Fiction Clemens: 2007

If you're wondering why Fiction Clemens isn't on the shelves yet (I keep hearing, "It was supposed to come out in July, right?")... or if you just want to know the madness that is the great 2007 Montucky ComiCon adventure, this post is for you.

Since this post is insanely long, Let me get the first question out of the way. I haven't been able to announce it publicly until now, but Fiction Clemens has changed publishers. I signed the contract at ComiCon, and my dear little cowboy is now on his way to a February release through SpaceDog Entertainment. So I apologize to those of you who bought characters and expected to see a final product last month... but just hang on a little longer :)

Now, onto the journey. The entire trip lasted exactly three weeks and a full moon cycle, which began as a sliver, hit the full at the end of the convention, and then waned as we wandered home. Summing up a three week adventure is a difficult task for a lazy bastard such as myself. Some parts that I should probably explain in detail will be glossed over, while other parts will drone on and on for all you care. If I'm lucky there will be one thing I get just right.

So it all began with ladypajama (Katie), Creature, and myself packing up the truck and camper and heading west. I'd left Lucy behind with my dad and Katie was leaving her new boyfriend. The first part of our trip consisted of a subliminal argument over who had the most right to be more sad.

As we slipped sneakily into Washington (I'd say at least 92% of the population had no idea we were even there), the conversation somehow wandered to "the Secret". I'm sure you've heard of this. It was Oprah's book of the month, it was a movie, it's been blah blah blah'ing all over the place for months. Apparently Katie can't go anywhere without someone bringing up "the Secret". The last time it came up was right before she left LA. Somehow she segued from that conversation into an affirmation that would later prove to manifest her boyfriend. Despite the overwhelming evidence of Katie's story, I still think "the Secret" is mostly the Ridiculous, so I offered this challenge right there on day one: "Manifest a giant hamburger," I said. "I'm talking life-size."

Without batting an eye, Katie said, "Done. By the end of this trip we will see an enormous hamburger."

Hoping for ground beef glories ahead, Katie and I pressed on. We reached Portland late in the evening, and the next day had a wonderful time with the Portlanders, whose ranks continue to grow. Um... I know we did something culturally interesting and devilishly unique there. Oh yeah, we drank lots of beer. Portland is just a Missoula for cool kids. Katie and I decided we are definitely not cool enough for Portland. But our friends are, and that's good enough for us. Also Portland has seventy-five thousand bridges. Last year I hated that. This year I love it.

Next morning we caught up with the Seattle crew. Joel, Craig, Freedom, and Oisin pulled up in Sven and dragged us to breakfast. From there we headed south to Crater Lake, which turned out to be a sunken mountain. As Katie said, "Screw you guys, I'm going to be a lake." The campground was absurd. Tightly packed little sites. People swarming about. A grocery store. Camping, my eye. Apparently there were bears in the campground and each site had a little locker to store food in. Oisin fell in love with our camper and demanded to sleep in the snail shell. Her dad relented, hanging off the edge of a table/bed/thing way too small for him. What that boy won't sacrifice for his kid...

After Crater Lake I have a vague memory of getting lost and how somehow this made us awesome. We hit California and made our way to the Coastal Highway. The plan was to take Highway 1 all the way to San Diego. Other than a few cheats here and there, we came pretty close to doing just that. Next stop: Redwoods. Please refer to last years post if you don't know the otherworldly glory that is Humbolt National Forest.

The next day Katie and Joel traded places. This turned out to be a disaster that I do not have sufficient journalistic integrity to report. But the drive with Joel was nice. We geeked out on audio-courses (Mostly lectures on Herodotus), and took several long stops by the ocean. We also stopped in Santa Cruz where I found a hundred dollar bill in a gas station. Being the unscrupulous sort, I snatched it up, but being the paranoid sort I gave it to Joel. Who wants that kind of cosmic responsibility? Besides, Joel deserved it. However, the universe decided to take the money back as if it had never been... such a display of quantum schenanigans, I have never seen. The above-mentioned disaster resulted in having to get an $88 dollar hotel. Joel handed over the hundred and did not get his change. Clearly the hotel clerk knew what was up, was in on the cosmic joke, and has by now slipped away into some other dimension.

Katie demanded to be returned to my vehicle for the final driving day. So after a wonderful breakfast at the hotel across the street, we were back on the road. Despite her penchant for car sickness, Katie was awesome enough to let us take the Coastal Highway through Big Sur. They say Big Sur is beautiful, but that's something of a misnomer. The first beautiful place we hit into Big Sur was not Big Sur at all... it was the Coast of Ireland. Somehow they'd transported a bit of the Irish coast over to California. Katie and I hopped a fence and headed across a field of yellow flowers to a gorgeous zigzag of cliffs overlooking several jutting pirate-cave rocks, sexified by the slow in-rolling fog. We spoke in Irish accents, picked flowers, and acquired several ticks (discovered later, dammit!!)

After Ireland we got into a big discussion about Jack Kerouac, the Beat Writers, and their impact on our lives. Those of you who know what I'm talking about should reminisc over this for a moment. The rest of you probably wouldn't care anyway.

Any geographer can tell you that if you drive down from the Irish coast a few miles you will come across the Spanish coast. It's only logical. The Spanish coast consisted of several highlights including Bird Poop Rock, the first tick discovery, several starfish, my near-death in the vicious ocean, the conquering of Pirate Cave Rock, the death of my favorite boots, and way too much exercise.

Okay, let's see... Big Sur, yada yada... we drove through LA and listened to Katie's favorite radio station, arrived in Oceanside and went to bed. The next day we strolled the final 40 miles into San Diego, where the first order of business was to pick up Joiton (design and pencils for Fiction Clemens) at the airport.

Now, the actual San Diego part of the trip is kind of a blur. Thanks to the organizational wizardry that is Joel, we were able to afford a luxurious 2 bedroom suite with full kitchen by packing 10 people into the place. Overall the stay was excellent and we managed to avoid any homicides. We also met Vero Gandini, the colorist for Issue 2, and her boyfriend Leo. As soon as they arrived the room was flooded with Spanish as they and Joiton tried to dizzy our brains with their crazy moon language. We hit the zoo, as well, which was touristy bliss.

Schmoozing and wheeling and dealing all went well at the Con. I signed my contract with SpaceDog and got comp copies of 24Seven, vol. 2, an Image anthology I was lucky enough to get a story into. I met lots of great creators and people in the biz. Freedom, Joiton, and I ended up hanging out with a former gameshow host from "The Weakest Link" for a while and had some sparkling conversation.

I found myself emotionally invested in the convention this year. It was more than business, and it broke my heart to leave. The people in Comics are amazing, wonderful, enthusiastic humans, and I can't wait to see you all again in New York!!!

The journey home was relaxed, but all were anxious to get back. A few highlights from the return trip: visiting my godfather and his family, my great uncle the magician in Burbank, photos with the Warner Watertower, dinner and touristing with Higham in San Francisco, Jenna in Oakland cooked us a delicious masterpiece, my old Publisher Jeremy took us to a crazy restaurant in SF called AsiaSF where Asian he/shes danced on the bar (the curious are encouraged to google a bit on that), good cozy talks with the Khans and my mom in Santa Cruz, a dead battery, the people's park in Berekely, and an AMAZING walkabout at a place called "the Albany Bulb". We also hit Portland again to see Theo's gallery, then Seattle briefly to carouse with a thousand freaks.

And now for the moment you've been waiting for. On our way to Pier 39 in San Francisco, Katie and I stumbled upon... you guessed it... a larger-than-life, enormously huge hamburger. Amen.

So I have recently discovered that Fiction Clemens has a niche. That this came as a surprise to me should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my propensity for locking myself in bubbles and clouds, and dreaming thinking wishing (ridiculously) to be absolutely unique.

Anyway, it's called "steampunk" if you haven't heard of it, and a bit of research assures me that I am proud to be a part of such a killer sub-genre. I found the list of titles belonging to the niche familiar and adored, and clearly influential on what I do. I hadn't thought about my influences as part of a unified whole before, and it was fun to see them grouped together. The idea of "steampunk" is that of advanced technology in a Victorian-era world. I have often described the world of Fiction Clemens as "what people in the late 1800's thought the Future might look like". Twelve Monkeys, Howl's Moving Castle, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, etc... are some of my favorite stories fitting this niche. Catch-words like "clockwork", "steam-power", "pneumatic tubes" describe the style of this flavor of science-fiction, although it doesn't seem that the western element has been too-often capitalized (other than in that wretched film, "Wild Wild West"). This, of course, is Fic's particular stamp. It has always amazed me how the "Western" genre continually ignores the fascinating "non-Western" realities going on simultaneously in the late 1800's. True the "old-West" is marked by a certain isolationism, but that does not mean certain things, styles, news, rumors would not seep through and have an influence. Think of it. Cowboys hanging at high noon, pistols at dawn, train robberies, injuns, all of this going down when? Around the same time as the second industrial revolution, the British occupation of India, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Marx, the Michelson-Morley experiment, even skyscrapers! And it was in these days that the very genre of Science-Fiction invented itself in the wildest dreams of industrialists, physicists, and Jules Verne.

Fiction Clemens was not written with any of this "theoretical" framework in mind. I just blasted out a fun story. But it's always something to look back and see what the subconscious was chewing on at the time. I'll leave off here, though. A writer over-analyzing his own work is a nasty habit not fit for the public, and, like masturbation, is preferred behind closed doors.

Now here's a little steampunk for you, junior.