I turned 36 earlier this month, which makes it half my life that I’ve been an anarchist, a vegan, and a DIY culture maker. I was exposed to these philosophies through punk music and zines in my teens, and it’s a bit of an aberration that the ideas I encountered in a youth subculture are still relevant to me at this time in my life. But they introduced me to ways of thinking about the world and empowering practises that are still true and useful to me now, and I’m grateful I encountered them.

And so while I don’t care about whether I’m old or not, I do care about youth subcultures. Read the rest of this post »

Pretty nuts: that goofy Grand Theft Auto 3 video I made five years ago for my zine has been watched by the guy who designed SimCity, the Sims and the upcoming Spore. He actually mentioned it last week in a rather brilliant-sounding videogames-as-art speech.

That video (part of my Pleasure Circuit Overload series of vids about videogames) has gotten a ridonkulous amount of attention for what it is and it seems to keeps bumbling into places it doesn’t belong. (CTheory? The New York Times? Whaa…?)

But just so my head doesn’t inflate too much — I didn’t win the Shuster award for best comics writing I was nominated for last week. My new pal Cecil Castellucci won it for her excellent P.L.A.I.N. Janes graphic novel about a clique of nerdy girls transforming their town with art-terrorism.

Undeterred, I’m diving into researching and writing a new comics project, Time Management for Anarchists: The Comic. Which is gonna be drawn by Marc Ngui, the genius behind the My Trip avatar skins (pictured below).

It seems random, but everything in my life connects if you have enough time and graph paper to map it out. Read the rest of this post »

The second round of the Artsy Games Incubator went terrific: all five of us ended up with videogames you can download and play: check out Mouse Police, Bungee Fisher, Cupcake Challenge, Albacross, and my own Baby Runs This Mofo.

It’s a good excuse to interview one of the founding sponsors of the AGI project, Jon Mak, a Toronto game designer who Newsweek dubbed a “wunderkind”. His abstract videogame Everyday Shooter came out for the PS3 and now it’s available on the PC — if you’d like a chance at winning a free copy, leave a comment in response to the MP3 interview I did with him below. In it Jon explains why Guitar Hero is fun despite being a sucky game, that he learns best through failing, how he made ES while working part-time for money thanks to context switch, & how the work gets better the more you take away.

 
 Jon Mak interviewed April 2008 [37:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The lo-fi sci-fi movie I wrote and co-produced last year is now coming out as a DVD, complete with commentary from all seven directors with DIY no-budget filmmaking tips and tricks. To launch it we’re having a screening at the Royal Cinema, one of the last grand independent theatres in the city, Thurs. May 15th at 9pm (608 College, $10). This’ll be the first time it’s screened in Toronto since the amazing advance screening we did at Innis. There’ll be a q & a with the directors afterwards and as a bonus we’re also showing the premiere of “Luggage”, Craig Macnaughton’s new short. Craig did a great job with the design of the DVD and revamped the Infest Wisely trailer with all the great quotes we got from the media. Check out the official press release and the cover art below. Read the rest of this post »

Locus is a collaboration between two small independent publishers in Melbourne, aduki independent press and Vignette Press, run by Emily and Lisa. They got together to run market stalls (and now also a blog) because they knew doing it with a friend would be more enjoyable than going it alone. They were kind enough to share their advice on selling indie books and zines.

Doing market stalls probably won’t make you rich or sell a truckload of books. Our best market day ever made about $750, mostly we make a lot less than that. Beer money, really. But even if you don’t sell a lot you’re still spreading the word and marketing your product, which is important in the long run. We learned what kind of markets work for our particular books and what sorts of places just don’t. The only way you can figure this out for yourself is by getting out there and trying different markets. Here’s some tips for running a successful market stall. Read the rest of this post »

My comic, it appears.

2008’s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, Junot Díaz, was asked what he was reading for pleasure and he named my and Salgood’s graphic novel Therefore Repent! “It’s completely nuts,” he said, which is pretty close to what the Quill and Quire guy said (”unhinged”). Seems there’s a literary consensus on that. When my reader poll came out in favour of Lilith being actually daemonic and not just crazy, I committed to doing something over-the-top fantastical in contrast to my more muted stuff — nice to hear it’s working for people. Junot sounds like my kinda booknerd!

In other flattering news, I’ve been nominated for the Joe Shuster Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Writer award. Unlike some of the other talent there with a dozen or so comics to their name, I have only TR! and one other strip that appeared in the Beguiling-produced Comic Festival. You can read it on Salgood’s site.

Also: Chicago launch of Therefore Repent! next month!

The last round of the Artsy Games Incubator was really good — we had a longer run (meeting weekly for six weeks) than the first round, and we all ended up making videogames worth showing. So we’re doing an open house at the Mobile Experience Lab at 52 McCaul St. (3rd floor) on Wed. April 23rd at 7pm, where there’ll be short presentations of the games we made using accessible tools. It’s a great time to find out more about future rounds of the AGI, and we’re also inviting people in the indie games community at large to bring their games-in-progress to demo — and no, you don’t have to identify as an artist. Admission: a game-in-progress, or a snack for the snack table. For a taste of what’s to come, check out some of the screenshots below.
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For those who’ve attributed my recent silence to Sidney, she’s only part of the cause. I’ve also been doing a gig for OCAD recently — The Mobile Experience Lab was looking to showcase some of the cell phone technologies they’d developed over the past two years in public spaces. I started as a consultant on narrative and then I was kept on to implement the scenarios I’d written. It was a lot of fun working with a bunch of talented folk to figure out how to make these whimsical and odd things happen on John Street. They’re hoping to launch it this summer, funding and situation willing. Below is some documentation we got during the alpha and beta testing. Read the rest of this post »

I published my graphic novel Therefore Repent! in Canada in August, and IDW (who put out 30 Days of Night) just released it in the US last week. I just got a copy of their edition and it looks great: they used a slightly thicker paper stock and a slightly lighter ink, but it’s otherwise pretty much identical to the Canadian edition. Even though I’m best known for writing articles on do-it-yourself publishing, I’ve learnt a lot in publishing with other folks too. So today I’m going to answer one of the questions I get asked the most:

“How did you get a book deal?”

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I recently produced a promotional video for some friends of mine who have a game called N+ about to be released. Based on their free Flash game N that they developed independently in 2004, it’s coming out soon on Xbox Live Arcade as well as the PSP and Nintendo DS. It’s a great game, and it was a good opportunity to work with Craig Macnaughton (my co-producer for Infest Wisely) again — he did an amazing job pulling together what was a complex shoot with effects and stunts. Click through to check out the 3 minute vid.
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Both critical raves and good sales? Eerie.

Therefore Repent! got a starred review in last month’s issue of Quill and Quire, made the Best of 2007 list in this month’s issue, and actually squeaked into the bestseller list for Canadian graphic novels last week.

Salgood Sam has booked the Montreal TR! launch at the newly opened Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore (211 Bernard Ouest) on Saturday, December 8, 7-9pm. As I’ve been in the baby zone, he’s been taking point lately with an audio ad and tabling at Expozine.

All this and it hasn’t even come out in the US yet! It’s due to hit the stores down south in January via Diamond (# NOV073660) and the US publisher IDW has printed up a great looking 30 page sampler to promote it: drop a line if you want some for your store or your pals. UPDATE: Salgood has a nice interview here, and the Montreal Mirror did an article as well.

Although we’ve been prepping for it for the better part of a year, Susan and I began the project in earnest a week ago today: her name is Sidney Amelia Bustos Munroe, and she weighed in at 7 pounds, 14 ounces.

It’s been going great, it’s a totally engrossing and fascinating process. Susan and I have made a bunch of things together, but Sid’s by far the best. Imagine a human being, but an implausibly adorable one, and you’ll have an idea of what she’s like. And if you’ve having trouble picturing that, check out the pictures interspersed with some of my early observations. Read the rest of this post »

A lot of artists I know have great ideas for videogames, but no programming skills. A lot of videogame makers I know wish there was more creativity and innovation happening in the field, but don’t know how best to foster it. I started the Artsy Games Incubator to try to address both issues.

We just had our first prototype set of sessions, with four of us meeting once a week for four weeks, and I kept notes. Using point-and-click game creation tools we made games and game elements for the sessions and invited feedback and discussion from the other members. It’s based on the writer’s-circle model that I’ve also used for movie making, but I wasn’t sure it’d work for games — but when the other members were playing and talking about my game Space Invader I was getting feedback as useful as I did with those other groups.

There’s going to be another iteration, so whether you’re a Toronto artist looking to get into the next group in January or an interested party who would like to get involved in some other way (Metanet and Queasy sponsorship are what made starting this possible), read more about it here.

The first third of Therefore Repent! — 60 pages — is now available for your browsing pleasure. And not only is it free to read, it’s also free to use: we’re licencing the jpg versions of these as remixable under this Creative Commons licence. So, if you’ve ever wondered what’d it’d be like to be the writer of a comic book and work with as talented an artist as Salgood Sam, now you can. Open a page up in photoshop or Gimp and replace my words with more interesting ones. Colour the pictures. Use the images as graphics for your non-commercial projects. Send the results to us and we’ll put ‘em up on the site: even better, we’ll send the three most inspiring remixes a free book.

I’ll be doing a Therefore Repent! launch in Vancouver on Friday, Sept. 28th with the creators of True Loves (Jason Turner & Manien Bothma), Jobgoblin (Brian Fukushima), and Hatesong (Fred Grisholm). It’s at Lucky’s Comics, 7-10pm, Free. Then I’m back in Toronto on the 30th for Word on the Street — I’ll be signing books at my table in Fringe Beat between doing a presentation called Be Your Own Boss In The World Of Publishing and a panel with Willow Dawson and Ray Fawkes called “I Have A Great Idea For A Story, But I Need An Artist!” Come say hi!

The Vancouver International Digital Festival, with the intriguing catchline of “reminiscing about the future,” is hosting the Canadian premiere of Infest Wisely at Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour, 4pm, $10) on Sunday, September 23rd. I’ll be presenting it and also participating in a Vidfest panel on Monday called “The Wisdom of Crowds: Web 2.0 Democracy or Mob Mentality?” that should be pretty spirited: I already know I completely disagree with one of the panelists.

I’ve also just confirmed that there’ll be a free sneak preview screening as well in Montreal on Friday, Sept 21 8-11pm in Dare-Dare, a gallery situated in a park with no name. Myself and Craig will be there to present it and there’ll also be vids by two other excellent community moviemaking projects, The Assembly and VideoHymn. Click through to see Rickie’s sweet bilingual trippple films flyer. Update: Warren Frey did a videoblog interview of me in Vancouver.

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Just coming down from the high of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival where we not only found an excited audience for our new graphic novel (we sold 90 copies in two days!) but I got to sit beside my favourite comic maker at the convention, Carla Speed McNeil — who, incidentally, I first heard about through the first TCAF when we were on a self-publishing panel together. I did a quick 20 minute interview with her and we talked about why she creates anachronistic science fiction societies, how she gets around the fact that her work is complex and hard to promote, and the development of her sin-eating aboriginal bad-boy. Click play to hear it.

 
 Carla Speed McNeil interviewed at TCAF 2007 [20:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Keep reading to hear about the other amazing cons I went to this summer, as well as some tips for enjoying them! Read the rest of this post »

So my fifth book and my first graphic novel, a collaboration with Salgood Sam, is finally available. Therefore Repent! is my take on the dark fantasy world established in the Holy Bible’s Book of Revelations. Some folks have asked about its relation to the Left Behind series, also set post-Rapture but with a conservative bent. I haven’t read it (though I have watched the movie starring Kirk Cameron and featuring Toronto’s CBC building as GNN Headquarters) but from what I hear it’s sincere bible fan-fiction, careful not to violate the canon. Mine’s closer to Bible slashfic, what with the bisexual angels and nipple-clamp-enhanced demonic communion. I like to think I’m re-imagining the Bible franchise, like Frank Miller did for Batman. Head over to the store to buy it or keep reading for the back cover copy and to see a hot book striptease. Read the rest of this post »

Therefore Repent!, my post-Rapture graphic novel, is launching on Thursday August 16th to kick off the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. It’s a co-launch with another comic about the end of the world — my pal Claudia Dávila has written a thoughtful and ultimately hopeful story about what happens when the world runs out of oil. As well as the books being on sale, Salgood Sam will be bringing down the original Therefore Repent! art from Montreal for folks to ogle — crazy ass shit like this. Keep reading to see the neato flyer for the event. Read the rest of this post »

I’ve always prided myself on the fact that the DIY publishing articles on this site have a certain lack of, shall we say, bullshit. And normally, a book called How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead would smell a little funky to me. However, Ariel Gore, Hip Mama mag creator and indie culture maven wrote this book, and like all her books (I’m particularly fond of her memoir Atlas of the Human Heart) it is excellent. As well as sharing her own considerable experience, she interviews folks like Ursula K. Le Guin, Dave Eggers, and even me, and manages to pack more wisdom and practical advice than I’ve ever seen in a book of its ilk. (It had an extremely high nods-per-minute ratio.) She even gets the folks she interviews to give “assignments” at the end, making it a writing class unto itself. Plus it’s extremely readable — I intended to skim to find something to excerpt but I found myself sucked in and reading most of it. Below is one of my favourite sections in the book. Read the rest of this post »

One of the things I thought would be easy — as I know a fair amount of musicians — was getting Infest Wisely scored. What I discovered was that people who write and perform songs aren’t necessarily able or inclined to compose music to order. I’ve seen this before with illustrators that aren’t good designers, even though both are visually-based skills. (Though Marc Ngui, whose hilariously dead-on fake ad was used in this week’s ep, can do both. He also did this anti-milking public service announcement for ep 2 that ended up being cut.)
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