Charlotte Heroes Con
I must recover from this convention, and since a picture is worth 1,000 words, then this will make up for all the words I won’t type.
Carla Speed McNeil gets the respect she is due from Jeff Smith:
More Jeff.
Bone love.
Great fans, great show. Absolutely lovely time. Yeah, got convention crud, but not until the end, so I was only grumpy the last day. Hah!
The best part of the show for me was getting to go over my new prose novel with Jeff Smith. Got a better reaction to the outline that I dared dream. Very inspiring. I daydreamed about my book all the way up to the show and all the way back. Firing on all cylinders.
But Jeff urged me to get A Distant Soil done as soon as possible. The challenge? Shave my head and keep it shaved until the book is finished.
Whew. I may have to come up with some other sacrifice. May I crop it boyishly short instead? Live with my natural color for awhile?
No, I did no commissions, so nothing to show. I inked my new GN project the whole time. My editors would be pleased.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:10 am
Boy, that’s a challenging challenge! Colleen with a shaved head? And he suggests it at the beginning of the convention season?
Hee.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:46 am
I’m not going to any more conventions, so I am not sure what impact my naked noggin would have.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:10 am
Daydreaming about your book is awesome.
Shaving your head? Could be interesting, but yeah, if you’re only at home, not so much impact, beyond the daily reminder that you need to finish the project.
Glad you had a good time! Recover from the convention crud soon.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:13 am
Shaving my head might be a great way to stave off ticks.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:23 am
BTW, I went through a long period where I was having trouble writing, and now I am so flooded with ideas I can barely go to sleep at night. As exhausted as I was yesterday, my brain was racing.
Today, I’m hoping large doses of home made ice cream will cure me of insomnia.
It’s as good a cure as any.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Of *course* the home made ice cream will help. Couldn’t be anything better since calcium is a natural soporific (sp?). That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Feel better soon!
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:20 pm
You mean that isn’t your natural hair color?
Think about what a great blog posting the photo of the shaved head would make. I’m just saying, that Jeff Smith guy is a freaking genius. Ignore his advice at your peril!
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:45 pm
LOL! Well, I know what would happen. We’d get several thousand hits just to see the freakshow. But, would they buy the books?
I’ve seen plenty of artists do incredibly vulgar and stupid things to get attention, and I sincerely doubt my going bald would be able to top any of them!
But the idea that I need to get leverage on myself is a good one.
Tell you what, someone send me a big, interest bearing loan, enough to finish off the entire series within a two year deadline. If I don’t meet the deadline to finish my book, I have to pay back the loan right then, the day it is due, or I default my copyright.
Ow.
If I do meet the deadline, the loan gets paid out from my future profits, directly from my publisher and I keep my copyright.
Now THAT’s leverage! LOL!
I bet most people just want to see me shave my head, though. I betcha. LOL!
June 24th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
And we all know how attached you are to keeping your copyrights! Heh. That’s a mighty dangerous offer to make. Of course, in this economy, is there anyone around who could afford to take you up on it?
Heh. Yeah, I think we’re just voyeuristically curious as to what “Colleen without hair” would look like.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
LOL! Seriously, the only thing standing between me and the end of this book is funding. If I had the dough, I would just sit down and finish it.
Fans don’t realize that we have bills to pay while we work. If I could work on A Distant Soil full time, I would get it done pretty darned quickly.
With the added incentive of possibly losing my copyrights/trademarks, I’d not even leave the house for fear of getting a bug or being hit by a bus. I’d get a lot of work done!
A Distant Soil makes money. It just doesn’t make THAT much money. Jeff tells me when it’s finished, people will be more likely to read it. And everyone I know who finished their magnum opus saw a substantial increase in sales.
Regardless, without up front funding, it’s just too hard to finance. I had some personal issues that had me running through a load of my cash stash a couple of years ago. That was hard to take. That money would have financed maybe two issues of the book. Argh.
But yeah, does anyone else have money anymore anyway?
I’ve had short hair a couple of times. Eh, I could live with it. but since I am not doing show and am living on a mountain, shaving my head is no big thing.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
BTW, when I had steady income on ADS, I produced about five issues a year. That would have me finishing the series in a year-and-a-half of full time work.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I had a great time during my short attendance at Heroes.
(In addition to seeing you!):-)
How was the panel on Sunday?
And how come we don’t see any pictures of you at the Con?
I should have asked for your camera and snapped a few!
June 25th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Wow… Is Jim small, or are those drinks HUGE?
As for the hair challenge: while your beauty surpasses such trivialities as hair color, length, or style (much like a rose is a rose is a rose)… the best way to market this would be to model a new hat every few days. Perhaps you could borrow hats from other people? Set up a wishlist at a hat vendor to add to your collection? Sell sponsorships or donations with people sending you baseball caps sporting a worthwhile logo? (Perhaps later you can replicate Neil Gaiman’s black t-shirt collection, and sell them to fans for charity.)
As for funding Distant Soil (aside from hat-vertising), how much do you sell a page for? Could we, your faithfuls, sponsor a page, sight unseen? Perhaps one could sponsor a cover, or a full-page spread, or just a random page at different prices?
If you do accept the challenge, you should schedule the shearing during San Diego, early in the Con. Sell tickets to the shearing (with proceeds going to fund leukemia wigs), and then see if curiosity increases your booth traffic. Perhaps even sell a convention variant where the cover characters are also bald. AND…take pictures of your baldness, and have your artist friends sketch designs. Display the five best designs at another convention, and let people vote with money (for charity). Winning design gets drawn on your head, photographed, and the prints sold for more donations. You gain much publicity. (Remember Peter David’s Elfquest tattoo?)
Given Jeff Smith’s locks, you should counter-challenge him, if you complete the books on schedule, he shaves his head, then goes one year without shaving.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
LOL! Perspective is funny, ‘aint it?
Yeah, if I gotta shave, Jeff has to shave for Rasl.
The sponsor a page idea is something other people have done. I have no idea if it really works.
Maybe I should just hunker down and sell some art again. I hate to do it because of the difficulty of shipping it, but I may just have to figure out how to squeeze in a few more hours a week. I’ve gotten some complaints that I don’t blog as much, but I think people would rather have me draw more. And write more.
I’ve got a couple of Tori Amos signed numbered books. I think I will put one on ebay this weekend, with an Absolute Sandman. And a couple of sketches in each book.
Maybe I should go bald and have people draw on my head. Then we could scalp me and sell the skin. Ew. Kinda not funny. I guess some people would be in to that.
June 26th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Hmmm… I was thinking S&N Ltd Ed photos. Maybe a vinyl skull cap, with styrofoam head for display?
Page sponsoring apparently worked for Howard Cruse (Stuck Rubber Baby) and Craig Thompson (Blankets). Those were original GNs, and you’d be selling the issues PLUS the GNs, so you only gotta fund the issues. How does your page rate differ from what you sell your art for? Would your page rate cover the cost of producing the single issues?
Hey… why not follow the Robert Crumb model? He has a guy who buys old Crumb comics online, has Crumb sign them, then he sells them on eBay. Mile High probably has quantity of Sandman #20 (on sale!). Sign the comic, do a quick sketch on the backing board, and mail it off!
June 27th, 2009 at 12:59 am
[...] her pith helmet. But I didn’t get Jeff Smith to worship at McNeil’s feet. Go now, this photo must be [...]
June 27th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Yay me in the bottom photo. See that Abs. Sandman? Colleen signed it for me last year and included a badass sketch.
June 28th, 2009 at 12:22 am
Just in case you thought you could hide from your adoring public,
pictures of your Heroes Con panel are posted here>
http://www.flickr.com/photos/patcave/sets/72157620562614136/
June 29th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Ok, so I’m guessing the whole shaving your head thing might be related to Alec Longstreth’s NOT shaving until he finishes his “Basewood” storyline. During the self-publishing panel with Alec and Jeff, Alec explained his self-challenge, so maybe Jeff latched onto the idea but gave it a spin for you.
DON’T do it! Alec looks scary enough with his grizzly beard and mop of hair (paired with his lens-less black frames: … “odd” is a polite adjective. Love ya, Alec! Phase 7 rocks!) In your case, regardless of your color choice, please don’t succumb to the dark side of Jeff’s challenge.
Now, if I could just win the lottery, I’d be happy to fund the completion of ADS myself. Consider it a promise — not quite empty, but not likely to come to fruition, but a promise non-the-less!
I remember buying some original pages from Teri Wood MANY years ago while she was struggling to complete Wandering Star. But I see your point about the trade-off between sales and income vs. shipping and lost time from work.