Five Inches and Falling...

It's snowing today hereabouts (we're already over the 5-inch mark) and Marj is home (no school!). So, puttering around and chipping away at studio work, writing and drawing.

I'm prepping for tomorrow's first new semester session at the Center for Cartoon Studies and just wrapped up proofing the first volume of a new book series, S.R. Bissette's Blur (Complete Editions) Volume 1. It's the first of four volumes collecting all my video review columns from 1999-2001; I pulled all this material together last August in a flurry of frustration-spawned activity, hoping to get out the first two volumes before the end of 2005, but have only just now managed to gather a complete enough set of VMag from my archives to double-check that scattering of published work, incorporating all of it into the finished book (and footnoting sources, as necessary).

I'm also scrambling to finish the cover today and get it scanned so I can ship book and cover off to Jean-Marc Lofficier in France and get this first volume to bed and into print. Actually, I'm doing all four covers in one swing, if only to ensure Jean-Marc can post everything on the Black Coat Press site in short order, and we can pull all four volumes together before the end of winter. Then there's the wrap-up work (long overdue) on All That Lovecraft Loathes (a short story anthology of my short fiction and stories and poems by fellow Vermonter Roderick Bates), Gooseflesh Volume 1, and the comics essay collection (including the expanded version of "Mr. Moore and Me," the original version of which is already in print in more languages than anything I've done outside of Swamp Thing).

The goal is to clear the decks as I get projects done, with the ongoing work on the revisions for my cannibal movie history We Are Going To Eat You! constantly gaining steam. I'm hoping to make 2006-2007 a major year of output, including volumes collecting my past works -- articles on horror movies, comics, and hopefully at least one volume collecting my comics works. This will also clear shelves in the studio and library of books and materials I've held on to for years (decades, even) for publication. As that happens, the ongoing organizing of the existing library (with a prejudice toward all that's of use in my CCS classes) is underway, too. Multi-tasking in spades, you might say.

OK, back to work --