Masks Holiday Sale!

In addition to the book, I'll throw in bookmarks and buttons and other goodies.
The coyote mug, however, is mine.

It’s almost Christmas, and I am officially neck-deep in writing Volume 2 and finishing that Christmas surprise story for y’all … so why don’t you guys have some fun without me and buy some cheap books?

That’s right, Pocket Coyote is having its first-ever holiday sale! Through the end of the year, all signed copies of Volume 1 are $15.00 (as compared to $19.48 if you buy direct from the printer). It makes a great gift for the YA reader in your life, or anybody who likes superheroes … or mythology … or sarcasm … or really bad watercolors. I’m all about value.

For those of you who may have forgotten, the 412-page Volume 1 paperback includes not just all 32 chapters of Masks Volume 1, but also an essay about how Masks came to be, a feature on how I did the illustrations, the Hawkins Foundation’s secret files on a bunch of the characters, and an all-new short story, “The Missing,” which takes place between Volumes 1 and 2 and will never be published anywhere else. If you buy the book through Pocket Coyote, it also comes signed and personalized (that means I write in the recipient’s name and the brief message of your choosing—anything that’s unlikely to get me arrested, sued, or punched in the face). Once you’ve ordered, I’ll send you an email asking you for your preferred autograph text. Make sure you spell everybody’s names right; I will copy your spelling precisely, and you will be embarrassed if it’s wrong.

All books ship via U.S. Priority Mail, which means they get there within a couple of days if you live in the continental U.S. Unfortunately, Priority Mail shipping has gone up to $5.30, but if you order two books, I’ll refund your shipping costs on the second one. If you order three or more books, you’ll be the best reader ever and I’ll refund all shipping costs beyond whatever it costs to actually throw the books in the mail. I’ve never had to work this out before because nobody’s ever ordered more than two books at a time from me before; I encourage you to be the first person to give me this problem.

The package will also include a random assortment of Pocket Coyote goodies, including any or all of the following: signed bookmarks, handmade buttons, and goofy sketches I drew in the middle of the night while drinking too much tea. All of these make great stocking stuffers, unless of course I’ve had way too much tea.

That's a penny to show how thick the paperback is. 412 pages! With pictures!

You can order the books here. And whatever you’re celebrating this December, I hope you’ll enjoy having Rae and Trevor over to celebrate with you.

Comic-Con, Ghost Dance, and good news / bad news

Please don’t kill me. I’ve been working on it, honest.

Well, no, actually, I haven’t been working on “Ghost Dance.” I’ve been working on Volume 2, which is more important but less urgent for reasons I’ll explain.

Good news first—“Ghost Dance” will hit the web by Saturday, July 14, during Comic-Con. (I’m going on Sunday this year.) You guys will finally get to meet the Black  Mask and Eagle Eye and thrill to one of their stranger adventures just after the end of World War II. Can I get an excited squee, please?

Less-good news—Volume 2 is running behind schedule, and will be delayed until September. Sorry, guys. It’s turning out a bit more complex than I expected, and life is interfering. More bloggage on that later.

Good news again—I have bookmarks! Two kinds! Here is the artwork for both of them—one featuring Rae and one featuring Trevor. And heeeeeeeere is the text that goes on the back of them, to whet your appetite for Volume 2:

On the Rae bookmark:

There are capes—heroes with powers. There are masks—wannabes with a few tricks. Everyone knows who the real heroes are.

Until now.

Rae Masterson, a.k.a. Merlin, doesn’t let her lack of powers stop her from fighting the good fight. At 17, she’s already saved her city, built a superhero team, and fallen in love with her crimefighting partner, Peregrine. But everyone knows masks live fast, die young, and leave anonymous corpses. Rae’s time is running out.

When Peregrine’s bloody past comes back to haunt him and a long-dead hero suddenly returns to life, Rae must choose between love and survival. To save the world, she must confront her own death. To save Peregrine, she must make a deal with the devil. Can she do it?

And if she does, who will save her?

On the Trevor bookmark:

There are capes—heroes with powers. There are masks—wannabes with a few tricks. Everyone knows who the real heroes are.

Until now.

Trevor Gray, a.k.a. Peregrine, was born to be a hero. Raised as a sidekick, he took up the colors of his missing mentor and now fights on in his name. At 17, he’s built a team of young heroes and fallen in love with his masked partner, Merlin. But death is never far from any mask, and now it’s paid Trevor a visit.

When a last message from his teacher upends his life and a long-lost hero returns from the dead, Trevor must choose between duty and love. To save the world, he must confront his demons. To save Merlin, he must break her heart. Can he do it?

And if he does, who will save him?

Are you excited? I am!

Further good news—I have the most adorable Pocket Coyote buttons known to man. Here’s a photo:

And finally, less-good news—I am not totally sure there’s going to be a blog entry next Monday, because my schedule for next week is absolutely psychotic. I will probably be spending a lot of time on the road for work-related stuff—teaching classes in another city, having meetings, etc. If I can blog from God-knows-where, I will. If I can’t, I won’t. It might not be on Monday, either, because I expect to be completely exhausted from Comic-Con. I will try to get con photos up on this blog and on Pocket Coyote sometime next week for everyone to enjoy, but I won’t be seeing much of my house and you may hear zombie-like groans coming from the depths of the internet. Bear with me, guys.

And while you’re at it, be sure to keep submitting names for our contest to name the coyote!

How I made the bookmarks

Do you love how I’m saying “I” made the bookmarks when Nicole did all the work? Well, I paid for the tacos, anyway. And the Alex Ross artbook she called reference and I called a bribe. That’s almost like work, isn’t it?

Step 1: Take reference photos.

The lovely Carolyn Kabelitz modeled for Rae, in a somewhat ad-hoc version of Rae’s costume. My parents’ backyard provided the backdrop. We took a bunch of photos and cherry-picked the best ones.

Trevor was a more difficult task, mostly because I don’t know any guys with the right build and facial structure to double for him. I knew plenty in high school, of course, which is why he looks and acts the way he does, but most of them did eventually get that last growth spurt and are now much taller than I am. So I dug up a photo of a boy playing what looks like flag football and told Nicole to use her imagination. There were extra tacos involved.

Step 2: Lay out the bookmark design

This is the point where Nicole took over. She flopped the image of Carolyn so that she now appeared to be standing with her left hip toward the camera—you’ll see why in a minute—and turned both photos black-and-white. Then she fiddled with layouts until she arrived with something she liked in the right proportions to fit on the bookmarks, which we knew would be 2x6”.

Step 3: Pencil.

Next Nicole printed out the photos at four times their final size (that’s 4x12”, for those keeping score) and laboriously copied the poses. She added Rae’s logo brooch at her hip (the reason she flopped the photo in Step 2) and lengthened her tunic. She also wants it known that she is now going to draw Rae in Chuck Taylors at every opportunity, because Carolyn made them look so superheroic.

The Trevor image was harder, of course, because she had to take an image of a boy running in a loose T-shirt and shorts and translate it into an image of a boy running in long pants and a jacket, and add his signature mask and goggles. It didn’t come out too badly, though. Nicole also changed the position of the boy’s right arm, because “every time I drew it like it was in the photo, it looked weird.”

Step 4: Watercolor

After Nicole scanned in the sketches to back them up in case something went wrong, she began applying watercolor paint to the images—first the black areas, then the lighter shading. We knew we’d be tinting the Rae image red and the Trevor image blue, so the whole process was very much about values of light and dark—making the shadows stand out sharply, capturing the different grays that would represent the hues of their costumes. The final step was to brush gray paint lightly around the figures to create a textured background and a sense of light. Nicole asks me to inform you that she decided to make the area behind Rae’s shoulder darker because she has such ominous forces around her all the time, and she gathered some shadows near Trevor’s front foot because John Lawrence is always showing up overhead and glowing, which would naturally make the sky around Trevor very light.

Step 5: Production

Once the black-and-white paintings were dry, I stepped in again and scanned them into my laptop. There I used PhotoFiltre to remove the penciled boundary lines marking the edges of the bookmarks (the printer asked me to leave 1/8” clear all the way around the design in case of printing issues) and add the text to each image—the quote, plus the information about the book and the blog address. Finally I used the Colorize option to tint Rae’s bookmark red, then turned up the saturation and contrast to get a really vivid hue. I did the same thing to tint Trevor’s bookmark image blue. Then I emailed the two .jpgs to the wonderful Richard Fieger, printer extraordinaire, and let him do his magic.

The result—my best bookmarks ever, which is good because with this much work for a 2x6” piece of cardstock, I don’t want to have to redesign them anytime soon. Although I’m sure I’ll end up tinkering with the proportions just a bit on the next batch … I really need industrial-strength therapy.