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Inked four pages in under four hours last night. This makes me happy. I hope to get the other five inked and on the painting board before the weekend is out.
I typically have two thoughts running through my head while I’m inking. The first is “If I lived here, I’d be home by now,” meaning that if I didn’t have to paint these friggin’ pages, I’d probably be long done with this book and well into the next. The second thought is largely unprintable, as it is rarely more than an incoherent string of profanity directed at my inability to ink.

So I played hookey from work on Monday, and along with a pretty quiet weekend and Independence Day on Tuesday, I got a ton of drawing in. Starting from last Wednesday night, I’ve gotten nine pages pencilled and straight-inked. That’s got to be some sort of new record for me. Of course, if I were of real artistic caliber, like Sim or Speed, I’d have nine pages finished. Still, that’s really fast production for me. I’m guessing it’ll take another two weeks of evenings to get everything brush-inked and toned, so a total of nine pages in three weeks — that’s a little less than triple my usual. It’ll also push me dangerously close to the hundred-page mark that’s eluded me so long. If I can pull a few more weeks like this, I might — might — get this sucker done by next spring.
Wish me luck.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WOMEN WEBCOMICKER GRANT NAN
PURPOSE
In order to foster women publishing independently, with economy, and as owners of what they create, I will award FOUR grants annually, of a year’s free hosting at WebComicsNation.com, to women making a regularly-updating new or existing webcomic of any genre or style.
The recipients will have unlimited data storage and bandwidth, the ability to choose to support their work with ads, and a storefront for selling merchandise.
The name of the grant is “Nan”, after the “digital person” Nan 11 from Rumble Girls: Silky Warrior Tansie. In RG, Nan agitates, comments on, and works behind the scenes to help the heroine, Raven, come to the understanding that being her own girl is the key to her strength.
I believe the Web already has what women wanting to make comics need, and that it has and continues to transform American comics from a work-for-hire Boy’s Club to a stage for everyone to perform on and be seen. The Web is living up to its promise, and comics can, too.
DEADLINE
Submissions are now open. Deadline for submissions is FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2006, 6PM Central.
ANNOUNCEMENT OF GRANTS
NAN Grant recipients will be notified WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2006, via email. A press release will be sent out concurrently. (Because, dadgum, we all need good news by Wednesday.)
ELIGIBILITY
1. Persons applying MUST be female. You will have to provide me with a document such as a driver’s license, birth certificate, military I.D., etc. stating you are female. In the case of team comics (no more than three persons on a team), the entire team MUST be female, and remain so for the period of the grant.
2. Applicants must be at least 18 years old.
3. The work submitted must be free of contractural obligation for web publication, must be the property of the applicant(s), must not infringe on other’s rights, nor be libelous or slanderous.
4. I am kindly disposed towards manga and Oni-like comics, but good comics most of all.
5. Previous experience a plus, but not neccessary.
6. The NAN Grant is open to ALL female webcomickers, regardless of experience. This includes young, brand-new comickers, older brand-new comickers, experienced comickers now paying a success tax for bandwidth use, professionals from other fields. You have to either already be making a comic that needs hosting, or want to host a new one.
7. Applicant bears sole responsibility for following these guidelines. Failure to comply with items 1.-3. will result in revocation of awarded grant.
RIGHTS
1. Applicants retain ALL rights to their work. Submissions are the sole property of their creator(s), period.
2. Comics published with a NAN Grant that are later collected for print are requested to add “Originally published in (year) on Webcomicsnation.com, with the aid of Women Webcomicker Grant Nan” to their indicia.
3. I reserve the right to use applicant’s names and representative art to publicize NAN without further compensation. (This means I will tell people who’s applied, who’s won, and point the inquiring to their work.)
4. NAN Grant recipients are encouraged to crow as soon as they recieve notification emails.
GUIDELINES
1. Ideally, BEFORE YOU SEND ME YOUR PROPOSAL, BUY or BORROW and READ “How To Write a Book Proposal” by Michael Larsen. (Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582972516/qid=1066192984
/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-7710080-8024610)
While it is geared towards non-fiction proposals, it does teach everything you need to know about crafting a readable proposal.
What I do not want to see is your entire story written out in a single-spaced block in email. Have mercy.
2. Show me you already know how to put a comic/images online. I want to see clean presentation (which means learning how to use an image editing program to take out grays from scans), good lettering (many decent free fonts available at blambot.com, so there’s no excuse for lettering in Times New Roman), and basic HTML (which will greatly enhance your experience in hosting with WebComicsNation.com).
Excellent proposals by Lynn Lau and Leigh Dragoon that won their creators contracts at GirlAMatic.com can be found here:
http://tentative.net/jupiter/
And here:
http://www.spidric.com/proposal/default.asp
3. Email me at nanoneone@gmail.com, subject line “NAN: (title)”, otherwise my spam filters will eat it.
To this address, send me the URL of your submission, and attach a scan of a document that verifies your gender.
Don’t tell me it isn’t your best work. If it’s not, why should I look at it?
If you do things like use “u” for “you”, “4” for “four” and “LOL” for punctuation, don’t when you write me. I expect to see a command of conventional English. Also, sell yourself without resorting to emoticons. They’re for casual correspondence, which a proposal is not, at least not to me.
4. It’s okay to be disappointed if I feel your comic isn’t right for Nan Grant, because no one enjoys rejection. I regret I will be unable to provide detailed guidance or critiques of submitted material. I hope you will submit again.
5. I and grateful to you for submitting, no matter what my answer is.

Hey, everybody. Jen Contino has just posted a cool new article about Paul’s Little White Mouse Omnibus. Shameless plug: If you like Paul’s work, please take a second to post a word or two. It’ll help a lot to have the article near the top of the list for a while. Thanks!

Well, I’m back from Alaska, and I’ve been doing as much work as I can on the book. It’s been a bit tough this week, balancing art between all the catchup stuff that comes from being away.
The good news is that I did make some significant progress over the weekend: I got the last four pages dialogued, ballooned and all eighty pages of preview slotted in the new InDesign template. That was a big deal, as it’s major prepwork for the final volume.
On Sunday, i managed to get some good work done: I got pretty close to three pages pencilled; a single page and a two-page splash. Yay for progress! Now I just have to keep it moving.

Today on my lunch I went to the new Vault of Midnight store on Main Street, and I nearly had a hemmorhage from the awesome. This place is un-be-lievable! So awesome that I’m out of hyperbolic superlatives with which to define its awesomeness. Suffice it to say: This awesome goes to eleven.
There’s a mural of giant robots attacking godzilla and screaming orange and green walls and a lounge in the basement and shelf space — oh my goodness, the shelf space! And there’s a downstairs lounge, too! Curtis and Liz already have their new matching VoM logo tattoos; Steve’s is on the way.
Everyone in Ann Arbor should totally go check them out. Like, now.
Oh, and JimO? New printing of Kings in Disguise. Got me a copy — if there’s anyone else you need to infect with this comic, VoM has ’em.

Just figured out a way out of a particularly sticky scripting error I’d made. The solution makes me happy.
That is all.

So I didn’t go to Motor City this year, but I did swing by and visit folks afterwards. All the usual suspects were there: Paul, Sean, JimO, Pam, Michelangelo, Matt Feazell, Katie, Suzanne, and a new guy named Jeff.
Man, it’s really good hanging out with the cornwhackers. What great folks. So nice to see everyone, especially because of conversations like these:
On seeing the dance:
JANE: “Do you think I’ll get more girls if I wear my new stormtrooper helmet or just carry it?”
Over dinner:
JANE: ___ isn’t really a spook. He’s more like “spook support”.
JIMO: My cousin Louie’s in “spook support”. I don’t think he’ll ever get any time in the field, though.
SEAN: Why not?
JIMO: ‘Cause he’s six foot eleven and a hundred and ten. Unless they have a job for a pipecleaner…
JANE: Oh, man. I smell a minicomic.
SEAN: We could draw all the situations where he could actually infiltrate… like the NBA…
JANE: “Louie Ottaviani… Worst! Spy! Ever!”
Passing around Sean’s newly-acquired (and very hot!) book of high-art erotica:
MIKE: Hey, married people! Quit hogging the porn!
On seeing Pam’s new mini:
JANE: GAY WEREWOLF! NAKED GAY WEREWOLF! I’ve been waiting months for this.
PAM: The mini’s all-ages-appropriate, but I’ll have to show you the stuff in my sketchbook. I had to go buy a special British book of photography to get this one right.
JIMO: Why a British book?
PAM: Well, if you want pictures of guys in their “unadulterated” state… that’s not as easy to find in American photography. And this one was four dollars at the used book store.
On getting booze:
SEAN: God, there’s no place to buy booze here, *anywhere*.
JANE: Think they sell booze at Petsmart?
MIKE: Only doggy booze.
SEAN: Tequila! (Tequila!) Dog Tequila! (Dog Tequila!)
And I got new minicomics from Sean and Mike and Pam and Suzanne, which is probably everything I would have purchased at the show, anyway. And then we bought two bottles of wine with monkeys on the label, and one without, and then defaced the monkey-free label appropriately. A grand time was had by all, even if I did have to drive five hours just for dinner.

Paul is off to the Motor City Comicon. I’ve lost enough money the last few times I’ve done the show that I’ve elected to stay home and work on the book. I will, however, be leaving tomorrow evening to pick up Jim O and crash the Cornwhacker* dinner party, which is always the best part of the show anyway. Hooray!
*”Cornwhacker” is a term for Midwestern comics creators, coined by our own Matt Feazell. We have a tendency to get lumped together, even at faraway shows like SPX.

I spent a portion of last night redoing some of the dialogue, and resetting word balloons on several pages. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be working on earlier stuff, shush. You can only redact so much before your’e redoing the whole page. But the new style of balloons is much better — I’ve started using it on the new pages, and it was so much better that I decided to go retrofit the older pages with the newer style so that they all matched. Shoudn’t take too long, and in many places it made the balloons smaller so that more of the images will show. This is a very good thing.
Got the dialogue most of the way done (still fine-tuning a couple pages) and have five or six new pages ballooned. Good progress.