NYCC: we came, we saw, we… got really, really tired…

Yes, as much as I love cons, they are exhausting. If you saw me at Rocketship on Saturday night, you may have noticed me swaying slightly, like a young tree blowning in the wind. It wasn’t the alcohol, people! Luckily, said alcohol ran out soon, so we retired to Angry Wade’s with our good friend Joe Infurnari and his collaborator Neal Schaffer (BORROWED TIME from Oni).

Picked up lots of fun stuff at the show, some of which I’ll review for Endicott (including Vess’ volume in TwoMorrows’ MODERN MASTERS series, a delightful surprise). Met Stephanie Law, an talented fantasy artist who is working on a Tarot deck that should make any publisher in their right mind completely rabid. [Confidential to the Llewellyn peeps checking in: folks, I was blown away.] The aforementioned Joe and I spent a good deal of time “working the floor,” talking to whoever would listen about a little sumpin’ sumpin’ we’ve got up our sleeves. As two natural pessimists, we were both kind of surprised at the positive response we received overall. Keep your fingers crossed for us; it’s a very cool project (okay, yeah, I’m biased).

A true highlight of the show was getting to hug my friend Gail Simone and her awesome husband. It’s been so long since I’ve seen either of them and darn it all, they’re just so cool.

And I sold a bunch of stuff at the Chemistry Set table! Booyah! Much thanks to Kevin Colden, who pulled the whole darned table thing together and put in the most face time, hands down. Caught up with several old pals at the table, including a very chipper David Gallaher (good to see you, dude).

Alongside the Vess Modern Masters thing, my personal not-to-be-missed book of the show has to be THE PLAIN JANES, by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg. Leland found Rugg on the floor (I did not — boo) and picked up an advance copy, which I read immediately. Minx shall get off to a great start.

It’s embarrassing that I haven’t mentioned this yet — the kind of thing that makes me go, “Girl, you really need to be less self-absorbed.”

Don’t Look is a literary mini-zine that you can download and fold up yourself. You are encouraged to make many copies and leave them around for others to find.

If that reminds you of my mini zine tutorial, it should. The tutorial inspired the creation, which makes me squeal with happiness when no one’s looking. (Warren is also to blame, having posted my tutorial which lead BoingBoing to do the same.)

Do check out the zine and download a few of your own. Do not hoard them, however.

You can keep up with the adventures of Laura Lee, one of the creators, on the ENGINE.

Also, please read this important post over on the Endicott Studio blog.

Okay, it’s entirely possible that the Vulcan & Vishnu crisis has been averted. God bless Photobucket.

If you’ve never seen V&V before (which means you’re not reading ACT-I-VATE), you can see part 1 and part 2 over at Streetfables.com now and with any luck we’ll stay up! Booyah!

(We’ve only got 2 g’s to spare for the next week. Better not download that mixtape I made a while ago. )

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Leland is working on something of mine, which is always fun to see as it happens. Maybe I’ll be able to talk him into scanning a bit of it in.

Dead And Suffering Beautifully in Austin

Originally uploaded by DivaLea.

Any MST3K fans out there?

Anyway. I do so love this photo of Scott McCloud and clan. Read more here.

… this might be my new guilty pleasure:

NYIndieSeen

Jury’s still out. But, y’know.

You know, I strive not to read my reviews, because therein lies madness. And yet, like most creative people, I can’t resist. Found a particularly nice one today on PopMatters:

“The problem with taking well-known material as your source is that a single misstep can alert the reader to weak writing. The characters and plots are so familiar, that a reader can’t help but compare the new work to the old. Even when new stories are being told, unless they can immerse the reader in a way that utilizes the well-worn stories in a compelling way, the reader will judge the work at every step. Streetfables’ Weird Sister and Red, both written by Elizabeth Genco, overcome this by telling their tales so simply as to inhabit a very primal place. They don’t replace the original tale or mythic figure as much as drag it, kicking and screaming, into our world, and then sit alongside it, daring it to make eye-contact.”

Yay! It’s tough not to screw this stuff up. I don’t always make it, but I have to give myself credit for trying and caring about the source material so much. Nice that someone else thought so, too.

If you’re a comics folk reading this, you’ve probably already seen the press release. But wouldn’t I be remiss if I didn’t post it too? I daresay I think so.

Short version: We’ll be at booth A239 in Artist Alley. We’re giving away a huge pile of all our books. Stop by!

Best bet for catching Leland is the afterparties, so keep an eye on Heidi for all those details.

Long version:
New York City, NY – Webcomics collective The Chemistry Set is please to announce that it will be displaying at the 2007 New York Comicon taking place at the Javits Center in New York City on February 23rd through February 25th at booth A239 in the Artist Alley.

THE CHEMISTRY SET is a collective of creators bonded together to bring free independent comics to the masses. Every day at www.chemsetcomics.com, readers will be treated to new comics by some of the hottest and most talented up-and-coming creators in the medium. Counting two Xeric Award winners and over 30 years of comics writing experience between the group, members of The Chemistry Set have written for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Image Comics, Puffin Graphics, Random House, NBM Publishing, Oni Press, SLG Publishing and many more. Observe the chemistry between writers, artists, and across teams as we combine individual creative elements to build dynamic compounds through the art and science of collaboration. The readers will be part of the equation as well, with the ability to comment on the comics as the stories progress. Join us at THE CHEMISTRY SET, and be part of the experiment.

See you there!

It would seem that Leland’s Vulcan & Vishnu was StumbledUpon, so to speak, and now it’s all over the place.

And now, we’re almost out of bandwith for the month.

60 some-odd gigs burned through in a few days.

I had to take it down, unfortunately. This kills me, but our hosting provider has confirmed that they will disable our account if we go over, and I’m not having that.

Of course, we may have already gone over. So if, you know, this site disappears for two weeks, hey, at least I’m telling you now.

I will Photobucket the V and V. We should have done that in the first place, but noooo, I’m a control freak who likes to keep it in house. But. I really need to get this job on my plate done tonight.

Please bear with us. And bookmark my Livejournal, where I’ll surely be bitching with gusto if the worst does, in fact, happen.

(OK, so having a silly website disappear for a few days is far from the worst, I suppose, but y’know.)

edited to add: Great:

“Your account (streetfables.com) has reached 90 percent of the bandwidth quota limit for your hosting package. Bandwidth limits are often times exceeded because of increases in activity to your site either from visitor traffic or your own personal usage through e-mail and FTP. If you exceed your bandwidth quota, your account services (HTTP, FTP, POP, SMTP) may stop functioning.”

edited to add:
Q: “Can’t you just…?”
A: No, they wont let us add on extra bandwidth, I have to upgrade the entire damn package.

I have this whole post rattling around in my head about George Lucas, a hidden STAR WARS script, and how to keep working as a creative person in the face of constant uncertainty. It’s one of those things that makes me feel incredibly lucky that I have a partner who thinks about this stuff even more than I do. When Leland got here, he brought with him a few choice books about the creative process, like THE ART SPIRIT by Henri and DAYBOOK by Anne Truitt. Trusted talismans for them dark nights of the arty soul that he passed on to me with love.

The rest of his stuff got here just a few days ago (yes, finally). He has a whole sea of these books and he keeps finding more. Blankets! They’re cooler than my writing book collection, which is extensive.

Anyway, I was going to write about Lucas typing away at STAR WARS at his kitchen table and 3-ring binders that have become mythical in their own right, now, but… I have a deadline. So. I’m just going to tell you that the next page of SCHEHERAZADE is up.

Send dancing girls, confetti, snow and cashew nuts straight to Boorman. You think I can draw like that? You would be mistaken.

Wow, that was a snidge long-winded. Well, what are blogs for.

Oh, and Joe Hill’s book arrived today! And this YA thing called TANTALIZE that looks amazing. God bless preorders! And publicity lasses from Llewellyn who send me gorgeous Tarot decks in the mail! (Thank you, Alison!)

This was in my Gmail sponsored links just now:

Whoosh. I get a total nerd-on for this kind of thing.

“You do realize that the Victorian era is, like, the Wild West era,” Leland says. “Couldn’t we put me in a buffalo hunter’s outfit?”

Put simply: no.