… and relax.

I’m slowly recovering from the Alternative Press Festival last weekend. Both events (Collaborama on the Saturday and the Alt. Press Fair on the Sunday) were fun and roaring successes but I, as always with comic shows, found the entire thing exhausting. It hasn’t helped that I’ve been ill recently, but I also just find the process of selling my own work emotionally and physically tiring. That said, Jimi, Peter and the other organisers behind the five day long festival put on a wonderful show so a big thank you and congratulations to them for putting it all together. Long may the Alternative Press Festival live.

It would also be remiss of me to mention that while I love to moan about my relationship with comic/zine shows, I also end up coming away feeling vindicated, encouraged and inspired. There were a lot of great zines and comics available throughout the weekend which always makes me feel the need to work harder.

My favourite thing though, is that handful of people who stop by and offer feedback, or support, or just some wonderful conversation. I had some genuinely lovely chats with genuinely lovely people and it really makes that day of watching-people-judge-your-work-and-nonchalantly-walk-away go a little bit easier. Thanks to all of you who came by supplying me with much needed respite and sorry to that one person about the mistaken Canadian accent – I’ll never live it down.

During Collaborama on Saturday all exhibitors were asked to provide a page or two of art for an A5 zine that would be compiled by the end of the day. The very talented Footprint Co-operative folks then took that artwork and printed it. They had red and black inks so I decided to draw a secondary tone on separate sheets of paper to get the effect you can see below. I think it came out well. The pages were drawn very quickly and inbetween peddling my wares to unsuspecting passersby so bear that rationalising caveat in mind when reading.

I picked up a few comics when I got the opportunity to wander away from my table. My recommendations: Browner Knowle by Paul Ashley Brown, Dancing Eye and  Your Filthy Jesus Christ Made These Tits by Mark Oliver, Tight Fit edited by Sarah Duncan, Powered By Robots by Julia Scheele, and finally Nose Picking and Beard Book by Sarah Gordon.

Since Sunday I’ve been getting some orders for books people weren’t able to buy on the day and I’m now totally sold out of My Fellow Americans. If you see Dan Hancox prowling the streets of Dalston you may manage to get a copy from him but I think he is similarly low on copies. We won’t be going to a second printing without a publisher but it’s still possible to read the unedited blogs we produced while on the road here. I’m also looking into making a PDF and Kindle friendly version for e-book owners.

My next comic is a short, entirely fictional, story which will be around 6-8 pages long. I’m so excited about it and really looking forward to doing nothing but working on it this weekend. However, I doubt it will be ready to upload on here for about six weeks at least. I’ll continue to post illustrations and sketches and any further news here but this blog may be a little light on new comics for awhile. Brace yourselves accordingly.