I’ve been busy lately, but not with Sunnyville Stories.  I’ve been working on my original graphic novel Von Herling, Vampire Hunter.  Just yesterday, I finally finished the pencils.  At this time, I’m going to work on inking the book.  Work on Sunnyville Stories episode 9 will be delayed until around June 1.

Why the decision?  I’m not in a rush to do episode 9.  As for the second volume of Sunnyville Stories, that book is mostly complete.  It just needs to have the individual pages reviewed, retouched (if necessary), and organized.  Von Herling though is tricky.  For that, I have to ink just over 100 pages of art – more than double the length of an individual installment of Sunnyville.  

See that stack of bristol board?  That is just over 100 pages of the book that has to be inked.  Luckily, eight pages have already been inked and a few other pages have already been rendered on the computer thanks to Photoshop.

So far, the longest individual installment of Sunnyville I’ve done is episode 6.  That was 44 pages.  This however is more than twice that length with the total pages of art being at 120.

Let this be a warning to all of you out there who thinks that making comics is easy money or requiring little skill.  It is neither.  You need to have discipline, skill, patience, and a bit of luck to do it.

The fact that I’ve done eight whole stories of Sunnyville and pencilled a whole graphic novel automatically makes me better than most of the would-be’s out there.  Many of the hobbyists and stragglers out there will never draw a thing at all or even get past the first story.

Anyone wanting to keep track of my progress on Von Herling should stay tuned to this blog for updates and also should keep an eye on my WordPress blog for sample pages and art.

Subscribe to the RSS feed or via email if you haven’t already.  If you represent a public or school library system and you’re interested in carrying Sunnyville Stories Volume 1, please contact Brodart Company as they carry the work wholesale.  Make sure you buy a copy of Sunnyville Stories Volume 1 or get a copy from these other retailers.  And don’t forget that copies of Sunnyville Stories are available on Amazon!

Hopefully, in the future, they’ll review my book.

BREAKING NEWS!!!  Ladies and gentlemen, I discovered this completely by accident while searching through some databases via the Greensboro Public Library website.

A THIRD library is carrying Sunnyville Stories Volume 1 (ISBN 978-0-615-65392-1) and that is the Alameda County Library in California.

I learned of this when I ran a search through the Greensboro Public Library portal to Worldcat.  But wait…there’s more!  

The Alameda County Library doesn’t carry just one copy of the book – they are carrying TEN COPIES by my count.  A search of their computerized catalog counts copies located in the branches of Fremont, Castro Valley, Dublin, Newark, Union City, and San Lorenzo!

What’s more is that by my calculations, my wholesaler Brodart Company should have gone through nearly all its stock of books – which means they may very well order some more copies within the coming weeks!

In the meantime, if you are represent a library interested in acquiring Sunnyville Stories Volume 1, you can get copies direct from the publisher (me) or you can buy them wholesale through Brodart Books.  Be sure to get a copy today for your collections!

Yet another comics shop is carrying Sunnyville Stories Volume 1!

This time, it’s a local store which I reported on before – it’s Parts Unknown of Greensboro, North Carolina!  They’re carrying a few copies of Sunnyville Vol. 1.  They’re located at 906 Spring Garden Street in the College Hill neighborhood of Greensboro.

Stop on by and give John Hitchcock (the shop’s owner) your business.  Besides my fine work, he carries many other titles and books too!

Don’t forget that many other fine retailers stocks Sunnyville Stories too!

Today, I’d like to talk with you about my next book, Sunnyville Stories Volume 2.

This book is set to be released in March 2014.  It will collect episode 4 (“Don’t Answer Me”), episode 5 (“Dance Hall Days”), episode 6 (“Squeeze Play”), and episode 7 (“By Any Other Name”) of Sunnyville Stories.  In addition, it will also have two bonus stories, which will be short vignettes set in between the individual episodes, as well as the contents of the Sunnyville Sketchbook.  Originally, I planned the sketchbook as a bonus feature for the third volume of Sunnyville (which I plan to put out in 2016).  But I didn’t want to work on creating too much new material since I’m busy with my graphic novel Von Herling, Vampire Hunter.  

The good news is that in contrast to the aforementioned work (still in final stages of pencils), the second volume of Sunnyville is nearly complete.  It’s about ninety percent completed, because most of the content has already been assembled.  What remains is that some of the pages need to be retouched, the interior of the book finalized, the graphic design hammered out, and an ISBN assigned.  The book will be completed and sent to the printers no later than October 31st of this year.

This is the cover for the book.  Much like the cover of the first volume, I wanted to keep it simple.  I studied the covers to the Cerebus phone books by Dave Sim as a model.  In the end, I wanted to keep it simple yet catch the eye of potential buyers.  That’s why for this cover, I painted it with a blue wash of paint.  Blue is one of the three primary colors (along with red and yellow).  The primary colors catch the eyes of people.  That’s the reason why many book covers are rendered with the primary colors.

I need to work on the marketing campaign as well for this book and Von Herling, which  are to be released simultaneously.  Many of the shops stocking Sunnyville volume 1 will definitely be interested in this plus I’m still under contract with Brodart Company. They’ll definitely want these books for their stock.

Stay tuned to this blog.  I’ll keep you posted on the progress of the book.

Subscribe to the RSS feed or via email if you haven’t already.  If you represent a public or school library system and you’re interested in carrying Sunnyville Stories Volume 1, please contact Brodart Company as they carry the work wholesale.  Make sure you buy a copy of Sunnyville Stories Volume 1 or get a copy from these other retailers.  And don’t forget that copies of Sunnyville Stories are available on Amazon!

I have a new announcement to make, everyone.  Yet another independent store is carrying Sunnyville Stories Volume 1!

Remember how I reported on Carmine Street Comics earlier?  FYI, it’s a comics shop located in the West Village of New York City.  Owned and operated in part by the incredible Jon Gorga, this independent comics store now carries Sunnyville Stories.

That’s right!  They stock a few copies at present of Sunnyville Stories Volume 1.  You can find it in the shop’s self-published section.

Be sure to stop by Carmine Street Comics.  They have not only my work, but other excellent comics and even an artist who draws live in-store!  Tell them that Max West sent you.

I’ll be selling original artwork on my Etsy shop so be sure to check back from time to time.

I have an announcement to make.  Sunnyville Stories episode 9 will be delayed for awhile, in spite of what I said before.  Why am I doing this?

Some of you may know that I’m working on an original graphic novel of Gothic horror titled Von Herling, Vampire Hunter.  Sample pages of it are available on my second blog. In order to make sure the book meets its deadline of being completed and sent to the printers by October 31st, I’ll be working on the pencils the rest of May.  A total of 120 pages of art to Von Herling need to be finished by the end of this month so I will have adequate time to go back over and ink the 112 out of 120 pages that have not been inked.  Then I have to take care of the formatting of the book for the printers as well as plan its marketing campaign and organize the press kit.

At the same time, I’m also working on Sunnyville Stories Volume 2 but I’ll discuss that in a future blog post.

Von Herling is a tale of Gothic horror influenced by older works of vampire fiction.  In an attempt to move away from contemporary media depicting vampires as tragic characters, I want to show the vampire as a creature of pure evil.  Von Herling borrows heavily from the original novel of Dracula by Bram Stoker as well as the vampire films of Hammer and Universal.  The book will be finished in October and will see general release through Different Mousetrap Press LLC in March 2014.  Stay tuned to this blog and my WordPress blog for further details.

Subscribe to the RSS feed or via email if you haven’t already.  If you represent a public or school library system and you’re interested in carrying Sunnyville Stories Volume 1, please contact Brodart Company as they carry the work wholesale.  Make sure you buy a copy of Sunnyville Stories Volume 1 or get a copy from these other retailers.  And don’t forget that copies of Sunnyville Stories are available on Amazon!

Today is someone’s birthday and that is the one known as “Master Godai”.

Rusty and everyone in Sunnyville wanted to wish you a happy birthday.  So…

BTW, I’m talking about one of Master Godai’s works, an Japanese style webcomic called “Rascals” (and there are others on his site).  So go check it out!

I have an announcement to make.  I’ve decided to submit Sunnyville Stories Volume 1 to the Ignatz Awards.

Wait a minute…you’ve never heard of the Ignatz Awards?  Permit me to explain.  The Ignatz Awards were created and are managed by the Small Press Expo as a unique award within the comics industry.  Named after the character of Ignatz Mouse from the legendary comic strip “Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse” by George Herriman, it’s an award meant for the small press within comics and honors outstanding achievements in that field.  

A jury is selected at random and their identities are kept secret until the final ballots are revealed to the public.  This is to prevent any attempts to influence the awards process.

To meet eligibility, the work in question must have been published between July 1st of the previous ballot year and June 30th of the current ballot year.  As Sunnyville Volume 1 was published officially on July 9th, 2012, it is eligible.  The award categories are for Outstanding Artist, Outstanding Anthology or Collection, Outstanding Graphic Novel, Outstanding Story, Promising New Talent, Outstanding Series, Outstanding Comic, Outstanding Minicomic, and Outstanding Outline Comic.  A total of six copies of the submission have to be sent into the jury.  From there, the works are screened, read through, examined, and then the best of the lot are chosen for the awards.

As for the actual voting itself, that’s done by the attendees of the Small Press Expo.  The winners are announced at the awards ceremony during the event.  You can read up more on the event on the SPX site.

As this blog post goes live, I’m readying a package containing six copies of Sunnyville Stories Volume 1 that will be going out to the jury first thing Monday morning.  I know what some of you are thinking.  Why am I doing this?  The Ignatz Awards probably get hundreds of submissions every year, maybe more than that.  My chances of being nominated for the award are slim – and I realize my chances of winning are next to nothing.  So why am I doing this?

The copies I have of my book aren’t doing any good just sitting around my work area.  Plus winning or even getting nominated would bolster my credibility AND give me publicity.  That is something that both myself and my work really need.  Even though the odds are stacked against me by a lot, I’m still submitting those books to the Ignatz jury.  Not doing so definitely guarantees that I fail.  Wish me luck everyone.