The Great(est) Perhaps: Tonight

It's not every day that three of my favorite people in Chicago decide to get together and share their wares with the public. But tonight is one of those nights. My pal Joe Meno will be celebrating the release of his new novel The Great Perhaps, and will be supported by presentations from Jonathan Messinger (of Paper Egg and Feather Proof Books fame) and Jon Resh (a prolific designer and one of the first friends I made when moving to this city the better part of a decade ago).

It should be a great event, housed by the venerable institution that is Quimby's, so if you're in the area, stop by and get a triple helping of literary cake.

For the Affluent Bibliophile, Confused Enthusiast

It occurred to me that I should make at least some note of the books (that I've been working on, in some portion or another) coming out in the next couple of months, if for no other reason than to abate my constant forgetfulness that these are seeing the light of day (it's an easy enough thing to forget, given the lags and turnaround times in the strange world of publishing).

Two of these books are available now, at least according to what I could find on various web sites. The first is Demons in the Spring, by Joe Meno, a collection of short stories benefiting the 826 writing center here in Chicago. It's a great cause and the book's crammed with Joe's words and amazing illustrations, all far better than mine. The other book in stores now is the twelfth installment of Fantagraphics' Mome anthology. In this issue I contributed what was, for me, a real odd ball: an illustrated short prose story. The story, "The Spoils of The Fair," was originally written for The Dollar Store reading series, and then read at a couple stops on "The Three Paradoxes" book tour last summer. The illustrations are equally abnormal, as they were all done directly in a sketchbook, with a brush pen and colored pencils, a decent departure from my usual painfully sterile techniques. (Thanks to the Fantagraphics folks for the video from which I stole this (below) still.)


Two more books, both scheduled to be out October 8th, are The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008 (which will house a 32-page full-color excerpt of "The Three Paradoxes"), and the hardcover collection of Omega the Unknown (the dust jacket for which is in a recent post below).

Somewhere in all that mess, the second printing of The Three Paradoxes is making its way out into the world, and though I don't think I've even made an explicit mention of this edition anywhere, the Fantagraphics-published hardbound edition of "Mother, Come Home" is now available for pre-order, due out in February of next year.

I've probably missed something somewhere... I'll remember it at three in the morning, in a cold sweat, then promptly forget it and return to my dream of sentient doorbells and melting game shows.

Demons in Spring, in August

This isn't coming out until August, but I wanted to be sure to give advance warning that people should be on the lookout for Joe Meno's upcoming book, Demons in the Spring , for which I provided a couple illustrations (two permutations of one those illustrations are above). Those illustrations will join the (undoubtedly superior) work of Charles Burns, Archer Prewitt, Ivan Brunetti, Jay Ryan, Anders Nilsen, and kozyndan, among others.

With that cast of talent and weighing in at three hundred hardbound pages, it's sure to be an impressive book. But all that aside, the book benefits 826 Chicago, a non-profit writing and tutoring center, so come August, buy five copies... even if you hate everyone in the book. And then go get some anger management therapy, because you hate some of the nicer people on the planet. It's really time to take a look in the mirror, isn't it? Yes. Yes, it is.