Recent Appearances, A New Patreon Story, And Graphic Novel News!

Beep beep, motherfuckers!
So TransCat's had a kinda busy summer, and I haven't updated you on it yet.
I wanna talk about the two events I had recently. One was at Illusive Comics in Santa Clara, which was pretty sweet. The other was at the San Lorenzo Library, as part of their "Celebrating Queer Pride In Comics" event.

The Illusive comics event was just me and it was a cute little spotlight on a local artist, which felt great. It was nice to feel like everyone came just to see me :P

Well, to be fair, they came for new release day AND to see me. See, this shop owner, she knows what she's doing ;-)

I had a lil' table in the front, had all my books set up, and people who walked in saw me and checked out my book and me and the shop split the profits. It was pretty good, actually. I wasn't expecting much cuz it was only a 4 hour event, and i'm used to cons that last all weekend, but I actually made a good amount of money for only four hours. Totally worth it. I was really flattered, cuz they asked me if I wanted to come back after I get my graphic novel published, and I said Yes, I totally do wanna, so like, I might be announcing that pretty soon.

This part isn't necessarily comics related, but AFTER the event, me and one of my friends went to this nearby sushi place, and I got their big sashimi assortment dish, because that's literally one of my favourite things ever, and they served it to me with a goddamn shrimp head in the middle of the plate that was STILL MOVING! HOLY HECK!!! I know that maybe that's a common practice in other cultures, but I've NEVER seen it before and it freaked me right the fuck out. i felt like I couldn't eat any of the fish around it, or else the shrimp head might NAB ME with one of it's weird little tendrils. Grizzly! If I ever wind up back at that place, i am specifically gonna request NO shrimp head, plz.

The OTHER event was very different, it was me and like maybe 12 other creators, or something? Some of whom I've actually met before at other queer themed comics gatherings, some of whom were totally new to me. This was more in the style of a conference, we all still had our books out and stuff, but we we each got a chance to come up to the mic and say a little about ourselves and our art and what we're hoping to achieve and stuff. One guy, Justin Hall, whom you might know from his Shirtlifter series of comics, gave us a GREAT history of queer comics, starting in like, the 1940's and shit. honestly, I would have gone JUST to see him. Even if I wasn't involved in the event at all, I woulda loved to just hear this man talk. he had a lot to say, and we sadly didn't have time for it all, but I did enjoy every minute of it. In fact, his lecture has even given me some great ideas for TransCat in the future.

After all the talks, the audience was given about an hour to wander around and check out all the artists' tables. It was pretty sweet. I met this adorable little trans kid and their mom. The mom was super duper supportive and was flying the colours and everything, it was great. The kid, who was only 11, if i remember correctly, was super eager to give me all thier ideas about what a TransCat videogame might look like. It was adorable. They were like "TransCat should time travel and go through mazes and solve puzzles" and i'm like "hell yeah kid, hell yeah!" but then they were like "TransCat should fight invisible enemies who are also shapeshifters who can make themselves look like her friends" and i'm like "woah, if that ain't the trans experience right there, I dunno what is." Despte the really supportive base this kid had to grow from, I'm sure they have experienced violence and betrayal at the hands of people who they THOUGHT were their friends already. Hopefully that cool-as-fuck mom helps them grow strong, despite the many setbacks thier bound to face. I was really pleased cuz the mom totally bought every one of my TransCat books, and while I was glad for the sale, i told her "just so you know, there's a lotta swearing and violence in these and issue 3 even has a sexy scene" and they were like "oh it's okay. I swear all the time. My kid is not ignorant of the world." So i'm like "hell yeah". I feel like I've known SO many very protective parents in my day, it's nice to meet one who's willing to let their kids experience the world, firsthand, but with proper guidance, as opposed to trying to shield them from it.

So yeah, that was a great experience. I would totally do that again <3 br="">
What else is going on?
I gotta New Patreon Story going up this month!

Every day this month, from now to the 13th (except for Sunday, that's the LORD'S day, foo~!) I'll be uploading a new page to this new TransCat short. Now this is an EXCLUSIVE for my Patrons, so checking it out is as simple as signing up! A 1 dollar pledge will gain you access to this story, plus every OTHER story I've uploaded in the past. There are incentives to singing up at higher pledge levels too, so please, read all about those. Trust me, you WANT some of these!

Lastly, I do wanna mention one last thing. I talked about my graphic novel earlier in this post. I've been teasing about this a lot for a while now. I've also been WORKING on it for a long time. Seriously, this one book has taken up more of my time than I think ALL the previous TransCat books have combined :P Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it doesn't feel like one. Either way, I jsut got my notification from my publisher TODAY that the all the files I sent had been reviewed, the book is PRINTED and it's being SHIPPED TO ME AS WE SPEAK!
I cannot articulate how excited I am to hold the culmination of ALL THIS WORK in my hand for the first time. I'll have a soft launch for it on this blog but my BIG OFFICIAL OPENING will be at Comic-Con, with the help of Tara Avery and the fine, fine folk at Prism and Stacked Deck Press, who've helped and supported me SO MUCH along the way.

I'll cut this one a little short now, but stay tuned for MASSIVE write-ups on Comic-Con when it happens (two weeks and three days, motherfuckers!).