Hey, everyone. It’s been over a month since I updated the News section, and I’m sure
that some of you are getting antsy to know when the Preorders you’ve placed are coming out.
Well, The reason I haven’t updated anything is because I’ve been working my butt completely off.
I haven’t played tunes in three months, haven’t stopped to catch my breath or do anything
outside of family obligations and hanging out with my SO. Fortunately, I have a very
forgiving SO indeed, one who considers both of us slaving away at our desks in the
same room as “Quality time”. But beyond that, I’ve hardly left the house for
anything outside of my day job or the comic book in a solid month. Oh, yes,
and the dayjob has been kicking my butt, as well. I like my job, a lot, in fact —
but the last month has seen a number of 50-60 hour weeks, at a time when I really
needed all the spare time I could get.

The good news is that the work’s almost over — I sent 1.3 gig of information over
to Quebecor in Montreal today. At this point, I just need to proof the items that
they send me, and then it’s off to press. The bad news is that I’m getting this book
printed at the literal busiest time of the year. In addition to the usual summer
rampup in printing, Quebecor prints a huge majority of the comics out there today,
and they’re busy as a beesnest getting stuff out on time for San Diego Comicon.
So, of course, I pick exactly now to send my book off to press. I talked to my rep,
and she said that the best we can hope for is a July 21st or 28th ship date. I’m gonna
really press for a July 21st ship date… so some of you may get a last-minute
proofreading call!

And the good news continues; I’ve secured the location for the Vogelein: Clockwork
Faerie release party. As most of you already guessed, it will be held at
Sidetracks in Ypsilanti.
The owner’s really excited about the prospect, and she’s gonna let me sell the books
there and everything. At the moment, I don’t have a date picked out; I’ll settle on
a date once I get a firm word from the printer as to when the book will be delivered.
The current plan is for me to buy pitchers of pop and baskets of fried goodies
(Jallie poppers, beer-battered pickles, deep-fried zucchini) for the attendees, and
if people want beer or actual food they can order it from the bar. There will be no
cover charge, but there will be a door-prize: I’ll be giving away a free piece of
Vogelein artwork. The raffle costs nothing to join; it’s just me cleaning out my
Vogelein Artwork closet.

In the near future, I will be re-formatting the front page of the Vogelein.com site.
As pretty as it is, it’s a freaking huge memory hog, and totally disobeys the
Programmer’s Commandment of “None of thy pages shalt exceed 150K.” It’s also
on a privately-held server, which means that no matter how fat your ingoing pipe
is, the poor little Unix beastie who’s hosting it can’t shove it out any faster.
So it’s time for a redesign. I promise it’ll load much faster once it’s up and
running again.

So yeah. That’s about it for right now. Special thanks to Bill Cavnar, who
helped proofread the initial draft, and to Paul Sizer, who helped me get this
behemoth ready for press. More info soon, I promise: I’m going to have a full
month’s downtime while the book’s in process, and that will mean more literal and
figurative housecleaning time on my end. No rest for the weary!