I got the news of the nomination on Friday and I’ve been dying to talk about it. I told a few people, of course. My parents, Robin, and my friends Gennaro and Marcelo. Some of my DC Conspiracy crew. Some of the guys from the book. And I called up Tony Fleecs’ mom to tell her the good news, as well. Feel free to listen to that little exchange.
Oh, and I guess I also told Robin’s family. And some of the other people I’m currently working with on other projects. And I might have mentioned it to everyone that was sitting at a bar in Boston on Saturday. And Sunday. And a couple of my friends in DC. Like, all of them.
Ok, so I guess I didn’t really wait to talk about it. At least I didn’t post anything online.
But, look, I’m excited. I mean, really excited. This book started as a labor of love over two years ago. I got folks on-board quickly and they put a lot of energy into their stories. I put a lot of it together intending to self-publish it. Random House came along and picked it up but instead of simply handing it off I shook a lot of hands and did a lot of press and tried to get folks excited about this book.
It’s just nice, at the end of all that, to be nominated for the crème-de-la-crème of comic awards. I now know why people say it’s an honor to be nominated.
The other anthologies nominated this year are all top notch. Best American Comics, 24Seven, 5, and Mome. You know it’s a good year for anthologies when Popgun, Flight, and Hotwire Comix didn’t get a nomination. So, I’m honored – thanks to the judges and to all the folks that supported the book. See you all in San Diego!
Completely smashed video and text reviews of the wines you could actually find in your local shop. Check it out, link it, love it, pass it around. Here's just a taste of what you should expect to see...
Saturday was our third annual Counter Culture Festival and it was quite the success. We had 35 vendors selling their wares between 4 and 8, followed by the Cheeky Monkey Sideshow, Belladonna the Belly Dancer, and six live bands. The place was PACKED and it seems like everyone sold well.
There was some drama, of course, as Dremo's started charging a cover at 8PM. We weren't happy about that, obviously, but what does Dremo's care? They're closing in a week. Anyway, we heard some fantastic little quotes from the manager justifying the cover and we just had to let it go. It's too bad too, I loved that place.
But, that aside, I think most people had fun and I'm in the process of putting together a little video from the show (UPDATE: Now with the final video):
We're officially homeless now - The DC Conspiracy and the Counter Culture Festival begins looking for a new place to host us starting next month. Hopefully we can find a place with the same combination of ambiance, size, and metro-accessibility that doesn't mind the fact that we bring in around twenty to thirty people once a month for a full night of eating and drinking and 500-1000 people once a year for more of the same.
Who: Local artists from all media, sponsored by the DC Conspiracy.
What: Selling wares throughout the day and following it up with the Cheeky Monkey Sideshow, Belladonna the Belly Dancer, and live music (American Sinner, Stupyd Cow, Boats to Tangier, Lucky Dub, Blondsai, and Schaffer the Darklord).
Where: Dr. Dremo’s (http://www.drdremos.com) 2001 Clarendon Blvd., Arlington VA 22201
When: Vendors from 4-8PM Sideshow and belly dancers from 8-9PM Six live bands starting at 9PM
Admission: Free, must be 21+
More info: Check out the DC Conspiracy website (http://www.dcconspiracy.com) for a full list of who’ll be attending. Also, it’s important to note that this is the NEXT TO LAST weekend that Dr. Dremo’s will be open. So please come by and send it off right.
Robin registered me in a wine class for my 30th birthday. I'm making an honest effort to become more comfortable with commenting on wines. It started off just fine but by the time I got to wine #7 my thoughts on the wines I were tasting moved further away from the traditional.
It makes me think I should run my own wine blog but only critique the 8th or 9th wine I drink...
1) Our third annual Washington DC Counter Culture Festival takes place Saturday, January 19th from 4PM-2AM. This year we have 38 vendors of comics, fashion, art, and crafts between the hours of 4PM-7PM, a side show and a belly dancer from 7PM-8PM, and six bands going on from 8PM-2AM. You can check out the full schedule here. Admission is free - I'll put up a separate reminder on the 18th or so. 2) Saturday, January 12th from 12PM-3PM I’ll be at an open house for the Bethesda Writer’s Center promoting my new class Writing for Comics. If you can’t make it out to that there will be a sneak preview of the class on January 29th from 7:30PM- 10PM. I’ll be teaching the class along with cartoonist and editor Matt Dembicki and copy editor and writer Chris Piers. We're going to be focusing mainly on adapting your existing works into comics but the fundamentals we'll be teaching will work for new projects as well.
Oy, my friends are already saying I’m taking a big risk and I’m only a fifth of the way through the book. You see, I go to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden quite often for inspiration. I don’t claim to understand the technical aspects of what I’m looking at but it always amazed me how someone stares at a canvas or a clump of materials and says, “I’m going to create this with it.”
I love the old masters, don’t get me wrong, but when I walk the Hirshhorn I get this feeling of modern day artists creating something from nothing. They’re not being commissioned to create a portrait or a fresco based on some biblical or historical narrative. They just create and they’ll often leave openings in their creation that don’t really have a definitive meaning.
Since my novel is about a character that knows everything about the past, present, and future I think it’s a great idea to put him inside the Hirshhorn early on. The Hirshhorn, to me, represents the absence of facts, one of the few places that my character can stumble into and, for the first time in his life, find that he doesn’t have all of the answers.
The idea came to me on a recent trip, when some tourist was looking at Clyfford Still’s 1950-M No. 1. The man sort of grunted, turned to his daughter and said, “You can do that. You should be an artist.”
I tried to put my main character in that situation and figure out what would go through his mind. He’d instantly realize that it’s true; this girl could recreate that painting. But if she was staring at a blank canvas and never seen this work before, would she create that painting? Although he wouldn’t have a definitive answers (monkeys, typewriters, Shakespeare) it would be a safe bet that she wouldn’t.
And that’s sort of the very nature of art and it presents itself as an escape for my character, a child that knows everything. If he stares at a blank canvas what will he create? Anything he wants. There’s no definitive answer.
Of course, to bring it back to pop culture and move it towards something I know more about I decide to flex my character’s interest in creating a narrative and art and, naturally, he starts making comic books at an early age.
It just takes a slight set-up in the Hirshhorn to get there. No harm, right?
There are three works I focus on during this scene and each of them help to lay the groundwork for the narrative of the book and, if the book takes off, the entire series. Juan Munoz’s Last Conversation Piece, the previously mentioned 1950-M No. 1, and Peter Fischili and David Weiss’ The Way Things Go. The first piece represents the need to fill in blanks and improvise, the second piece represents the need to sometimes go it alone completely, and the third piece represents ordered chaos and how actions in the present have a reaction in the future. For a child that knows everything who’ll soon be running into people he knows nothing about, all three of those threads are incredibly important.
Or an editor will instruct me to just drop all of that and offer the motivations up to “whatevs.” Or “magic.” That seems to be a pretty convenient explanation.
I've always been fascinated with old Underwood typewriters. In fact, my first business card incorporated an Underwood into its design:
Needless to say I was stoked when Robin's parents gave me a working 1911 Underwood 5 for Christmas. All the keys are present, all of the paint is still on. It needs some oil and some ink but, beyond that, it's a gorgeous piece of hardware that's sitting in my office right now. As soon as I clean it up and get it working I'll be sure to take some pictures of it.
That’s the working title for the YA Fantasy/Conspiracy novel I’m working on. I actually logged about 15,000 words for the book and then had a revelation that was so tight it forced me to start over again a week ago. I’ve since logged around 10,000 brand new words. I’m excited for this, to say the least.
It’s the story about a kid named Hector who, from the moment he was born, knew everything that there ever was to know; past, present, and future. The only thing he doesn’t know is how it is he knows everything, and this mystery will launch him on a cross-country adventure to a top-secret government lab to find some answers. His traveling companion, Stewart Friedman, is a man who spent the first forty years of his life just sitting around his apartment staring at walls and the past twelve years of his life in prison and mental institutions for attempting to blow up the San Francisco-based lab. His motivations are a mystery to everyone, including Stewart. They make the journey across the country being pursued by government agents as well as a group of people that even the Know It All can’t discover a thing about.
The first book is a self-contained story with plenty of little mysteries left over that would hopefully explode into the bigger story in future books (I need to get the first one published so let’s not get ahead of ourselves). I’ve been having a blast writing this and I hope people dig it when/if it eventually drops. So look for progress on that project as well as little snippets as I write them.
Well, here we are. I’ve been silent, to say the least, for the past couple of months, ending 2007 in a bit of a whimper. I hate to say that I was in the processes of “giving up” but I was certainly taking an extended break and ignoring everyone I could possibly ignore and even people I couldn’t really ignore.
I don’t really want to dwell on the whys and wherefores, I’m sure most of you can figure out the deal behind my absence. On the bright side I’ve been reading a lot more, spending more time with family and friends, and catching up on my TV and movies but, in reality, those are all just symptoms of a man trying to convalesce and get his mind back on track.
I’m back on track now. I’ve been back on track for the past couple of weeks but I figured I’d wait until 2007 was done to announce it. I’ve been focusing on two projects, mainly, the Sam Cooke graphic novel and a young adult fantasy/conspiracy novel. They’re both looking pretty fantastic, I must say, and I’m once again excited.
I need to pick up the slack on some other projects and that begins this weekend. Like Postcards II, for instance, which I still need to come up with a plan for. I have creators, I even have stories, but the plan’s been sort of lacking. So that’s my next big task. And it’s a huge friggin’ task. I let that one slide way too much.
Anyway, I’ll be posting here more regularly. Same with all my other blogs that have been lacking any new material for the past month or more.
It’s an amazing concept and one that’s executed pretty much flawlessly. I started leafing through the book during the middle of the night right before bed and ended up reading the entire thing, captivated by each and every page.
I've been working on a young adult (prose) book for the past couple of weeks. Just hammering out the story and the tone. I sent some preliminary stuff out to three people: the toughest critic I know, the guy that helped me with this concept years ago, and a PHD in pop culture and children's literature. They each gave me honest feedback along with an enthusiastic thumbs up.
So I've been trying to get the story together. There were several gaping holes in my plot but yesterday, while at the gym, I had an epiphany that filled one of the holes and forced the rest of the story to fall into place. I like to brag, I realize that, but I don't think I've ever been more proud of anything I've ever created than this story that was now in my head.
I ran home from the gym, showered, and went to Dremo's. I got a pint of beer and booted up the laptop. There was some weird message saying that Windows could not load my profile. I didn't want to fix the problem - I was too excited and needed to write - so I decided to allow Windows do what Windows had to do. My desktop came up, barren. When I opened Word it went through an install process. Beyond that everything seemed fine, however, and I but down 6 pages of single-space story synopsis for the first book with some add-on for two additional books.
I wrote my ass off, leaving as they were closing down Dremo's.
Got home and busted out the memory stick to back up the document. My old profile loaded up just fine this time, however, and now I can't find the document anywhere. I tried several programs, searched the deepest and darkest places of my laptop but I'm coming up with nothing. I'll have to rewrite the document.
But, wow...talk about a momentum killer. I was ready to start putting down pages today and, instead, I need to redo what I did yesterday.
I think there's a lesson to be learned here; not sure what it is, though.
Let’s face it…the Holiday Season™ is upon us. I know, I know…I don’t like it either, but the Holiday Season™ starts as soon as the Toys ‘R Us Wish Book is sent out and, well, it’s sitting on my desk.
So with the Holiday Season™ comes the need to get in the Holiday Spirit™. Decorations, fruit cake, ugly sweaters, office parties, and, of course, gift giving.
Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened makes a great Christmas gift as it is. It features stories from some of comic’s most-gifted creators. The book features tales of romance, mystery, heartbreak, and adventure. It has a cover that makes gift-wrap unnecessary. It’s a great book for tried-and-true comic fans, people who are looking to branch out from the superhero stuff, people who are new to comics, and people who are simply into good stories, whether it’s a comic or not.
So…it’s a great gift, yes. But I have a better gift…I have all of these signed and sketched-in copies of Postcards lying around. Sure the book looks great, but wouldn’t one that’s covered in signatures and sketches look even better? That’s why I’m going to give you all a chance to swap your copy of Postcards with one of these rare copies.
Here’s the deal. Buy a copy of Postcards between now and December 15th and send me proof of your purchase. A copy of the receipt is probably the best way to go about it but feel free to be a little creative if you like. On the 15th I’ll randomly select four people that purchased the book and get them a signed and sketched-in copy of Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened.
So give someone a one-of-a-kind gift that they’ll love forever. Or, you know…keep it for yourself and give them the copy you bought at Barnes & Noble. It won’t be one-of-a-kind but they’ll still love it forever.
Jason Rodriguez’s graphic novel anthology Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened was the subject of a five-minute video pod now airing on Al Gore’s Emmy-winning TV station, Current TV. The documentary, produced by Gabe Uhr, follows Rodriguez around to antique stores and local watering holes as he buys postcards, talks about comics, and shares drinks with his fellow Washington DC-based creators.
To find out if you have Current TV in your home and to see when the pod will be airing, go to http://www.current.com/tv and look for “Wish You Were There.” Current TV loops their pods so that the piece will play at different times on different days. If your cable company does not offer Current TV, or if you’d rather just stay seated at your computer, you can also view the pod at http://current.com/items/86441551_wish_you_were_there.
If you enjoyed the Current TV pod, feel free to visit the Eximious Press YouTube channel (http://youtube.com/profile?user=EximiousPress) where Rodriguez posts weekly videos that focus on used postcards and storytelling.
When: Saturday, October 27th, 11AM - 4PM Where: Barnes & Noble @ Clarendon. Arlington, Virginia What: Arlington writers of various genres are converging on B&N Courthouse for a day of talking and signing. I'll be there with Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened. Proceeds benefit the Arlington Public Library. Check out the announcement for more info.
Sometimes a show is so awesome that a cheesy pun for a title isn't just allowed, it's required.
I had a great SPX this year. Despite showing up for only an hour-and-a-half on Friday and constantly taking breaks to talk to folks on Saturday I managed to sell 29 copies of POSTCARDS. At $20 a pop a primarily small-ticket item show that's a good deal.
People really seemed to dig the book - it didn't take a whole lot of pitching. I just told them the concept, let them flip through it, and waited for them to make their decision. A lot of people purchased it, everyone told me they loved the concept, and most of the people who didn't purchase it there at least picked up a postcard or wrote the name of the book down (one woman even asked me if it's cheaper on Amazon...I had to say "yes").
I also got to meet a bunch of great new people; press, fans, and fellow creators. Very friendly atmosphere, lots of chatting. There's always a great community around SPX; makes me proud that the convention is hosted in my area.
I'll write up a more detailed report later on including some photos...
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