I’m now taking pre-orders for SECRETS & LIES. The book is $19.95 (plus shipping and handling). Anyone want a copy?

The anthology is being featured in Issuu’s member’s area as a Popular Document. Exciting! It’s gotten 2, 252 views as of this typing thanks to you silent peeps out there peepin’ this right now. Thanks for making my last 24 hours.

Printing goes well on the anthology. When all was said and done and the last submission hit my inbox, the book topped out at 180 pages! Here’s the complete list of contributors:

Dan Archer
Dan Barlow
Marek Bennett
SR Bissette
Box Brown
Colleen Frakes
AP Furtado
Penina Gal
Shaenon K. Garrity
Cayetano Garza Jr.
Rick Geary
Tymothi Godek
Dan Hernandez
Matt King
Lucy Knisley
Joe Lambert
Jeff Lok
Jose Luis Olivares
Dennis Pacheco
Caitlin Plovnick
Dave Roman
Corey Eno Ruffin
Denis St. John
Charles Schneeflock Snow
Bryan Stone
Betsey Swardlick
Colin Tedford
Radical Warren
Paul H. Way
Chuck Whelon

Whew! Above is a sample of the cover I came up with after three nights of no sleep and a dozen different cover designs and attempts. It may not look like anything special, but it’s what’s between the covers that really counts after all, right?

The book went to press today after a few hiccups and bumps around noontime.

The paper order came in yesterday here at work and what a haul it was! Twelve cases of 70# Accent Opaque Text (for interiors) and a case of 80# Hammermill Color Copy Cover (for the covers). I raised the print run to 500 copies, which may be small potatoes to some publishers out there, but for me this is an unfathomable amount of paper/books. I’m wondering how I’m going to haul all of it down to New York in two weeks!

I totally skipped out on sleep last night to finish up edits, scanning and placing comics into the final layout. I’m running on pure adrenaline right now as I type a bit here then step into the next room to make sure the print run is going smoothly. If all goes as planned we should have printing done by sometime Monday morning/afternoon and then we’ll be taking the books to Marus Printing in Hartland, Vermont to get bound next week. The books should be back from the bindery just in time for Saturday night’s book release party at the Main Street Museum in White River Junction.

If you’ve emailed me or tried to get a hold of me in the past few days and haven’t heard from me it’s probably because I’ve been busy putting this book together and getting to press on time. Things will slow down (sort of) in the next week (except for the whole moving into a new place thing next weekend after the book release party) or two then they’ll get hectic again as I venture down to NYC for the festival.

I’ll be posting info on how to order a copy online in the next few days as well as posting again over at the blog for the next couple weeks before the festival.

More soon, stay tuned!

CCS senior (graduating tomorrow!) Alex Kim was hard at work last night on our book release party poster. Here’s some pictures of Alex screenprinting like a madman last night courtesy of fellow senior Chuck Forsman as well a .gif preview from Alex of the finished poster. This beautiful 5 color poster will be available at the Secrets & Lies table at MoCCA this year for those interested in getting a copy. The book release party is scheduled for May 31st at 8pm at the Main Street Museum in White River Junction. Hope to see some of you there! I’ll post more details about the book soon. Things are really coming to a crescendo as we enter the home stretch for the festival. Alex generously donated his time, labor, and supplies to make this poster happen during a very busy CCS commencement week and we’re totally in his debt. Enjoy the pics!

You may know him as Box Brown or Brian M. Brown, we call him one of a generation of promising new voices in comics. He just submitted a nice two page story to our humble publication and for this we say “thanks”.

So.

There’s this anthology. And it’s going to be debuting at this year’s MoCCA festival.

We’ve got three stories submitted so far including one from soon to be graduating CCS senior Dennis St. John, one from recent inductee to the Best American Comics anthology Joe Lambert and drawn by the talented Jeff Lok, and one from the legendary Rick Geary! It’s an eight page story that originally ran in the Sept. 1991 issue of Heavy Metal called “A Tragedy In Orbit”. One of his most phenomenal short comics and definitely one that blew my mind way back in those formative years called the early 90’s. The originals are here and we’ll be putting them on display at the book launch party in White River Junction the weekend before the festival (details coming soon).