[Shannon, by the way, is currently on tour on the west coast -- she's doing a book launch at Lucky's on Aug. 24th in case you live in Vancouver!]

So here’s a breakdown of how much time we each spent working on the book.

Jim’s hours: 283.8 (writing: 23%, revisions and editing: 16%, publicity: 20%, publishing business: 38%)

Shannon’s hours:  1000+ (drawing)

So basically, Shannon put in 80% of the time even considering I took on publicity and publishing roles. (If I was just doing the writing, it would have been closer to a 90/10% split.)

We’re dividing the money we make 80/20%, but it still feels weird. I mean, I knew it took a long time to draw, but it really takes a long time to draw. This wonky division of labour is something to keep in mind when if you’re ever approaching someone to draw a comic. Even if you’re a slow writer and they’re a fast drawer, you’re still asking them to spend much more time realizing something than you spent creating it. What are you bringing to the project beyond amazing ideas and sparkling prose?

It was a push to get the book ready in time, and tricky to manage as it’s a IDW / NMK single edition co-publishing dealy, but Shannon still took the time to do these hilariously amazing bio illustrations of the two of us, check ‘em out after the jump!


I’d given Shannon a bunch of photos of me on a trip for a possible bio pic illustration, and the one she chose was of me facing off the digital zombies in some airport arcade. I went along with it even though I was a bit concerned it would make me look like an asshole if she drew herself quietly crocheting or something. Happily she drew herself as villainous as me. As usual with Shannon, things turned out awesome! Back to back, awaiting the critical onslaught…

Sword of My Mouth #1, the first part of the follow-up to my post-Rapture graphic novel Therefore Repent!, is now in stores and this weekend at TCAF. #1 will be the only print edtion — issues #2-6 will be digital only, after which the complete story will be collected together and published as a printed graphic novel. So if you’d like to get them as they’re released bi-monthly through this year, you have two options — you can subscribe to the complete series in a digital format for $6 or pre-order the printed graphic novel for $12 and get a free subscription to the digital issues as well as some other goodies.

In a time when the economy and other forces are making the print pamphlet model unsustainable for many indies, we’re excited to see how this will work. The digital format isn’t going to replace the print book, but it’s an interesting format that allows for cheaper prices and more direct interaction between creators and readers — one we hope to foster by adding commentary.

UPDATE: Pre-orders no longer available, but you can order it here.

Starring Emma Goldman and Mikhail Bakunin, it’s a totally weird animal: part how-to, part polemic, part coming-of-age story, part interview, and Marc’s matched it with his whacked-out imagery and trippy colouring. I’m really excited to see what people think when we launch it next month. Check out more info and the cover after the jump.

In a timeshifted Toronto, political firebrand Emma Goldman is paying the rent as a graphic designer… just a few cubicles down from like-minded radical Mikhail Bakunin.

The tension is mounting…

Make a Fool of Yourself
I like publishing because it is possible to survive one’s mistakes.
–Michael Joseph

If I stayed home with the curtains drawn until I’d written, rewritten, and polished to perfection each precious line of the next Great American Novel, I wouldn’t be famous enough to get it published. As it is, when I do produce my finest masterpiece, folks will say, “I always knew Ariel Gore had it in her,” and the New York Times will admit that I’m a genius, and I’ll be even more famous than I had to be to get the thing published, and I can die a goddess.

Until then, I’ll publish what I’ve got.

Most lit star’s first publications were straight-up embarrassing. This is as it should be. You live and learn. The humiliation of a bad poem doesn’t truly hit home until your ex-husband has submitted it in family court as evidence of your total mental incapacity.

I will not write such a poem again.

But even the embarrassment is good practice. If you’re going to be famous, you’d better get used to humiliation. There is no dignity in celebrity. When I finally got the L.A. Times–my grandmother’s hometown newspaper–to run a big color picture and proclaim me a lit star, they also mentioned that I’d once slept with a man for money. Thank you.

“The unread story is not a story,” Ursula K. Le Guin says. “It’s little black marks on wood pulp.” So make your little black marks live. Let a reader turn them into a story.

Look around. Great people are always kicking themselves for failing to reach impossible standards of perfection while the mediocre ones run around doing this and that and seeming never to feel the least bit bad about themselves.

So your first published piece won’t be in the New Yorker. So what? Maybe it will be in a small community newspaper published out of someone’s dirty kitchen and the only way you’ll get them to print it is by volunteering to do the dishes. It might be in a niche magazine or a small-circulation nation zine called I (heart) Amy Carter, it might be in a self-published chapbook. It doesn’t matter. Get used to publication. Get used to writing for strangers. Get used to the stupid things those strangers will tell you about your work. Get used to the awesomely heartening things they’ll tell you. Get used to the fact that as a writer, you may never know who read your work and whether or not it had any impact on them at all. Get used to imperfection. Get used to the typos that make it past copyeditors. Get used to publication. Short stories. Articles. Blogs. Columns. Blurbs. Poems. Whatever you’ve got. If you want to write for strangers, get it out there so those strangers can see it.

A lot of glossy magazines won’t even read your stuff if you don’t have a resume. But here’s the good news: You can publish the first issue of your zine for $50. If you’ve got access to the internet, you can start a blog for free. Once you’re publishing stuff yourself, you’re not just a writer, you’re a writer-publisher. If you publish other people’s stuff, too, you’re a writer-editor-publisher. You can join the club. And the listserve. You can go to potlucks with other writer-editor-publishers. You can offer to review books and write fillers for their zines and journals and websites. And voila! You’ve got a resume.

When it comes to writing a book, just write it. If the book is nonfiction, you might be able to write a proposal for it and get a contract before you write the whole thing. More likely, if it’s your first book, you’ll just have to write it. And what when it’s done? Try to get an agent. An agent can try to sell the book to a big press and get you a little money. And what if you can’t get an agent or don’t want one? So what? I know a few people who’ve spent years-coming-on-decades trying to find an agent who’ll sell their book to a huge press. They won’t even consider going for a medium or small press. This is madness. I don’t understand it. Maybe they’re hoping to impress their parents. But I can tell you that if you’re parents are not proud of you as an unpublished writer, they will not be proud of you as a published writer. If they are picky, critical people, they will find fault with your book regardless.

Maybe these developing writers want to make a lot of money. If so, they ought to learn a trade. Big presses are great, but they’re not the only game in town. Start with a humble book at a humble press. Start with your own press. Make 300 copies. Call a local bookstore and set up an author event. Invite all your friends. Make flyers about it. Send press releases and review copies to relevant media. Sell your 300 copies. And use the money to print more. Now you’re a published author. Onward!

Your first published pieces will be incomplete and imperfect. Who cares? It’s better to make a fool of yourself in front of a small audience than it is to steal from the world the light of your coming brilliance.

Write for Strangers

Like most writers, I started out writing for myself. I kept messy, irregular, emotional diaries. I meditated, pen in hand, across pages lined and blank. I free-associated and rambled on. But eventually, journaling to become a writer started to feel like playing with buckets of saltwater to become a surfer. Sure, had to get used to the elements I wanted to work with, but freewriting can only take a writer so far. So I started penning letters to friends, writing poems and posting them on telephone poles, and then, finally, writing short articles and profiles for Sonoma County Women’s Voices, a small community newspaper where the editors were kind enough to give me an internship.

Occasionally when I’m stuck on in a story or a chapter now, I’ll open a notebook and scrawl stream of consciousness to empty my mind and let the universe fill the vacuum, but when I’m stuck it’s usually more helpful to take a walk, have sex, paint a portrait, lift weights, go out for a drink. Freewriting helped me recover from too many years of formal education, but it’s no longer a super-effective tool when it comes to waking my creative brain.

If you want to write just for yourself, that’s fine. Get a good journal. Archival quality. But if you want to write for strangers, too, you’ll have to publish. I’ve had teachers who warned writers not to publish until they’re “ready.” This is silly. What’s ready? I started publishing my work long before I was ready. Start publishing. Start right away. And don’t be afraid to start small. Set yourself up with a public diary at livejournal.com. Print poetry on stickers and post them around town and in train bathrooms. Print short short stories on well-designed bookmarks and convince local booksellers to display the freebies on their counters. Print your words on anything you can think of — paper, walls, or the pages of cyberspace — and distribute freely.

Start Small

As Marc Acito says, it’s not who you know in this business, it’s who knows you–or rather, who knows your writing. So don’t be afraid to start small.

I might need a famous author to blurb a new book. I might find that author’s website and send them an email introducing myself and asking if they wouldn’t mind taking a look at my manuscript and consider endorsing it. And that famous author might write back saying, “Sure, I know you. You wrote that weird short story in Fly By Night magazine six years ago . . .” This is exactly three trillion times better than trying to get that same famous author to remember that we shook hands once. No agent, editor, publisher, or writer has ever said to me: “Sure, I know you, we met at such and such literati cocktail party . . .”

Even if no one who’ll be specifically helpful to you ever reads your weird short story in Fly By Night or your column in the PTA newsletter, you’re taking your craft and your genius into the world now. You’re getting used to seeing your words in print. If you have an editor, you are learning how to be edited–how to revise when asked, how to let the little changes go, how to fight for your original words when they’re truly important to you. When you read your first articles in print, you may notice that they seem to have a different rhythm and tone to them once set in type. A story on a magazine page has a different feel to it than a story on the computer. That’s because written words and stories are living things. You can’t always control the editing or the subtle transmutation that takes place when a piece is printed, but you can get used to the process and begin to work with it. If my first published work had been a book I’d spent years working on, I probably would have had a nervous breakdown. As it was, my first published article happened to be a 600-word story about a local First Nation farm struggling for survival. It took me a week to write. The subject matter was important to me, but not deeply personal. And so I began to learn to publish and be published not with a huge splash, but with a small offering, by lending my still-shy voice to an unseen community treasure that needed every voice it could get.

Check out more excerpts at Ariel Gore’s website or buy it online.

Keep reading to check out the cover it its full glory, wingèd helmet and all…

Therefore Repent! is a graphic novel set in a Chicago neighbourhood after The Rapture. Once the righteous have floated bodily into the sky, life goes on pretty much as usual for the immoral majority. Except that magic works, if you’re willing to risk demonic mutations. CNN reports that Mr. Christ and Mr. Bush are on a speaking tour of the red states. And an angelic army appears to have been deployed to mop up the sinners. But through it all, outsiders Raven and Mummy face the possibility of a bigger problem than the end of the world: the end of their relationship.

In the tradition of The Book of Revelation, Therefore Repent! is a lurid dark fantasy tale. By taking the apocryphal scripture as literal truth — as the American powers-that-be claim to do — the story also explores the political and spiritual ramifications of God abandoning humanity.

On writer Jim Munroe’s comic-inspired novel Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask

“It’s an excellent book — a funny, cool riff on superpowers and twentysomethingness.” –Neil Gaiman (The Sandman)

“Jim Munroe has written the first novel to harness the energy, idealism, and cartoon-inspired playfulness of the new wave of culture jammers. It’s about time we have some superheroes to save us after the post-irony meltdown — forces of corporate darkness, beware.” –Naomi Klein (No Logo)

On illustrator Salgood Sam‘s work for Image Comics’ pirate vampire title Sea of Red

“brilliant” — boingboing.net

“jaw-dropping and unusual artwork… just knocked my socks off” — thefourthrail.com

In the tradition of The Book of Revelation, it’s a pretty wild dark fantasy tale filled with demons and swords and blood. I’ve always been a fan of the kookier parts of the bible, being able to understand that it’s a story rich with symbolism rather than literal truth. But kind of like the people who learn Klingon and quote Kirk in episode 22, Christian fundamentalists take the bible way too seriously and ruin it for the rest of us. The difference is, instead of gathering harmlessly at Star Trek conventions, the fundies have taken over the White House and are trying to control people’s lives.

Update: You can order it here or find out more over here!

The backstory: a year ago, when An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil came out, I posted one entry a day to the faux blog. On it was an online poll that asked readers if they thought the character Lilith was really a demoness or just delusional: I said that I’d write a spin-off story depending on how the vote went. Of the 500 people who weighed in, 55% of you thought she was unholy rather than unhinged.

Supernatural, then.

While I was touring with Unspeakable Evil, Bush took the election in the States and it seemed hard to get weirder and more sinister than real life. But it made me think about the Rapture and how a lot of the religious right believe that it will literally happen. What if it did happen? It’d be a pretty wild post-apocalyptic tale straight out of the comic books.

And as it happened, at the end of Unspeakable Evil, Kate and Bruce start working on a comic book together called The Bold Explorers. Montreal illustrator Michel Lacombe stepped up to the plate and together we’ve made that 24-page comic, and one of my geek-boyhood dreams has been realized.

If you’d rather hold the thing in your hands, you can. As an experiment I’ve made The Bold Explorers available for sale through lulu.com, a print-on-demand service. I uploaded it last week and have a copy in my hands today. It was free for us to upload, and the comic is sharply printed on nice quality paper. However, it’s a bit pricey: with shipping, it comes out to $9 US or (choke) $15 Canadian. Michel and I get about a dollar of that to split.

But The Bold Explorers actually refers to the comic Kate and Bruce start making together at the end of An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil. A comic that is currently being drawn into being by the fiendishly talented Michel Lacombe. Check out the cover, and keep your evil eye cocked for it — it’ll be released in October.