July 2020: Curse Words, LOTJ Excerpt, Undiscovered Country
LONG DAYS HOT NIGHTS
We're around the halfway point of summer, one of the weirdest summers most of us can remember, I'd guess. Man, I miss the movies. Summer blockbusters have been my thing since I was a kid. I'd do double features, plan my birthday around going to the theater with friends... oh well. There's always next year, and it just means we're probably getting our stories in different ways at the moment. Like... comics! And novels! How lucky that making those happens to be one of my jobs.
I hope you and yours are staying safe and sane... read on for the latest on what I've been up to. It's actually been a hugely busy summer on this end.
CURSE WORDS HAS BEEN KICKSTARTED
Last month Ryan Browne and I ran a Kickstarter campaign for an omnibus hardcover collection of our entire Image series CURSE WORDS. We called it CURSE WORDS: THE WHOLE DAMNED THING, and the project ended up receiving $142,155 from exactly 1,600 backers. Incrediible! Still can't quite believe it.
Ryan and I are hard at work on the new Curse Words issue that will be included in the hardcover, as well as the other extras (I'm killing myself composing the songs for the concept album we agreed to do, for instance.) We'll probably be finished with all of it fairly soon, and it's all looking amazing. If you didn't get a chance to participate in the Kickstarter, and you'd like a chance to buy the hardcover omnibus, we've decided to open pre-orders for it in advance of sending it to the printer. You can order it directly from me here. (Keep in mind if you order the omnibus from my site you will be receiving a sealed and unsigned copy.; this won't have all the crazy extras the Kickstarter had - but it'll still be great!) If you don't need the hardcover, but you do want to order the new issue of CURSE WORDS we'll be making, you can click here to pre-order that one.
And finally, as I mentioned, I'm composing a concept album for the Kickstarter backers. Fully produced, should be challenging but really fun. We're considering making a limited edition vinyl record of it when it's done, but in order to justify the cost we need at least 50 pre-orders. You can pre-order that here - this is the first promotion we're doing for it, so we'll see how it goes, but fingers crossed! I'll have beautiful Ryan Browne jacket art, liner notes from... someone cool... all sort of fun things.
LOTJ EPISODE ONE: THE PHANTOM EXCERPT
Last month, The High Republic, the all-new Star Wars initiative set hundreds of years before Episode I, was delayed from the planned August debut to January 2021. That includes my upcoming novel Light of the Jedi , which will kick the whole thing off on January 5, 2021.
This month I bring much better news. You can read chapter 1 of Light of the Jedi right now! Go on, read it. I'll wait... Dig it? Then pre-order LotJ on Amazon OR click here to pre-order through your local comic shop!
AS THEY SAY, 'TWAS AN HONOR TO BE NOMINATED
Last month, my new creator owned series with Scott Snyder and Giuseppe Camuncoli, Undiscovered Country, was nominated for the Best New Series Eisner award! That's a massively huge deal - my first Eisner nom (they're like the Oscars for comics). In a normal year, the ceremony is held during San Diego Comicon - but since there is no SDCC this year, they did it via a YouTube video hosted by Phil LaMarr. Still very cool!
We didn't win. The amazing Invisible Kingdom from G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward snagged the trophy this year.
That's okay. I'm still thrilled, and it makes me feel great about what we're doing with this book. The first collected edition of the story just came out this month, and I've decided to make a very limited number of signed copies of Undiscovered Country Volume 1 - DESTINY (nominated for Best New Series at this year's Eisners did I mention that?) available for my newsletter subscribers. You can either get the standard edition or the Barnes & Noble exclusive edition which has a different cover and a free poster! Both volumes will be signed by me before we send them out. VERY LIMITED COPIES.
SOMETIMES IT'S ABOUT THE NOTES YOU DO PLAY
I wasn't kidding about the concept album. It's a bit hard to meet up with my various musician pals these days, so I've been doing a lot of planning and work using tools like this Roland TR-8S; a hugely versatile drum machine and sequencer. I haven't used this one before, and it has a pretty steep learning curve, but it's been super fun to use that part of my brain. I love writing, but I love making music just as much.
(Also pictured, my Taylor 512 acoustic, which I've had for 23 years and love as much as anything I've ever loved. It is also a hugely versatile machine.)
I've also been spending a lot of time breaking and thinking about two new creator-owned comics - one with Ryan Browne and another with a different artist I've worked with before... but I've also started lighting a fire under another idea a good friend and I came up with years ago. We had a slightly buzzed conversation about it in a bar at a convention, and neither one of us has ever let it go. We'll see if it happens, but I think we'd both be thrilled. This time seems to underscore for me something I've believed for just about forever: create while you can, and if you can, do it with people you think are amazing.
