BOOK DEAL (and new art)

BIG. NEWS.

A lot of you folks probably already know this, but...I GOT A BOOK DEAL WITH ABRAMS! (I got the offer 2 months ago but I needed to wait until the contract was all done and signed before I could officially announce it.)

I'm writing and drawing a young adult graphic novel geared towards girls called PAGE BY PAIGE. It's about a redheaded 16-year old named Paige, who moves to NYC with her family from Virginia. (Sound familiar?) Feeling alone in this new city, she decides to cope by learning how to be an artist. But she finds that the lessons she learns on paper spill over into her real life. The more she becomes an artist, the more the line between her imaginary self and her real self begin to blur. The whole book is rooted in my own experiences, so it's quite a personal project for me. And I'm THRILLED to find a publisher brave enough to take on a new author like myself.

At a whopping 192 pages it'll take me the next year to draw, and it will be released in SPRING 2011 by Amulet Books. (The YA division of Abrams) This is why I recently joined a comic studio in Gowanus, so I won't have to spend the next year drawing this totally isolated in my apartment!

I must say THANK YOU to everyone who bought one of my little sketchbooks back in Virginia or picked up one of my zines here in NYC. And thanks to my editor Maggie Lehrman, my agent Maya Rock over at Writer's House, and my friend Chad Beckerman who passed along my name to Maggie in the first place. It's been 9 months since when I first started talking to Abrams, so I'm grateful for my friends and family who have put up with me rattling on about this project for so long. (And, um, sorry, but you'll have to keep hearing about it for a while! But I promise it will be amazing...)

And now...how about a happy painting? (Click on image to see full size.)

This little watercolor is about how I've been feeling unfocused lately by so many lovely distractions. (The words on the paper say, "work you should be doing") Working on the book project, staying up way too late with my karaoke friends, hanging out at HiChristina, playing with puppets, going to concerts and parties and openings, etc. I'm definitely enjoying myself...but I know that soon I need to buckle down again and get back to WORK.


Last weekend I went and volunteered painting canvases (another lovely distraction) depicting book covers for the library of PS 171 up in Harlem. Here are a couple of the other New York Cares volunteers...

And here's the giant book cover that I painted...



Currently Listening: Camera Obscura...My Maudlin Career

Rocks and Cages

Here's a couple rainy day drawings! Please click on image for full view...

Whenever I have some sort of physical pain I always try to visualize it...and right now it feels like I have gravel in my veins. The doctor said it was a pulled muscle in my neck...then the massage therapist said it might be a herniated disc...then the chiropractor said my spine was simply out of wack because the muscles around a couple of my vertebrae are like a BRICK. Cumulative damage from years of spending hours hunched over a desk without taking enough breaks. I worry if I can retrain my body to not hold such tension in my shoulders...

For years I've criticized guys for being all about the chase. How once they catch you, they don't want you anymore. But I've realized that, wait, no, I AM that way. In this drawing I'm letting yet another little rabbit scamper off. (And for the record, I don't have nearly that many metaphorical empty cages. It just looked better in the drawing with a huge wall of them...)

Currently Listening: Grizzly Bear...Veckatimest

On Hogs and Heffers

Whenever I hang out with my friend Matt Mikas we ALWAYS end up drawing. Yesterday was no exception...after visiting Honey Space and the newly opened High Line we ducked into Hogs and Heffers for a drink (or three) and HAD to draw our hysterical bartenders. (Please click on image to enlarge!) First, Matt penciled this one of Erin and then I inked it...

Then I penciled this drawing of Red and Matt inked it...

But he was taking forever inking so I did a rubbing/drawing of the very-worn-down bar top...

Here's Matt...

And at one point I got up on the bar for some dancing myself! (This is the bar Coyote Ugly was based on in case you're not familiar with it...)

Currently Listening: The Avett Brothers...Four Thieves Gone

Pantsless Comic...New Studio...Etc.

This little comic will appear with other comics about subway stories on THE DAILY CROSS HATCH. But I'm an impatient soul, waiting for them all to be posted it...so I'm just sharing it now! I drew mine about my experience doing the No Pants Subway Ride back on a snowy day in January with my friend Jesse and over a thousand other people! It's an annual event organized by Improv Everywhere. (Thanks for your input, Alex Scordelis!) Click on images to see full size! (You can zoom, too)



Press...
This past weekend was the MOCCA Festival here in New York. At a karaoke themed after-party I met the lovely Sarah Jaffe who wrote up a little diddy about my Tupperware comic!

More News...
I've joined a COMIC STUDIO in Brooklyn! (It's right by the Gowanus Canal at 2nd Ave. & 10th St.) I'm sharing a room with other working creatives like Marvel artist Reilly Brown and artist/comics journalist Chris Irving. Just down the hall there is also Deep 6 Studio (Which includes comic artists Joan Reilly, Tim Hamilton, Leland Purvis, Mike Cavallaro,Dean Haspiel, and Simon Fraser) and Studio XOXO (Joe Infurnari, Vasilis Lolos, Becky Cloonan, Steve Ellis, Jason Little, George O’ Connor, Kat Roberts, and Nathan Schreiber.) Many of these artists are featured on the online webcomix collective Act-I-Vate, the site where my Tupperware comic is featured. The room I just moved into is the newest studio, so we're still working on a name for ourselves...

If you're wondering why I have not been posting my usual crop of new drawings, it's because I've been working on WRITING AND EDITING the past few weeks. I miss the instant gratification that comes from telling stories with lines rather than words, so I decided to draw about it...


Oh, and my AD HOC SHOW is up through Sunday in case you'd still like to catch it! It's been a big success, thanks everyone for your support!

Currently Listening: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix...by Phoenix