July Was Crazy, Back In Japan, Back To Work (Patreon)

In case you missed it, I spent July in the US. My kid got to spend time with her grandparents, meet her uncle, and many other relatives on my side of the family. She had a blast. All the while, I was selling FaLLEN at conventions in or near Chicago, Austin, and Washington D.C. I was hoping I could interview some of my convention friends but I ran into some problems early on.

- I did not know I had to unlock my phone in order to use it in the US. I had an older US phone I used instead, but I used AT&T which, in the midwest anyway, was total garbage. 

- I barely saw anyone!! I would normally interview people in the green rooms or someplace but the first con locked people out of their green room and we got kicked out of the second con's green room (which was a mistake and those people got in trouble it sounds like). At the last con, a friend of mine was a guest and I was going to interview him, but our schedules never worked out for that to happen.

- My parents' new house did not have working cell service (thanks, AT&T). It was totally bizarre, and to use the phone I had to walk down the street to make a call. We did not always have wi-fi and we did not even have TV until Week 3.

- My kid was super jetlagged the first two weeks and that caused me to be jetlagged since I had to deal with her. 

I took my cintiq but there was never a time to use it, so the livestream I had planned did not happen. Someone recorded my panel on making comics, which I was hoping to share, but I never got their contact info. 

On the plus side, though, my panels were very successful. Much more than usual, haha. A lot of people showed interest in a web series about the basics of making manga so I bought a stand for my phone that will hopefully allow me to take video of me working on art. I will probably do the first one this month, which I will post here first. It will probably be about either paper or nibs (exciting!). 

I got to see clips from the episodes I did storyboards for in 2013! It was an animated series called Dinosaur Train and I never saw the end product until last month. If I can get those clips I would love to do a shot-by-shot comparison with some of my storyboards.

And last but not least, I sold a TON of FaLLEN books. I was nervous at first because at Anime Midwest, my first con, I actually had the worst sales I have ever had. It was bizarre because I have done all right at that con in the past. I had a terrible location though and the booklet did not mention who I was or what I did, or even where my table was, so that may be one reason why. Thanks to those of you who came by, though! 

Okashicon was a tiny con near Austin and I met some super cool guests and sold pretty well considering there was only a few hundred people there (sold better than Anime Midwest, which is several THOUSAND people). I liked the con quite a bit and might be back for one of their sister cons next year. 

Otakon, though, was just amazing. Loved the DC area, loved the people... the food was surprisingly awful (cilantro on everything! Why!?) but the people were nice and the city was clean and had a lot to do. The convention had a lot of older attendees and though I wasn't a guest I had an excellent location. FaLLEN vol. 1 sold out early on Saturday, and vol 2 sold all but two copies by the end of that night. I totally did not have enough books and knew by Friday sales that I would not have any for Sunday, so I just went to the Smithsonian instead. I super definitely want to go to Otakon again, it was fantastic. Thanks again to people who came out to say hi!

Okay, I think I've yammered on enough. I'm sorry I was totally silent for all of July-- if ANYONE wants a refund, just let me know and I will refund you for July. I am going to be back to creating content this month, though! I had too many people ask about the state of Vol. 3, and my kid is 18 mos now and a whole lot easier to work with. Just wanted to update you all and apologize about not getting a livestream or con interviews.