fast-approaching dead-line

Currently, in the studio, the temperature is a moderate 77 F, the air is still, and smells like burning rubber and polyester with a strong, distinct, inexplicable overcast of nursing home.

Between the clunk-whir of the inkjet printer jimmy-rigged to print the poly plates for my press, I thought it'd be a good time to go update.

I'd meant to be done printing said plates earlier today, but instead of actually rising after I'd hit the snooze button a generous eight or nine times, I instead dreamt - pretty linearly, actually - of getting up, checking my email in bed, then getting up and dressing and leaving for the studio - without having done so in the least.

Lutefisk Sushi is due Saturday. No sleep 'til booklet!

tee to the i to the tee to the s, exclamation marks.

So, learning that I do not really want to field all the Russian porn-hounds who apparently are putting such mild terms as "t i t s" into their Google and Meendo searches and ending up here (and I'm assuming pretty disappointed), we'll just call this my submission for Lutefisk Sushi E, rather than it's real title.

go read!

She's a Spiny Northern Maid

Just finished pencils for my submission to Lutefisk Sushi E!

from a tiny room in the moony city

go read!

(holy shit, it's already the ides of August?)

'Sea Change: A Choose-Your-Own-Way Story' - and now a Xeric winner, what?

I'm proud (and still surprised, honestly) to say that thanks to the Xeric Foundation, I've received a very generous grant from them to self-publish Sea Change. It'll be the first major printing project I tackle on my printing press, under the moniker of my micro-press, and I am just so goddamn excited for it. 

The Xeric Foundation started giving out grants in 1992 (as I like to call it, "Ninja Turtle Money") and this round in 2012, after twenty years, was the last of the grants in its current incarnation. Since print-on-demand and online-publishing has become widely viable, and changed the how print and book industries operate in a big way, they've decided to redirect how they distribute their charity and focus on other things. Which is great. Good for them. I'm incredibly happy to have been chosen to be a part of - which puts me in the company of some extremely wonderful cartoonists - and to have their support put behind this book. It was a year ago now that I started drawing this, in the rudderless feeling that came immediately after graduation. Which sucked. This mostly certainly does not.

I really can't thank them enough. It's wonderful.

I did wait a while before telling most people, but the press release for the May 2012 winners should be coming soon, so it's going to happen, whether or not I feel comfortable with it, or not.

Haha, wait, it is, out. Today. Have at, people. There are a lot of books coming our way.

(true story.)

My plan is to settle myself into Minneapolis this month, put all my printing dominos in a row, and move Maisie from home in Wisconsin back into the moony city in August.

And not drop her. (knock on wood)