Well, I’ve got some announcements to make before getting onto business today. First and foremost, two legends in the world of commercial art have departed – Roy Doty and Walt Reed. Doty did a lot of cartoons for magazines, newspapers, packaging and even books. Anyone who has seen early editions of Judy Blume’s “Fudge” series will recognize his artwork. As for Reed, he is best known for his time with the Famous Artists School and for writing The Illustrator In America, a compendium of American illustration from 1860 onwards.
On a more upbeat note, Dave Sim is recovering well from his surgery. A “get well” card is currently on its way from me to Kitchener, Ontario.
Anyway, on to my own work now – there are still significant delays with Sunnyville Stories #12. At the time of this writing, only one pencilled page of the story exists.
Why the delays? One challenge is that the story has gotten away from me. I’m going to need to invest more time on Sunnyville #12. On a personal note, I will be heading back to New York City over Easter weekend to visit family as well as to stop over at Carmine Street Comics (a vendor who carries my work). That will delay Sunnyville #12 more. As it stands right now, the complete comic won’t be done until the end of April and probably won’t be up for sale until sometime in May.
On top of this, I still have to assemble everything for Sunnyville Stories Volume 3 which has to make its deadline of June 30 for its planned release. Another challenge is having to market my work. Just this morning, I mailed off another postcard to Forbidden Planet of New York as a major goal this year is to get them carrying Sunnyville Stories. Direct mail has been sent out to various libraries too in the hopes of getting them to carry Sunnyville Stories.
Mailing labels are a boon as they are cheap and easy to print up from your own home computer printer. These can go on mailers, postcards and envelopes for time and convenience. Many of these were used on sales letters that went out to libraries in Ohio, Oregon, Colorado, Washington and Illinois. The libraries selected were ones that were found to have huge expenditure budgets in my research and we are talking big budgets of over US$10 million! Surely, they’d be willing to add copies of Sunnyville (and Von Herling, Vampire Hunter) to their collections. More of these sales letters will go out during the week.
I’ll keep you posted on the progress of both Sunnyville #12 and the third volume.
That’s all for today.
Sunnyville Stories Vol. 1 (ISBN 9780615653921) is still for sale on Amazon. Copies of Sunnyville Stories Volume 2 and Von Herling, Vampire Hunter are for sale right now at Great Stories. Check out Direct Textbook too for more details on my books! And if you have an Amazon Kindle, get Sunnyville Stories Volume 1, Sunnyville Stories Volume 2 and Von Herling, Vampire Hunter for it today!
Comments? Questions? Fan letters? Interested in ordering books? You can write to:
Different Mousetrap Press LLC, 1100 19th Avenue N, #108, Unit J, Fargo ND 58102-2269
