Chicago Zine Fest!

In one week we'll be smack-dab in the middle of the Chicago Zine Fest, Friday's reading & art show will have happened, and we'll be just about to open the doors to Saturday's exhibiting & workshops.  It should be tons of fun, I hope if you can you'll come.

We've had a good response from the press, there should be articles in the Columbia Chronicle and Time Out Chicago later this week.  Microcosm did a quick Q&A with us, and the Chicago Underground Library interviewed us on their blog.

In other news, as soon as the zine fest is over, I'll be preparing for the Museum of Comics and Cartooning Art (MoCCA) Arts Fest April 10 & 11 in New York City, and the Stumptown Comics Fest, April 24 & 25 in Portland, OR.

More upcoming events: In May I'm taking a trip to Tokyo to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew.  August 21st I'll be exhibiting at the Minneapolis Indie Xpo!

The next few months will be a bit of a transition for me, as I'm moving down to the Fun House (home to half of the zine fest organizers) at the beginning of May and five close friends are planning on moving from Chicago.  This might be kind of rough, as I've already felt at least one of them pull away from me in expectation of moving to a new life in a new city.

the trash heap (that is my room) has spoken!

Oh sweet lord.  That's a long while since I've posted on the blog.  How embarrassing.  Whatever, that's the point of blogs right?  Just like webcomics, you're supposed to post a bunch, and then leave it to proof until doubled in size...or is that bread?  I don't know.  What I do know is I've been MIA for a while.

So the Milwaukee Zine Fest was pretty inspiring.  So much so that the four of us (Ramsey, Matt, Leslie and I) have been spending the past two months since the fest organizing a Chicago Zine Fest!  Let me tell you, it's a lot of work, but it's coming along.  Here's the info on a convenient poster:

It's totally free, and open to the public.  Registration is open for Saturday's exhibiting.

So yeah, that's what's going on.  If you're reading this, I would love for you to be involved some how, whether it's mentioning it to a stranger on a train, or devoting every second of the next month and a half to putting it together, or anywhere in between.

I've also started tweeting on Twitter.  I was signing up CZF's Twitter account, and I saw all of my friends on there, and I just couldn't resist.  Sigh.  At least I'm wasting my time on the internet for something somewhat productive.

Here's the rest of my life in brief:
• I'll be exhibiting at MoCCA and the Stumptown Comics Fest (this one's not confirmed yet, but the plane tickets are nonrefundable, so if I don't get a table, I'll volunteer) in April on opposite sides of the country.
• I got a new computer, which actually runs at a reasonable speed.  The last straw was when a website literally said "Your computer is too old to use this page."
• My bedroom is a complete and total disaster, I can not keep it clean, or devote enough time to make it clean in the first place.  It's really drafty too, and the low tomorrow is 4°!!
• I haven't been doing drawing any comics lately (not good if I want to have new stuff by April, which I do).  I've been working on character designs for my new 5-part minicomic series, Love Letters.
• Quimby's is AWESOME, today we launched a subscription service, so now you can have your favorite periodical put on hold for you for free!  I bottom-lined the project, and I'm really excited about it, hopefully folks will dig the idea and start subscribing.
• I've been training at Vocalo, to be a collaborator.  I'd direct you to my first audio piece I edited, but I compressed it incorrectly.  So you'll just have to wait until Friday evening.
• James P.B. Duffy is working on new songs!!  We're working on two songs simultaneously, a song I wrote while I was in Friendship is Terrible, and a song Josh wrote about having a crush on a barista.  Pretty awesome, with very different sounds, but some odd similarities.
• My sweetheart has been in Mexico for three weeks, and she's coming back soon (is she in for a weather shock), but I have absolutely no idea what day she's getting back.  No clue.  Does that make me a bad person?
• It's two o'clock in the morning and I'm going to bed. 

i have books

I wasn't sure how to follow up my previous post, as it was so serious. It seemed like anything I could possibly write would seem shallow compared to it.

SO I'VE DECIDED TO SHAMELESSLY PROMOTE MY WARES!

I started an etsy account, it's a more public means of selling my books, over my website's store. I have my four comic books for sale, The Trugglemat, Spitting Pennies, What is This? and Alpha City Comics Issue One.

I've also changed how I am producing my books, i used to sew the interior pages together, and then use rice paste to glue the covers to the pages. Every time I would glue my books, I would get nervous, thinking my recipe was somehow wrong, and the books would fall apart. They never seemed to fall apart, so I kept on making my books that way. Then finally, at MoCCA this year, I put a BUNCH of copies of What is This? together, to give away, and show off. Sure enough, some of the covers started to fall off, and I was super embarrassed handing them out to people. One woman ran up to me at one point waving the book, telling me how much she liked it and as she opened the book...crack! I could hear the brittle dried glue breaking.

While I was in New York, I decided to stop using glue on my books. And as if the Universe wanted to make sure I meant what I said, it drove the point home: My favorite pastime on the way back from a convention is to sit on the Amtrak train, and read read read all the comics I got at the show. So, I sat down in my seat at Penn Station, and opened up my first read of my trip, Kazimir Strzepek's The Mourning Star, Vol. 1 (which, by the way, is AWESOME). As I read the book, the glue gave, and chunks of the book dropped one by one into my lap. I pulled out my needle and thread, and went to work sewing it back together, which took me until Albany.

So short story long, I'm sewing all of my books together now, and I think they look and feel better than ever. Alpha City Comics now has a shiny foil tape spine. And Spitting Pennies will eventually get a black tape spine, if I can find some good black tape. I'm also making a more conscious decision about what color thread I'm using for each book. I'm far more satisfied with the finished product.