My cup runneth over… on to the carpet.

Oh kay… I think the trick is to just keep adding things to you plate until you don’t even notice that there’s even a chance that one or maybe all of your projects might fail at any second! So, here’s my current round up:

Volume one of Elfworld is coming closer to being published. We are definitely planning on the book coming out for Small Press Expo, where I will be in attendance behind a tiny half-table, hopefully stacked high with copies of the book. As it turned out, we are going to have a couple of free pages in the book (’cause of how the signatures work… you need it to be in a multiple of sixteen (not twelve)) so I have decided to create a short story for the book! I hadn’t planned on doing anything this time around, but I figured, why not, I’m going into debt to print up 3000+ of these things, I might as well have something in it! It’s going to be 6 pages, I think, and it’s tentatively called “The Wounded Elf” (a very literal title, as you can see from the drawing above).

The SF Zine Fest is actually happening, Sept. 9th + 10th! Bay Area zinesters, cartoonists, etc. (more on the “etc.” in mere seconds), please sign up for tables now now now! CELLspace raised their rental rates by 25% from last year, so we really need people to commit early in order to be able to pay them for the space… It really is a fun show, and I think that we can do an even better job this time than last year, even with the VERY late notice!

About the “etc”… I’ve been noticing that at all the recent comic/zine shows I’ve been to in awhile (with perhaps the exception of MoCCA) there is an ever expanding amount of non printed matter making the rounds, with crafty things like hand-made monster toys and pretty stationery becoming the new “must buy” items… ‘tho this rubs some zinesters the wrong way, I’ve decided I’m all for it, these more diverse offerings are helping to bring a whole group of people to zines and comics who might not be interested otherwise… So we are going to go out of our way to welcome crafters and D.I.Y.-types of all stripes to the SFZF this year.

I am almost done with all of the Moominvalley books, which have been just about the best thing that I’ve read in years… so sad when you are almost done with a series, but I see that Tove Jannson has some other, non-Moomin books she has written, and Drawn & Quarterly is publishing a collection of her newspaper strip this fall, I hear. Anyways, the books’ oft-struck tone of nostalgic melancholy and joy is perfect. So much is going on here… My favorites are Moominvalley in November, Moominpappa at Sea, and Moominvally Midwinter. Please read these, everyone!

Finally, I haven’t mentioned my overwhelmingly wonderful girlfriend Hannah yet… I guess this blog is supposed to be about my comics “career”, but whatever… I’m fully and contentedly in love, it’s crazy. She is just amazing and everything I can imagine wanting to find in another person. That’s all!