Good news! I’ll be an exhibitor at this year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival on May 7 and 8, 2011. TCAF is an annual event focused on the incredible diversity in comics, and most importantly, admission is free! Come stop by if you’re in the area or are looking for an excuse to make a trip to Canada.

Our table is on the second floor, #209. The map will be printed in the festival guide in full color, but in case you want to figure out your plan of attack in advance, here’s where we’ll be!

The full floor maps are on the TCAF website, so you can check out the locations of all 300+ cartoonists in attendance.

Toronto’s National Post newspaper has been running a series of interviews with all the exhibitors new to TCAF. Click to read my answers to their questionnaire, and check out everyone else’s while you’re at it! It looks like a great group this year.

My tablemate at TCAF will be the one and only Kevin Czap, creator of the infinite scroll webcomic SPOILERS, and who blogs about all things comics as a part of Comix Cube. Be sure to read ‘em both.

Kevin is also the guy behind PUPPY TEETH, a minicomic anthology he started last year. Collection #1 came out last fall, but we’re back with a new volume just in time for TCAF– and this time, it’s full color!

PUPPY TEETH 2 is a mighty 52 pages, with comics from over a dozen artists. It’s debuting at TCAF, where you can get it for a nice $10. You can also order it from the site; all you need is a Paypal account.

My story is a three page little thing, simply titled In Which a Young Caribou Grows No Antlers, Is Exiled from Her Herd, and Journeys to Find Answers. It’s my excuse to play with a fable-esque comic I’ve been thinking of writing, but haven’t had the time to really focus on.

Along with the PUPPY TEETH anthology, I’ll have a few additional minicomics to sell!

I’ve put together a minicomic issue of issue 1 of IN MAPS & LEGENDS. It’s 22 pages, and in black and white– but with every purchase of the minicomic, I’ll also provide a high quality, full-color PDF! The minicomic will be available for $2.50. TCAF visitors can buy digital versions of issues 2-6 while they’re at it for just $1 per issue.

Also available will be a zine version of Mike’s and my recent how-to ebook, FORMATTING COMICS FOR KINDLE & NOOK. This is a 30 page guide, and it’ll cost $4 at TCAF (though you can always grab a PDF if you can’t make it to the con!).

Writer Michael Jasper and I have been releasing the digital comic version of IN MAPS & LEGENDS for a little more than half a year now. We’ve learned a lot, and are constantly getting questions from other creators wanting to make ebook version of their own comics. So we made a guide! Formatting Comics for the Kindle and Nook.

This how-to guide covers assembling image-based ebooks for the two biggest e-readers on the market: Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. This ebook covers how to convert the images for your comic into the Kindle and Nook formats, and how to package those images in the most effective manner. We also share what we have learned about digital comic distribution for sites other than Amazon.com and BN.com. The ebook is $2.99, and has step-by-step tutorials with plenty of screenshots to make sure you don’t run into any problems formatting your own comics. It’s available for Kindle and Nook, and as a PDF and ePub.

I hope to see you there!

In August, Cleveland comics buddy Kevin (who teaches a class on making comics at the Cleveland Institute of Art that you all should sign up for if you’re interested in the format) teamed up with some others and set out to work on a mini-comic: PUPPY TEETH! I was invited to join in, and did a short little 4-page comic called TWO CARDINALS. It’s actually a re-done version of a mini-comic I did a few years ago, which in turn was based on an incident where a cardinal fell, dead, on the sidewalk right in front of me. And then what happened…?

I hadn’t inked a comic with a brush in quite a while, so it was a fun excuse to try it out again. You can see the first page of my mini-comic offering to the left.

PUPPY TEETH is a massive 58 pages, with stories by 10 different creators. if you’re interested in getting a copy, it’ll be all yours for $3. Kevin sold them at SPX, and will also have a table at the upcoming PIX in Pittsburgh on October 16 & 17 (which I sadly can’t make it to! I have a convention timing curse.) Of course, you can always just get a copy from him just by ordering through the website.

It’s pretty nifty. We’re hoping to do s’more minis soon.

I’ve been taking a break from writing Some Did Rest recently to work on a few shorter projects, samples of which you can see to the left and below! Maps & Legends is 8 pages, full-color, and is part of a collaboration with author Michael Jasper. We’re revisiting a book he wrote and adapting it to visual form; as you can tell from the title, maps play a large part in the story, and portraying them has been a fun challenge. Hopefully I’ll have an update about Maps & Legends’ future soon! Mike has some great ideas about where the story will go.

I also finished up a short submission for a comics anthology. Best Erotic Comics is true to its name: an annual anthology out from Last Gasp. I had a short story in this year’s BEC 2009. The book just got a great review from Carnal Nation, and it has short comics from a lot of great artists: Alison Bechdel, Gilbert Hernandez, and others. So pick it up if it’s your kind of thing! The short story I just submitted is titled In Winter, and is only three pages. I’ll update with any news about whether it will be in next year’s edition when I find out. I love doing short comics because of the freedom they allow– I’m always playing with different styles and figuring out what works best for the story I’m drawing.

Now, though, I’m ready to focus. Some Did Rest needs a finished script (and I’m dying to figure out the look of the pages and send it out into the world). And then… who knows? I’ve got another YA idea floating around in the back of my head that might get some attention when I’m done.