Thursday, July 06, 2006

I'm Moving to Montana, Gonna raise some Dental Floss....

...well actually, I'm just going out there to Missoula for the next four weeks* to learn how to sharpen Dental Instruments.

I got a promotion at work, I no longer assemble the dental mirrors. Now I am a repository of knowledge for the company. We're closing down our factory in Missoula, and moving all the operations to our headquarters in Pennsylvania. My job is to learn how our our remaining employee out West puts all the precision edges on the tools we make, and transfer that knowledge back to Pennsylvania. I guess I'll finally get to employ my technical writing skills, as they expect me to write a "manual" on the processes. Right now, outside of a few spec sheets, it's all in that one employee's head. (and partially in mine already)

While I'm holed up in a Motel in Montana, I'll also be working on the pages to my new Graphic Novel, "One Last Ride on the Ghost Truck".

It's going to be a Twilight Zone-ish tale about a man coming to a sense of closure with all the failed romances in his past, and maybe learning about himself in the process. Yeah, It's kinda like "High Fidelity", but with more people being killed, and not so much backtalk from smart-ass record store employees.

This is a story that has been twenty years in the making for me; I first got the idea in a dream I had the night I broke up with my College girlfriend in 1986. If you're one of the lucky folk who picked up a copy of Get BenT! #1, which I published in 1997, and you're the type to read the text pages, then you've seen this tale in its short story form. Well, now I've added scenes, heightened the fear and suspense, and given the ending a better twist, and I'm drawing it, to boot.

There will be a promotional T-shirt. I haven't finished the artwork yet, but it will say:
"GHOST TRUCK YOURSELF!"
Feel free to begin a "Snakes on a Plane" type buzz campaign about this book now.
Consider it your Birthday present to me when you tell all your cool friends about my project. It's my Birthday Monday, you know. I'll be 43. At least I won't be living in Mom and Dad's basement when I turn 43.
...but only because I'm temporarily living in a Hotel in Montana.
*during my absence, my catalog pages are down, since I can't be back here to fill your orders until August.