Antigone Reading this Friday

Which is not to say that I'll be reading Antigone. But I will be reading from Fat Vampire at Antigone Books in Tucson this Friday at 7pm. Joining me will be Janni Lee Simner and Jillian Cantor. The readings will be followed by a question and answer period. There will apparently be refreshments!

Also, here's something nice: don't live anywhere near Tucson but want a signed copy of one of our books? Antigone has agreed to ship personalized copies! Just email info@antigonebooks.com with your name, address, which book you'd like, and who you'd like it signed to, and they'll get in touch to work out the details. Note: Signed copies must be ordered through the email address, not the web site.

GUYS READ: Funny Business, Released Today!

Previously I've posted some images from the forthcoming anthology GUYS READ: Funny Business. I have a story in it, and illustrated the thing. But more importantly, other people have stories in it. Other people like Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo, Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, Jon Scieszka, and David Yoo. And David Lubar. You know David. Author of Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie and In the Land of the Lawn Weenies?

Here's the illustration I made for David's story, "Kid Appeal." I defy you to figure out what's going on in this story from the image. You'll just have to get the book, which is in stores now.

Letter to My Younger Self

Recently I was asked by Anna Staniszewski to write a letter to my younger self. The result is below, but there are a lot of letters from/to other authors on her blog. Maybe go have a look.

Dear Younger Me,

DON'T READ YOUR REVIEWS. I hope I've caught you early enough. The first book you'll illustrate (The Dirty Cowboy, by Amy Timberlake) will garner pretty much universally positive reviews, and win a bunch of minor awards, and this will ruin you. You're going to assume it'll always be like this, and you'll start Googling yourself to the point of blindness. Metaphorical blindness.

Just know that, in time, you will long for the good old days when reviews came to you at a trickle–a handful of clippings from your publisher now and then–and a reader had to care enough to post an actual letter. Do you know that feeling you get now when you're just out on the street, minding your own business, and some anonymous critic shouts "nerd" from a moving car? Or something disparaging about your outfit? Now imagine that's the only outfit you own. You have to wear it all the time, like one of the Castaways. You're Ginger, and you're only strolling on the beach, hurting no one, wearing that dress that says "U.S.S. Minnow" across the bust which you obviously made yourself, and in fact the only things you even have to wear are the Minnow dress and the "Happy Birthday Mister President" dress, and then a bottle washes up on shore, and there's a message inside, and KittyKat93 from Tulsa, Oklahoma says "Nice outfit, Ginger lol."

That's the internet.

Understand that your brain, which is not as smart as you think it is, will file the anonymous car-shouters in the same cabinet where it keeps a review from The Washington Post. And that it will highlight any and all negative passages with ink so ostentatiously yellow that you will be able to read them in your dreams. The part of your brain which currently sucker-punches you with humiliating junior high school memories during random quiet moments is going to discover its true calling after people start publishing your fiction. It's really going to come into its own. You know the part of the brain I'm talking about. It's located in your gut, despite all medical evidence to the contrary.

At the age of thirty-seven you will institute a No Reviews Policy. It's going pretty well. You're learning to concentrate on how you feel about your writing and looking forward to a day when you can hear the word "Goodreads" without getting sick to your stomach. But there's going to be a lot of years of existential angst before you get here and you know what? You're going to really love your wife (if you're not married to her already), and she doesn't deserve all that garbage. So maybe never get in the habit of Googling yourself in the first place and save us all a lot of headaches. Literal headaches.

Love,

You

Best of Friends

Previously I've posted some images from the forthcoming anthology GUYS READ: Funny Business. I have a story in it, and illustrated the thing. But more importantly, other people have stories in it. Other people like Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo, Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, Jon Scieszka, and David Yoo. And Mac Barnett. You know Mac. Practically every image I've posted for the last two years has been for a Mac Barnett book.

Here's the illustration I made for Mac's story, "Best of Friends."

Currently On My Desktop...

...heads.

My Parents Give My Bedroom to a Biker

Previously I've posted the cover and a whole lot of cover sketches for the forthcoming anthology GUYS READ: Funny Business. I have a story in it, and illustrated the thing. But more importantly, other people have stories in it. Other people like Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, Jon Scieszka, and David Yoo. And Paul Feig. You know, the Paul Feig who created the best television show of the nineties, Freaks and Geeks.

Here's the illustration I made for Paul's story, "My Parents Give My Bedroom to a Biker."

Things!

Recently Angela Fox conducted an interview with me via Skype in which she asked a very thorny question regarding baby werewolves. Heres the link.

Also! I'll be doing areading and signing at Antigone books in Tucson on September 24. I'll be sharing the stage with Janni Lee Simner and Jillian Cantor.

Guys Read: the #$@!! Cover

Pardon my language. The cover for this book, the first of a forthcoming GUYS READ Library, was a little slippery. Hard to nail down. Previously I showed you the cover we ended up with, today I show most of the ones we didn't.

Early in the process I was really attached to the idea that all of the GUYS READ anthologies might have the common element of an illicit black bar or box, possibly containing the GR logo, which could always be concealing an ostensibly naughty or terrifying or mysterious part of the image. Jon Scieszka and the good people at HarperCollins humored me for a long time about this.

Click to make big.



Then we all glommed onto the pie in the face element for a while.



What I'm not showing you at this point is a number of formal-looking portraits of a Little Lord Fauntleroy type with pie face or, alternately, Groucho glasses. That's because eventually Harper or Jon or somebody thought it might be better to pull back from this portrait and show a modern-looking boy admiring it in a museum setting.



Eventually it was agreed that the gallery was working but Fauntleroy wasn't, so we explored other options.



NOT SHOWN: about a half-dozen other concepts that were too superficially similar to these to bother including.

If I sound bitter or tired that's only because I enjoy complaining. I love this book and I like its cover.

Guys Read: Funny Business

In case you missed it when I posted this back in May, here's the...trailer? Sizzle? What are we calling these things now? Here's the moving talky thing for GUYS READ: Funny Business, which I mentioned yesterday.

Guys Read: Funny Business

For years now Jon Scieszka has been championing books for boys and encouraging parents and educators to just let the poor guys read what they want with his organization GUYS READ. He's even published a Guys Read anthology already, with a lot of great stories, but now he's getting serious. So to speak.

Later this month all good Americans will be reading Guys Read: Funny Business, the first of the forthcoming Guys Read Library. I had the honor to write a story for this anthology of humor, and to illustrate the whole thing.

So I thought I'd kick off September, which will inevitably be renamed Guys Read Month, with the uncropped cover of GR:FB.



This is what it'll look like in stores:



We went through a lot of iterations with this cover. I'll post all of them soon.

sketchbook: LIONS

sketchbook: DRAGONS

Largehearted Boy

Interested in the secret soundtrack to my new novel, Fat Vampire? No? Oh.

Well, then don't go to the music and book blog Largehearted Boy. Forget I said anything.

sketchbook: GIRLS

Show and Tell Me

Please click through to Amy Timberlake's blog Show and Tell Me to read the story (and see a larger image) of this terrible thing to the right. But suffice it to say that yes, it is a picture of a zombie throwing up a smaller zombie.

The Comic-Con

A Short Play by Adam Rex
Based on True Events

A hall in San Diego. An attractive woman dress'd and undress'd in the guise of slave Leia poses for photographs. Three rogues look on.

ROGUE ONE: Not hot, methinks this counterfeit of Princess Leia be.

ROGUE TWO: Forsooth, my friend speaks verily: not so hot is she.

ROGUE THREE: FAIL.

Rogues Exeunt.

FIN

Comic-Con Signing

Previously I mentioned I'll be participating on a panel at Comic-Con. I just want to say today that I'll also be signing in the Autograph Area after my panel, and giving away FAT VAMPIRE t-shirts to the first fifteen people in my line (who want one).

The t-shirt graphic looks like the image up left. My signing is in AA1 from 12-1 pm. See you there!

Okay, I'm Back

Just a quick note to say that I'll be at the San Diego Comic-Con in support of my new book, FAT VAMPIRE.

On Sunday from 11-12:00 I'll be participating in a panel called Entertaining One's Inner Child in room 24ABC. Also participating will be Matt and Jennifer Holm (Babymouse), David Steinberg (Daniel Boom), Jimmy Gownley (Amelia Rules), Sina Grace (Among the Ghosts), and Greg Van Eekhout (Kid vs. Squid).

I'll also just be wandering around most of Saturday and Sunday, so if you see me please say hi. I'll be the guy who looks like me.

Sorry.

Okay, it seems I owe some of you an apology.

Ever since Adam died I’ve been insisting that he absolutely is NOT one of the legion of the undead, but then he stopped by last night and sort of broke it to his mother and me. It’s not a choice he made, it’s just who he is now. I think we’ll get used to it, in time.

And I guess he really has written a vampire book. He gave us a copy, which he insisted we begin reading immediately while he watched us with those smoldering eyes of his. I like it all right, but it’s not really his mother’s cup of tea.

Maybe you people will like it better. Here's an excerpt.

Adam’s mom wants me to take down that last post, but I can’t figure out how. She wants everyone to know that her son was very successful. Maybe not as successful as he would have been had he followed his father into engineering–ask me how many homicidal goth copyeditors have visited me lately at Honeywell–but I guess that’s water under the bridge.

Heh. Water under the bridge. You know some legends say vampires can’t cross water? I read it on Wikipedia. A little dead son vampire humor, there.

God, you people are getting to me.

Adam's Dad Again, and This is the Last Time.

You people. You people with your sick rumors. For the last time:

Adam has NOT returned from the dead to shop around a new vampire novel. I don’t even know where to begin telling you what’s wrong with that idea. To start with Adam simply would not write a vampire story–it’s not his style. And with the YA and Adult market already oversaturated with other people’s vampire stories? It would be ridiculous.

Please show some respect for the dead.

We’ve heard about the book too, but I’m sure it’s just by another author with the same name, or else some sicko trying to cash in on our boy’s death. The joke’s on you, mister sicko. None of Adam’s books ever made any money.

Adam's Dad Again

Hi, Adam’s dad again.

I’d like to say right off the bat that Adam’s mother and I don’t appreciate all the rumors flying around the internet about Adam being killed in some supernatural way. I’m a man of science and I don’t believe in such things.

Yes, he was found in his car yesterday, nude and completely exsanguinated. On his chest there was a message in blood that read “YOU USE TOO MANY COMMAS,” so of course police are looking for that copyeditor gal.

I thank all of you who posted thoughtful emails and comments. To the rest of you I say: knock it off with all your “advice.” We are not going to cut Adam’s head off and fill the mouth with holy wafers. We’re Presbyterian.

Message from Adam's Dad

Hi, this is Adam’s dad.

If you read this blog then you’re probably already aware of some of the stories getting around about him, but I want to set the record straight.

Adam was last seen at the Phoenix Book Festival in the company of what I’m told was “a fair-skinned and darkly beautiful young copyeditor.” She approached him after his signing and professed to be a big fan and brushed her slender hand against his. Phoenix in July is pretty warm, and Adam was heard to whisper that he could not account for the fractal chill that spread in his breast.

He’s always talking like that–you should have heard him when he was a teenager.

According to eyewitnesses he walked off with the beautiful copyeditor after she remarked that she wanted to share with him her “dark embrace.”

“Ha!” he was heard to say as they left. “For a moment I thought you said your ‘dork embrace.’ Huh…that would be a funny premise for a book.”

He hasn’t been seen since.

If anyone has any information, we’d appreciate it. He was supposed to come over last night for Jenga.

The Queen of the Quail

Baby gift for my friends Phil and Angie, and brand new friend Phinneas.

5x7, oil on paper.

Guys vs. Vampires

HarperCollins has created a facebook page for my new novel, FAT VAMPIRE: a Never Coming of Age Story. I'm sharing it with Eric Luper's excellent new book Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto, hence the name GUYS VS. VAMPIRES.