ROMO 2, part 27
"Gi' us less of a job to do. Go on, gi' us." (Blackstuff as Ink Jockeying)
Creating a graphic novel is a full time job.
Unfortunately, so is selling one. If the first volume in a new series doesn’t sell, then it gets harder to justify spending all of the extra time - largely unpaid - making a second. And for about half a year now I’ve been trying to make pages for ROMO’s next adventure, Book Two in the series, while at the same time doing all that I can think of (and more!) in order to have Book One as widely available and saleable as possible. Book One that I spent the previous 18 months making.
So now I have TWO Full Time Jobs! Egads.
I’d been planning to show here how the continuity of a certain landmark has figured throughout many distinct strips of mine, a spread of new pages from ROMO Book Two included. But I’m obliged to swop horses midstream (or some other mixed metaphor) and instead to blow the trumpet for various of the upcoming shows and events that I will be tabling at for the rest of this year, all with the explicit aim of raising awareness of ROMO’s very existence. Help me to blow that trumpet!
This is crucial just now as the second, paperback edition of ROMO Book One (Strange Case of Cackle & Hide) is soon to make its debut, with an on sale date of September 1st in the USA, followed by November 26th (just in time for Christmas, y’all!) here in the UK. Abrams will be the book’s distributing partner in the USA.
LET THE PARADE COMMENCE!
Here’s the QR code that will take you to the listing for the book on Amazon US:
I’ll be making another new set of business cards featuring that to help spread the word wherever I go, and it’s been added to new variants of the ROMO PROMO animation video that was made for the crowdfunding campaign to secure funds for a print-run of the first, hardback edition of Book One last year. See? Full Time Job.
Speaking of Extra Investment…
This next month sees me going to the USA to try and speed things along as best I may. With help from SelfMadeHero we’ve reached out to various stores within reach of where I’ll be staying while there, in an attempt to set up some promotional style events. There haven’t been many responses, it has to be said (the market’s kind of flooded, and still recovering from distributor collapses, as well as the tariff wars and such). As the result, at least for small, independent operations like ours, and with a brand new character from (despite my best efforts) a little-known author, gaining any traction and credibility is like building - or perhaps taking down - a wall: it has to be done brick by brick. But more about the upcoming US Tour (it is to laugh) next time.
THIS TIME…?
In just over a week’s time it will be CAPTION Weekend in Oxford. Caption Small Press & Comics Festival is “a Comics Festival with a difference: no segregation between guests and attendees”, plus Talks, Panels & Workshops, Portfolio Reviews and an Art Auction. Guests this year, besides myself, include Daisy Crouch, Shri Gunasekara, Yu-Ching Chiu, Andy (Broken Frontier) Oliver, Rich (Bleeding Cool) Johnson, Kieron Gillen, the Rickard Sisters, Myfanwy Tristram, Karrie Fransman and Hannah Berry. This year it has a Pirate theme (clue above) and on the Saturday ( 8th August, for most of the afternoon) I’ll be running the All Hands On Deck! Workshop by ILYA. Splice ye mainbrace and billow the top sail, me hearties/ya swabs, etc. etc.
And that’s not all… Later this year, 2-4 October, I’m a guest at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, or LICAF, in Kendal, where I’ll be giving an illustrated presentation on ROMO bright and early on the Saturday morning (3rd), venue TBC.
Then, in November…
BRING IT!
Personally I kind of miss my time at the drawing board, er tablet, while having to do all of this, but also in the firm knowledge that if Book One doesn’t sell through like it should, not only do I not and never get paid, the chances of securing a future for Book Two and beyond become slim (and I have eight - count ‘em, 8 - adventures of ROMO in my head and in constant prep to various stages of completion. Book Three, which was once upon a time the First Story I was going to tell is, for instance, fully scripted!) And you really wouldn’t want to miss all of that, would you?!
So if you’re out and about, LOOK FOR THE BANNER! Stop me and Buy One!
(Or don’t buy one and stop me, I guess. Serious spanner in the works… mumble, grumble, pffft.)
WISH ME LUCK!
And please, do anything you can to help me spread the word.
Until Next Time, this is ILYA, over and out.
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Blimey, you're busy. Good luck with your world tour! P.S. Love the Thing drawing.