Happy Birthday to Me

Well today was my birthday, when it started out I didn't think anyone was going to remember at all, but it turned out everyone did. Still it's kind of depressing to turn 31, somehow it doesn't seem right to be that old yet. The last couple years have been kind of nuts with All the work I've put into Alpha Shade and it's almost like I've been frozen at 28. The time has gone so fast and yet it seems like I've been doing this forever.

Chris says that I have to get at least two pages out a week, and he's right, the story is never going to get anywhere unless I get the pages out quicker. Now that Chapter two has started I really should come up with a better work schedule. Right now I work every day unless I'm obligated to be out of town or something, but I think I get burned out and end up working slower. Or maybe I need to stop thinking of it like a job. I mean, YES it IS a job, but it's more like a lifestyle. MM, I don't know, I don't want to sound like I'm whining, It's great to be able to work on a project like this, and my art has gotten TONS better on the last two years ... I guess it's just that there really isn't any end to it. If I think of it more like something I want to do and less than something I have to do...

Speaking of A-S the preorders for the book are going amazingly well. I was getting pretty apprehensive about the whole thing after the low T-Shirt sales, but I think it's going to be okay ;D
It's only been four days or so and sales have already paid for 1/5th of the printing costs. That doesn't sound like much, but 5000 really high quality books are REALLY expensive to print, so I'm quite pleased with that number. We only need to sell 640 book to pay for the printing costs, which leaves us with 4360 books that sell for pure profit. Not that I expect that we will sell anywhere near that many this year, but since I'll be doing this so many years I can't even think about it, we will have plenty of time to sell them.

I'm going to go back and reread the story tonight. I haven't really read it for more than a year. Since I'm going to have to figure out what most of the main characters need to look like in this chapter, I figure I need to re-acquaint myself with who they are.

I might take a couple days next week to go hang out at the UofM too. I was just there with JQ tonight and it's funny how only a college campus can feel like a college campus. College students too, there is something about them that is so obviously college. Like a slouchy-optimism coupled with a "I just gotta be me just like everyone else" dress code. It would be nice to portray that in the comic.