.
  

So, looking to the future, here’s what I need to accomplish in the coming year:

• I still need more income. I only teach part time, so I can spend more time writing. I’ve been surprised at how difficult it is to balance teaching and writing—the trouble is too much of my teaching work has to come home with me at night (prepping class, grading papers, etc.) So going full time isn’t really an option, unless an opportunity to do writing workshops exclusively comes along (very unlikely). That leaves making it from my creative work (slightly less unlikely). I *would* like to do more guest lectures, though.
  


• I’m going to have a lot of promotional work to do once Trouble Is hits print. This book presents an opportunity for income, but as a first work, I’m not expecting much. In fact, with cost of cons, travel, and other promotional expenses, it may end up costing me more than I earn. More importantly, though, it can lay the groundwork for future income—get my name out now, so I can sell not just this book, but the next book too. And this is the first in a trilogy, so there really is a direct path from here to future book sales.
  


• I want to get Gingerbread Houses into print.
  


• I want a wider variety of things to sell at cons, particularly books with spines. Minis don’t sell well at SPX anymore, nor do they sell well at any con I’ve exhibited at other than MoCCA. I sell more copies of my $32 design book than I do my $1 mini-comics. So, books with spines it is. Trouble Is and hopefully Gingerbread Houses should help fix that. I’m also planning to put together a couple of lightly illustrated print editions of my two plays. I don’t expect to sell a lot of copies, but it’s something different to put on a table, and it’s work I’m proud of that not many people have seen.
  


• I want to script not one, but *two* new graphic novels in the coming year. I need to do the next book in my series with Shelli, of course. But I want to get a separate project going as well, something aimed at an older audience, and that gives me more freedom for formal/structural experimentation. I’ve got a particular American president in mind for the subject of this next book. No, it’s probably not whom you’re thinking of.
  


• I need to get my website cleaned up, redesigned, and profitable. It’s a lot better today that it was at the start of yesterday. It’s working again, and I stripped out a lot of junk that was cluttering it up. I do need to put some of the ads back up. That was never a big source of income, but it was something. And now that I’m regularly updating again, I’m hoping it can do significantly better, especially if I’m smarter about how I build it.
  

Clearly, I’ve got a lot to do. I should get back to work.

The Blog is Back

After allowing my website to languish for a ridiculously long period of time, I've finally gotten around to starting to put it all back together again.  Things got broken the last time my site got bumped to a new server; unfortunately, I was not able to figure out how to save my existing archive.  But that's okay.  Nothing wrong with a fresh start.  (More unfortunate is the loss of the Full Story archive.  Which likely spells the end of that project.)

Once I feel confident that I've fixed all the major technical issues with the site, I will begin semi-regular blogging again.  And sometime after that, I hope to give the site a complete overhaul.  But for now, at least it's up and running, without blatant error codes for content.  I've also updated my list of projects in the sidebar, so you can see what I've been up to while the site's been down.  I have plenty more news than that to report, however.  More later.