You can all relax now. My long wait is over: the first copies of Wild Ride arrived at my door yesterday and . . . they look fantastic.
It’s great to see Mike Deas’ beautiful art in its final glossy-paged form and so nice to be able to flip through the pages (as opposed to looking at a pdf file on my dying monitor.)
Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until October before you can hold a copy of Wild Ride in your hands.
Fortunately, you won’t have to wait to get a sneak peak at the opening pages of Wild Ride. They’re available, including some of Mike’s rough pencil sketches, at the new website for the book series: graphicguideadventures.com.
We’ll be adding more goodies and news to the site in the coming weeks, so grab the feed and add it to your RSS reader to get all the updates.
In the meantime, here’s a couple of thumbnails to get you started:
No tag for this post.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
- darn bots can't compute - try the search up top for more posts
We’ve been a bit Rome crazy around here for the last few weeks, due to watching entire second season of Rome, the HBO series, in four days.
We’re not wearing togas or anything (as Andrew-who’s-been-swallowed-by-Facebook suggested), but I am marching across Northern Italy trouncing Gauls whenever they have the nerve to face me.
Not satisfied with spending four days watching the entire TV series on dvd, I’ve gone out and bought the classic real time strategy game Rome: Total War. As the title suggests, it’s a pretty bloody game and as a result, many, many men (and horses) have died. But, you know, I’ve got to let off stress somehow.
Continue reading ‘The literacy value in empire building’
No tag for this post.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
- darn bots can't compute - try the search up top for more posts
The big day is getting close! Wild Ride will be in bookstores very soon.
The first printings have arrived at the Orca offices in beautiful Victoria, BC. And illustrator Mike Deas, lucky west coaster that he is, has the photo evidence to prove it.
Mike lives in Victoria, so all he had to do was walk around the block to grab his copies. Me? Well, I have to check the mailbox compulsively for the next week, while my copies make the 3000 km journey across Canada. Lucky books. That cross-country journey is a beautiful one.
It’s always exciting to see your new creations finally printed and bound for the first time. So, I feel a bit like a kid before his birthday, eagerly counting down the days and waiting as patiently as I can. But I really hate waiting.
Maybe I’ll go check the mail just one more time.
No tag for this post.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
- darn bots can't compute - try the search up top for more posts
As usual, I’m a bit late with my post about last week’s Brantford & Burlington Book Camps, but you can stop fretting: the wait it over!
It was an early start to get the train to Brantford from Toronto, but I arrived just in time to find all the campers posing for their group photo. Myself and one of the powerhouses behind the conference, Marsha Skrypuch, joined in for a few photos and then we were ready to get down to the nitty gritty of comic making.
Continue reading ‘Having a blast at book camp’
No tag for this post.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
- darn bots can't compute - try the search up top for more posts
Published at August 17, 2007
in life.
While I know I’ll never be a professional wildlife photographer, like Michael Runtz, I am very happy that I managed to snap this shot of a black capped chickadee on the feeder outside my office window.
For the last month or so, there’s been a pair of these little guys hanging out in our back yard fighting the bullying house sparrows and extremely rude starlings for their turn at the feeder. The chickadees are even smaller than many of the sparrows and more often than not, the bullies chase away the chickadees. And if it isn’t the sparrows then it’s the tank-sized starlings who tell the little chickadees to get lost.
But after being knocked back one too many times, these little fighters fly in quick, startle their nut-munching adversaries and manage to grab their share of the food. And once they get their claws into that feeder, it takes the pestering of more than one sparrow and starling to get a lone chickadee to leave. This fight for the feeder happens repeatedly throughout the day and it’s better than any reality show on the TV.
When the chickadees are through battling for their dinner, they then entertain all within earshot with their songs that take me right back to the woods of Algonquin Park and fill my head with distant memories of Hinterland Who’s Who spots. Listen to the chickadee’s song and tell me if it doesn’t put you in a canoe paddling along the shores of a northern Ontario lake.
Now, if we could just do something about the sounds of the two MASSIVE home renovation projects going on next door to us, I might be able to forget I’m in the city all together.
No tag for this post.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
- darn bots can't compute - try the search up top for more posts
Too many things on the go today to actually getting any writing done, which is a bit of a pain. But I did have a chance to read over a bit of the awful first draft of my top secret WIP (well, the five chapters I have completed so far) and guess what? It wasn’t that awful!
Continue reading ‘No writing Wednesday & decent first drafts’
No tag for this post.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
- darn bots can't compute - try the search up top for more posts
Published at August 13, 2007
in life.
Guess what I did yesterday? Yup, instead of working the full day on my latest top secret WIP, I decided to change the entire look of my blog and website. Not only that, but I switched the whole darn site over to Wordpress. Finally!
As I said on the front page of the site, the old baby blue layout worked well for me. I hand coded the html in 2000 and it’s been a bit like a plywood shack flaunting stable building codes, with crazy balconies nailed on at precarious angles and walls knocked out to make way for new additions. It was a haphazard affair to say the very least.
But all that changes with this new sleeker design and proper formatting. If you’re looking to get yourself a site up and running pronto, then I highly recommend Wordpress, so go check it out.
Now I gotta do the stuff that I’m meant to be doing – writing! In the meantime, leave a comment and let me know what you think, or if you find anything broken. I’m sure I’ve missed something.
No tag for this post.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
- darn bots can't compute - try the search up top for more posts
Another week passes and I’ve been busy working on a top secret WIP and the latest book in the Graphic Guide Adventures series for Orca.
Wild Ride (book one in the series) is off to the printer and I’m totally chomping at the bit to get my grubby paws on a copy.
I’m also getting pumped to spend a day talking comics at the Brantford and Burlingon Book Camps. It’s all happening on Thursday August 16th in Brantford in the morning and Burlington in the afternoon.
I’ll be working with four groups of 50 young writers to show them how comics are written and produced. Once I’m done blabbering, the kids are going to have a chance to put their mad creative skillz into action to write their own comic pages.
Looking forward to it!
No tag for this post.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
- darn bots can't compute - try the search up top for more posts
Published at August 2, 2007
in life.
Okay, Algonquin Park might not be that wild, but it definitely was fantastic to get away from emails, video games, tv, and all that other junk for a whole week.
This year was probably the best yet. We did see bears, but from the safety of our car and not while trapped in our tent. It did rain, but for only 15 minutes not for three days. Those two events alone would put this year up at the top of our list, but add to that our discovery of the beautiful Pog Lake campground, with sites like the one on the right.
When I wasn’t stretched out on a beach or swimming in one of the many lakes in Algonquin, I was exploring the park. Early Thursday morning I joined about 20 other campers for a guided bird walk around Mizzy Lake. Our guide, a very knowledgeable fellow named Ron, led us along abandoned railway tracks and through two bogs, pointing out all the different species of birds we spotted along the way. It was amazing to hear the story of the animals and it really painted a more complete picture of life in the park throughout the seasons. Unfortunately, the best time to see the birds in the park is in the spring when they’re mating and showing off their colours. Many species were either long gone back to South America or simply laying low while they took care of the young. But, thanks to Ron’s impressive owl hooting, I did manage to see many new species (new to me, that is.) Of course, I’ve totally forgotten their names, which taught me an important thing about bird hikes – next time, bring a freakin’ notebook!
Plenty more to tell and photos to post, but the work is piling up and I’ve got some stories to write. Before I get back at it, I’ll leave you with a photo that sums up my week’s experience nicely:
It just doesn’t get better than a pancake breakfast after a dawn paddle! I’m sure Devin, Nadia and Marcus would have loved a stack of these during their Wild Ride.
More camping news and photos to come.
No tag for this post.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
- darn bots can't compute - try the search up top for more posts
recent comments