Golf?

Had a bit of a black hole showing up in my schedule. Thursday, I ended up getting a flight out to Chicago that has me touching down at 9 a.m. The Con doesn't start letting us set up until 3 p.m., and my hotel check-in is also at 3 p.m.
Then I noticed that there's a lot of public golf courses around my hotel. I haven't played in about four years, but I was positively giddy when I sent in a tee time for 10:45 a.m. I'll post my scorecard for what can only be one of the worst round of nine holes ever (nine, because I do need to be done by 2:30 p.m.). And yes, I play with a strict code of honor. So it might be painful seeing some of those 10s pop up, but I do hope to only bogie on at least 1-2 holes.

The Shirts have hit the fan

Just got in the shipment of shirts for Wizard World Chicago. Cutting it a wee bit close, I know. But in the near future I’ll get some uploads of the great dernwerks designs available, with items from Dear Pirate and The Expert’s Guide on How to Kill Things That Go Bump in the Night. I’ll also be packing up copies of Expert’s Guide Issues 1 and 2, as well as some preview art from Issue 3 and Pants on Fire, the next big dernwerks project. I’ll be taking Dear Pirate questions at the con, for those too lazy to email it in. And in the near future I’ll also be letting y’all know how to get the shirts and (secret item)s if you can’t make it out to the Con or Baltimore’s Comic-Con (not to be confused with Otakon, which I’m sadly missing this year).

Those crazy San Diego Hotels

Because I like to laugh at those less fortunate.
Well, that's not true. About four years ago I actually booked my San Diego hotel literally about a week before the Con.
So out of curiosity, I checked up some prices.
Hotwire just screamed in pain and told me to go away.
Expedia can get you as close as the Harborview, at $227 for Thursday, $360 for Friday, and $387 for Saturday night. Anf that's still only in shuttle range of the center.
They've got nothing most close ones for the big nights, but the Marriott apparently stashed a few away. They've got some Saturday Nighters available for $295.
I punched up Hotels.com and I think it crashed the system. We're talking big numbers.
It looks like you can hop from hotel to hotel each night, but again, it's about $270-320 a night. Show up for the preview night and stay 'til Sunday, and it's at least $1200. Just for the hotel. Damn.
For referrence, going to Madison Square for this weekend is about $171. And Baltimore? $136 for some of the better ones.

new monkey pirate icon

Under the filing of things that I'm getting ready for ol' San Diego:

Adding to my list of things to do

Okay, I've been pretty dutiful when it comes to promoting the ol' DearPirate.com action. When I only had about two strips up, I started listing it on BuzzComix and TopWebComics. Both are popularity-based websites that really keep traffic there for the top 100 - but once you're in, you're golden. I'll be making a voting drive probably in September for this strip.
But the almost annoying thing about those sites is that you don't even really need to have a webcomic to be listed there. And there's a few sites that I've spotted that really are nothing more than a background waiting for a strip to happen. In short, I'm not sure how many people actually bother to go to those two sites to find new strips.
But there's one site that I was already familiar with, thewebcomiclist.com. I'd already be up there, but the text on the site says that I need 10 strips first, and alas, I'm at six (make that eight this Thursday). I'm not even near 10 strips until August 3.
So it's quite a funny note for me to realize this is out there:
http://www.thewebcomiclist.com/p/7817/Dear-Pirate

I'm a little worried about it, because it's not something of my doing. It's really the first time that this strip is officially completely out of my control, something I knew was going to happen sooner or later (was betting later. Damn, I hate losing).
I'd like to upload a pic of Monkey Pirate to it, but I don't have the time at the moment until after my San Diego trip. So whoever did make that listing and made it one of their favorites, thank you, and please don't put anything bad about me there.

Countdown to My Crisis

In seven days, I'll be on a flight to San Diego. Two days before that, I'll be without a DSL connection at home. I'm still working on touching up some pitches, scripts and letterings. I'm putting together my first-ever portfolio, and I'm getting ready for my biggest push of DearPirate.com yet.

In short, I'm terrified.

But right now, every hour and every dollar is budgetted out. The crisis is being handled, and I'm fighting off one mother of a nervous tick in my eye.

So far, crossed of the to-do list includes finally getting my preregistration status for San Diego taken care of, and cleaning out the gutters. Getting the dernwerks.com site its full facelift in time for San Diego is looking doable, with some of the design elements finally getting fixed up. I need to look into the html for an auto-redirect for this blog, but there's a temporary stop-gap measure up that I can live with until mid-August.

The homepage for Dernwerks, though, is the biggest problem at the moment. I need to make it less about news and updates (that's what this page is for), and more about Dernwerks' variety of offerings - something that could literally explode in the near future. I'll have about a dozen pitches and scripts with me in San Diego. I figure this is the year that I finally load up the grapeshot and let loose my creative madness.

More updates later this week.

Dear Pirate making some LJ rounds

It looks like the first appearance of Monkey Pirate is quite the hit on the Live Journal circuit, giving the ol' site a healthy boost of hits. Right now I've surpassed the number of hits related to the number of fliers handed out at Wizard World Philly. Heck, I think I hit that number within the first two weeks.
Right now, the site is showing steady growth and that's great, because really the "official" launch of the site - where it starts to really explode on my grand plan - is still a couple of weeks away.
The first landmark is Thursday, July 20. It's the first official day of Comic Con in San Diego. That's where I'll be going into HEAVY promotion, and things should start picking up. If all goes well, we'll be rolling heavy in hits on July 23 (though hopefully not crashing the site - I have contingency plans for that, and honestly doubt that anything short of a penny arcade link, a USA Today article and a mention on all three free news networks could harm that plan).
Now, the strips for July 6 and July 13 are on schedule. There shouldn't even be a hint of a problem there. But the strip for the 20th? That one will be tricky, as I'm pretty sure I'll be without internet on July 14 to about July 25. Hopefully I'll get something up there before the con, giving readers a whole eight strips to peruse. The secondary Dear Pirate project will start some time after the convention, too.
The other major milestone is set for August 3, for so so many reasons. It'll be the 10th week of the strip and again I'll be promoting it at a convention at that week. That week will also be when it gets submitted to some of the bigger webcomic lists, and when the first Dear Pirate shirts and tank tops are printed. Joy Times!
Well, back to a super-secret project that I'm building up for San Diego. More on that later if it becomes less than super-secret (though it does already have its own webpage. No, not that super-secret project. And not that one, either, but I'll be on that later. Yeah, that one.).
Later