It's been an unconscionably long time since I've posted. My defense is that I've been extraordinarily busy. A small sample of updates I haven't had time to make should give you an idea...
In late April, I took a family trip to Santa Barbara, and while we were there I did the Stagger Lee show solo at UCSB's College of Creative Studies. It was my first time doing the show without Shep, but I had my family with me to make me feel at home. Unfortunately, one member of the family felt perhaps a little too much at home. As I was being introduced, my not-yet-three-year-old-daughter Pearl, who was passing the time quietly "reading" aloud from The Poky Little Puppy, decided to increase her volume to compete with the amplified voice of our host, John Wilson. When my wife Tara told Pearl it was time to be quiet, a tantrum ensued. "What did I do?" John asked, bemused. Mortified, Tara hustled Pearl out of the room. When I took the podium, I felt I had to acknowledge the disruption. "That was my daughter Pearl," I told the audience. "On the day she was born, she was the loudest baby in the hospital, and apparently that hasn't changed." Just the other day, John sent us a DVD of my talk, complete with Pearl's outburst overwhelming the microphone. This will be a treasured family heirloom and a sure source of embarrassment for Pearl in her teenaged years.
In October, I'll again be doing the show solo, this time at the Edmonton Public Library. I'll also be doing a signing at Happy Harbor Comics. Stay tuned here for more details, and I promise we'll better acquaint Pearl with the concept of public performance beforehand.
In April and May, the Glyph Awards approached. Rich Watson did a nice series of profiles of the nominees in the various categories. You can still find the ones touching on Stagger Lee here, here, here, here, here, and here. When the big day arrived, we did very well, winning in four out of our six categories. The story was widely covered in the comics press. Shep and I couldn't be in Philadelphia for the awards ceremony, but we had arranged in advance with the almost supernaturally affable Professor Bill Foster that if we won, he'd call us on his cell and let us accept via speaker phone. As the time difference would have it, I was still at work when the awards were scheduled to happen. The expected end time of the awards show had long since passed when I was getting ready to go, so I thought we'd been shut out. I was just packing up to leave when my cell rang, and it was Bill telling me that we'd won Best Cover and Best Male Character, and that I had just won Best Writer. Bill put me on speaker. I said "Can you all hear me?" There was an odd little pause, and then a roar of applause so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear. It was very surreal accepting by telephone, and a silly comparison came to mind. I said, "Wow, it's like I'm Charlie and you're all the angels." There was a silence just long enough for me to think "Wow, that really died," and then again there was a huge roar of laughter. There seemed to be a cell phone lag of about two seconds, which made the proceedings all the stranger.
At the end of May, we were thrilled to find our names dropped by legendary San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll. We were particularly thrilled because this was a plug we'd done nothing to achieve; Carroll had become familiar with our book the old-fashioned way - by reading it. Ironically, this was one of the few days of the year when I hadn't looked at his column in the morning. My wife called me up in great excitement, having heard about it from a co-worker. We both initially assumed it was a mistake of some sort on the part of said co-worker. Go figure.
Shep and I are doing a short piece for an upcoming Image anthology called PopGun. Our piece is called "Jenny Greenteeth." I saw the art for the first time two weeks ago, and it looks gorgeous. We're also in the midst of a short piece for another anthology. I finished a draft of a script last Friday and am in the process of rewriting now.
About two weeks ago, artist Rantz Hoseley and I, along with the stalwart crew of letterers and designers at Comicraft (principally Rich Starkings and John Roshell), put the finishing touches on a preview book for our upcoming graphic novel, Displaced Persons. The preview book features fifteen pages of story from the book, and will be available for free at the Image table at the San Diego Comics Convention slightly more than two weeks hence. As you might know, this blog was started when Stagger Lee was at about the same stage that Displaced Persons is at now. Our release date is May '08, and it occurs to me that I should probably take this as my cue to shift over to doing a publication blog for it. I'm not sure if it makes more sense to just keep doing updates on this blog or to start up a new one, but whichever way I decide, there'll be an announcement here before too long.
