Tonight, if all goes well, I think that I may have finished the Monster Commute Book 1. (Which I like to call our “Traffic Novel #1.”)
I’m not afraid to state that it’s the biggest project that I’ve ever finished, aside from the daily production of the comic itself. If you include the fact that I’ve been working on this book in one way or another for almost 2 years, it starts to feel quite big. Epic even.
I’ve spent the last 5 or 6 weeks working on this thing (and writing) non-stop with every bit of time that I’m not sleeping or working the day job. The only time I’ve done anything else was to play with my kid or chat briefly with Dawna.
It’s been good, but also a bit exhausting. I feel like I’ve been running sprinting since about May of last year. I could use a day off, which I’ll take on Christmas.
Here are some fast facts:
- Our largest book to date has been After Halloween, at 64 pages. This one has 80. Those 16 extra pages add up.
- This book has the most writing of any book we’ve ever done. Way more. This upped the challenge to write everything, but also make sure that the details were correct, and everything was spell-checked and correct. Big thanks to S’ra for the help with this.
- The guest art is fantastic, can’t wait for you to see it. There are 12 pieces of guest art, from established talents and up and comers.
- I’m proud of it. I’ll be more proud of it when it’s a real book, in my hand.
- This is the first time I’ve made a book that addresses another world, straight on. I loved this part of it, and want to continue down this path.
- The RPG work that I did this autumn contributed greatly to this book. Thank goodness that I spent time thinking about Monstru in a different way, and documenting it. A ton of the new work for this book will greatly help the RPG too. They’re sisters for certain.
A huge thanks goes out to my wife Dawna and our son Goblin Boy. They’ve given me a lot of freedom and time to churn on this book as hard as I could, and I really appreciate their dedication and support. It takes a world of effort to document worlds, and it would be impossible without their help.
Big thanks to Sara McClellan (S’ra) who came in, in the last minute, and put her copy editing skills to bear on this project. She’s the best, and has worked on each of our books now, which is pretty cool. Let’s hope she’ll be around next time.
Okay, that’s enough for now. I’m just tired and obviously ranting.
- Daniel
