Galaxion Book 2 is available to order!

July 5th, 2011 | by Tara
Posted In: Blog

They look so pretty! Don't you want one of your own?

Finally, the long-delayed official announcement:

Galaxion Book 2: First Contact is available to order! Hooray!

Book 2 collects chapters 4, 5, and 6, plus the “A Matter of Principle” short story. It also contains a section with sample scripts and pencils, so you can see a bit of my behind-the-scenes process of comic creation. Plus you get the same sort of never-seen-before bonus illustrations you got in Book 1. All for only $18.00, which includes shipping!

For those of you who have been paying close attention, this is not going to be news to you. I’ve actually had copies here for quite a while, but for various reasons I’ve put off the “order now!” announcement. Still, if you haven’t clicked on the Store Page recently, here are a few things you might not know:

• PDF or CBZ format digital books (DRM free!) are also available to order, suitable for reading on your favourite mobile device.

• If you order Book 1 and Book 2 together, you get a deal: both books for only $30, including shipping.

• And with the purchase of ANY physical book, you also get a digital copy, for FREE! I figure, hey, if you bought a copy, you should be able to read it however you want.

At this point, some of you are probably thinking, “Well, that’s just great, but I already bought a copy from you,” maybe online or at a convention or even at a comic shop. “What about my digital copy?” Yeah, I do see your point. You should be able to have your digital copies, too! I know that it can be much more enjoyable to read a paper copy and turn the pages and flip back and forth to the best parts, but maybe you’ll want the convenience of being able to load it up on your tablet, and have it with you so you can look up the name of that strange engineer (without having to wait for website load times) whenever the need strikes you.

So I think to myself, “I’d like to be able to give people who already own the book their digital copies, but it’s not like I can ask people to show their receipt. How can they show proof of purchase? Wait—I know!”

Here’s the deal! You send me, either snail mail or email, a photo of yourself with your physical copy of Galaxion Book 1 and/or Book 2, and I’ll send you a digital copy! Simple as that. Keep in mind this is for a limited time only, so take advantage of this opportunity while you can! And if you know anyone who may not visit the site very often but has a copy at home, please tell them about the offer so they don’t miss out. Pass the word around!

I know there is a small potential for abuse with this offer, but I have faith in the goodwill and honesty of my readers. J Also, please note that this offer does not apply to the older Galaxion graphic novel (or “Black Book”)! We hope to get that all scanned in and available someday, but we’re not quite there yet. Thanks so much for your continuing support!

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Geocaching– my new obsession

June 21st, 2011 | by Tara
Posted In: Blog

Because as anyone who does it knows, it IS an obsession.

If you aren’t familiar with geocaching, it’s a kind of treasure hunt played with GPS devices. You’re given a set of coordinates where some kind of container—the geocache—is hidden, and you use your GPS-enabled unit to get there. Once you get to ground zero, the real hunt begins. This game is played all over the world with over a million caches hidden (this is not an exaggeration), and chances are good that there is a geocache hidden somewhere that you pass by every day!

Although I remember reading about the game many years ago, it was my neighbour who got me really interested. She told me that there was a geocache hidden near a path that was part of our regular morning walk. I was fascinated by the idea that there was a secret treasure waiting, but only for those in the know. I HAD to find it. I’d recently acquired a Garmin unit for my car, so using that we started hunting.

Of course, the road navigation GPSrs (that’s “GPS receivers” for short) aren’t really meant for use off-road, and tend not to have the kind of accuracy needed for geocaching. It’s sort of like trying to hammer in a nail with a pair of pliers—you can do it, but it’s not the right tool for the job. (I’m now using an iPhone, which is great for most things but I still want to own a dedicated and more rugged GPSr.) It took us three or four trips of coming back to comb over the landscape, and finally a couple of hints from the fellow who placed the cache, before we found the cache. It turned out to be a small metal tube craftily hidden in the tree, and when you opened it up there was a small roll of paper that you signed to prove you’d found it. That was our first signed log.

I became a member at geocaching.com, which is the most well-known site for geocache listings. When I typed in my address I saw on the map that there were literally hundreds of geocaches hidden within ten miles of my house! And that, pretty much, was the start of the obsession.

Caches are hidden by other geocachers. Often they choose to hide a cache at a certain location in order to show people a particularly interesting spot. Maybe it has a beautiful view, or maybe it has some historical importance. One cache I found while visiting friends in New Jersey brought us to a rock formation with petroglyphs carved into the surface. Another that we found just this past weekend led us to a tree where you can see the local beavers have been hard at work. When you ask a geocacher what they like most about this game, they usually talk about all the wonderful locations they’ve visited. Often these places are right in their own town– they just never knew were there until they came to hunt for the geocache.

While some caches are just a small “micro” container with nothing but the log book inside, many are large enough to hold items to trade. This is the part my kids love. We bring little toys so that they can trade for new things that they find in the caches. Each hide is different. You may think—like I did, at first– that following your GPSr to a set of coordinates where a container is hidden can’t be much of a challenge, but even the best your GPS units only reliably get you within about 5 metres of ground zero, and then you have to look carefully. For difficult hides I can spend 30 minutes trying to find it, and sometimes I end up not finding it at all. But the feeling of elation when you finally discover the cache makes it all worthwhile.

I’m still a newbie at this game; I’ve been caching for only a few months and with less than a hundred finds to my caching name. There are still so many caches waiting for me! At my last comic convention (which was TCAF in downtown Toronto), I arrived early enough to grab a couple of caches within walking distance of the building before the show began. You can bet that whenever I travel to an out-of-town con, I’ll leave time to go find whatever is nearby.

You can find out more about the sport/game/obsession at www.geocaching.com. If you are already a cacher, you can look me up—my cacher name is SurveyContactTeam. I’d love to hear your stories and favourite must-find geocaches. And if you ever see this button in a cache, you’ll know I was there!

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TCAF 2011

May 10th, 2011 | by Tara
Posted In: Blog

The Galaxion table.

This weekend I heard lots of people say the same thing: TCAF is so full of amazing creators that the experience is almost overwhelming. At every turn you find wonderful things that you want to own, and you hardly know how to spend your money! You want to read it all. My husband told me on the first day that he’d already blown through his budget and he hadn’t even left the second floor atrium. (Though we somehow found some money for the second day, for some of the other wonderful books we wanted. Here’s a link to a photo the hubby took of our haul. I think we need a whole new bookshelf for all this!) So, yes. It really was a great show.

This year the atrium had a middle aisle of tables, which TCAF organizer Chris Butcher told me was at the request of the folks running the library, who wanted the area to seem more “full.” I’d say they got their wish! From about 11:00am onwards the second floor was quite crowded, and I’m told the first floor was equally packed. At most shows I have slow times when I can sit down and work on some sketches—not at this show! Typically at a comic con I’ll get lots of folks who zoom right on by my table with barely a glance, either because they aren’t there to buy comics or they have specific interests that don’t overlap with what I do. Not at TCAF. Here, the majority of passers-by, even the ones that didn’t buy anything, seemed to linger long enough to really take in each table’s offerings. There didn’t seem to be that reluctance I often find at other shows to pick up and flip through a book. The people coming by were here because they were looking for something to read. It was… nice.

The Saturday crowd in the Atrium.

Sunday was, as you might suppose, more laid back than Saturday, so I was able to go around a little and hunt down some creators I’d been looking forward to meeting, and say hello to a few familiar faces. I was delighted to finally get to meet Dylan Meconis, who was as lovely a person as I’d imagined. I picked up a copy of her new book, volume 1 of Family Man. I love the webcomic, and I know I’ll enjoy it all over again reading it on paper. I was also pleased to meet Barry Deutsch, who created the comic with what has to be the best tagline ever: “Yet another Troll-fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl Comic.” Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword. I thought this was just going to be a collected version of the webcomic, but it turns out that the whole story has been expanded and there’s lots of new material! Woo hoo! I only had a far-too-brief chat with Angela Melick of the webcomic Wasted Talent (I am totally digging her book– why didn’t I go over to her table when I had the chance???), but I did find time to bring my daughter—who is a huge fan of comic strips like Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes, not to mention nuts about dogs—over to meet Dave Kellett and get a copy of his book Pugs signed to her (she brought it with her to school today). I bought his Drive collection for me, and burbled on about how much I love listening to the Webcomics Weekly podcast.

A bit more name-dropping here, mainly in the interest of sharing more books that you should check out: Jim Ottaviani had with him copies of his imminent book on Feynman (yay!), and my son was grinning from ear to ear when he showed me the copy he’d won of the also-not-quite-released book Astronaut Academy by Dave Roman. I was so glad that Crystal Yates of Earthsong and Stef of Sarah Zero stopped by– their respective webcomics are about as different as you can get, but each is amazing in its own way. And old pal Mike White—whom I haven’t seem in over a decade!—had the table next to mine, and he had with him copies of his new book from SLG, Amity Blamity. He drew incredibly cute sketches inside of every book—every one!—he sold: Chester the pig high-fiving a little cartoon-version of the person who just bought the book. Awwww!

Galaxion Book 2 did manage to arrive in time, so TCAF saw the debut of my second graphic novel! I packed what I thought would be way more books than I would sell, but out of a whole case of books I only brought home two. And that’s not even taking into account the other things I had for sale. What a weekend!

Thank you to everyone who stopped by to say they’ve enjoyed my comic, and to all who bought some stuff. You made this the best convention ever. And I know I say that a lot, but it really was!

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