Blowing the dust off.

I spent some time this week finally sprucing up the site for Absinthe. It’s been looking off for quite a while.

There’s still a few things left to do but mostly it looks like it should again. And now it’s a chapter-oriented site, rather than a page-oriented site – you can read all of chapter 1 in one screen. If you stretch your browser out wide enough you’ll pretty much get the intended reading experience of maybe noticing that each pair of pages has its own color scheme.

My current plans are to return to Absinthe in early 2014, once I’ve finished Rita.

okay maybe not gone forever

I’ve been meaning to mention this here for a few months but have been pretty busy: Absinthe’s status has been downgraded from “cancelled forever due to breakup” to “on hiatus while I do a solo comic and a costumed striptease”.

No, seriously, I’m taking this burlesque dance class that will see me dressing up in a blinky GLaDOS costume and wiggling my ass and tits in the middle of August! And I’m also working on a comic about a robot that I’m updating fairly regularly.

Absinthe may be back sometime this fall, but I’m not making any promises yet.

probably cancelled, sorry

I just broke up with Nick for the second time in four months. I really have no idea if I’m ever going to be in the kind of relationship where I’m comfortable collaborating with him ever again.

I originally said “hey let’s do a comic together” to try and cheer him up and make him feel good about his creative skills. It was fun. I would never have gotten through more than a couple of pages without him to help; his plotting and dialogue is worlds better than mine. We made a pretty good creative team.

Hopefully what I learnt working with him will make it easier to do solo projects in the future. Right now I don’t fucking know at all. I just know that I can’t see myself carrying this on without him.

If there’s any interest I might write up a brief synopsis of what we had planned for the remaining four chapters. It hurts a hell of a lot to cancel this; I had a great time drawing it, and I hope you folks had a great time reading what got made.

Surprise! Nomination!

Some email pointed me in the direction of the ‘other’ category of a new award. Absinthe is up for a ‘Rose and Bay’ award, which is about recognizing projects that connect the viewers/patrons (you!) directly with the creators (me and Nick!).

I’m not sure our little dirty comic has much of a chance against juggernaughts like Digger or Girl Genius… but on the other hand, holy fuck, it’s pretty awesome to be on the same list as a comic done by someone I’ve been trying to draw like on and off since I was twelve.

Anyway! Vote for Absinthe if you wanna. And while we’re talking about awards, I might as well mention that the Ursa Majors are open for nominations too.

Coming back soon!

I am now three thumbnails away from having all of Chapter 2 planned out! Which means that I can start drawing and Illustratoring. I’m hoping to have things ready to roll again sometime near the end of February. Keep us in your feed reader, we’ll be back!

In the meantime, have a look at this cool drawing of Absinthe in space [NSFW] that Farore did back at Rainfurrest.

Also: I sold the last of my stock of Book 1 at Further Confusion! I’m ordering a new pile, and we’ll be able to sell some signed copies over the net once they get in.

The Week Of Two Cons

I’d just like to say thanks to everyone who came to my table at Rainfurrest and bought a copy of the Absinthe book, or my other stuff!

I will be at Foolscap next weekend. If they have an Artist’s Alley I may snag a table; I’m not sure. After that, I will be back in Boston, and we will be able to ship out signed copies of the book to those of you who’d like one and couldn’t get to Seattle…

Books!

The book is here, and it looks awesome!

It’s seventeen bucks plus shipping. Lulu’s having a promotion right now: use the coupon code “LULUBOOK” to get 10% off until the end of the month.

Buy the book here!

If you want a signed copy, you can get one at Rainfurrest later this month – or you can get one afterwards. Email me and we’ll get you set up.

A little url juggling

Since the sex scene goes up tomorrow, I finally got off my butt and put a big ol’ “ADULTS ONLY!” page at the front of the site. The RSS and LJ feeds should keep working just fine, but if you read Absinthe by hitting a bookmark you might want to update it.

Also, there were some issues with the test print of the book, so I’m doing a second test print. It should be ready soon.

We’re almost done with the first chapter. There’ll be a hiatus while we work on the second one; we hope you’ll come back for it! And tell your friends.

I just posted the cover that I’m putting on the first collected volume. It’ll show up if you hit the ‘first page’ link now.

I can’t remember whether Nick and I agreed it should be “A Decorative Romance” or “A Decorative Fantasy”. I may have to change this!

And speaking of the first collected volume, I got e-mail from Lulu yesterday telling me that my test copy has shipped! If all goes well then I’ll have a small pile of them at Rainfurrest; find me in the dealer’s room and you can get a signed copy and ogle all the little details at 300dpi!

Exhibition and donations

Two things!

First, a huge thanks to Rheoryn for being our first three-digit donation – that link to the Furry Pound in the sponsor section is due to her. We’ll be giving her a cameo appearance somewhere in the next chapter. If anyone else makes a similar donation, we’ll do the same for you!

Second, Five Glasses of Absinthe will be part of the “Monsters of Webcomics” exhibition at the Museum of Cartoon Art in San Francisco – more precisely, it’s part of the “virtual gallery” portion of the exhibit, which I believe is a monitor or two cycling various images from all across the net. The exhibit opened last Saturday (August 8), and will be up until December 6.