Remember when I posted all glowingly about a web comic called Skin Horse, and kept saying everybody should read it?

Remember how one of my big selling points was the first year of strips was now available in convenient dead tree format that you can take anywhere?

Good.

Shaenon and Jeff are now funding volume two through Kickstarter, which is a sort of crowd-funding aggregation service. You say how much you need by what date, and then people kick in what they can to make your project happen. The Skin Horse fund opened yesterday, with a $3,000 goal and an end date of, well, July.

It hit $3,000 last night. See what can happen when people believe that you're real?

Anyway: The volume two Kickstarter sponsorship fund is still open, and comes with some really awesome bonuses for sponsorship, including character sketches, side-stories, and more. The $20 sponsorship level gets you a signed copy of the book, for what would have been the book's cover price anyway—it's basically pre-ordering with a guaranteed signature, which is pretty neat.

If you like Skin Horse, consider sponsoring volume two. If you can't figure out what the hell I'm talking about, go read the comic, and then consider sponsoring volume two.

We're the shadow government.

We're here to help.

It's official; convention season is starting. I'm in the process of getting ready for Marcon. Kate and I are on a Thursday morning flight so early that it's effectively a Wednesday night flight, which is always fun, and will either result in my having my usual weird mid-air dreams or in my getting a lot of work done. The jury is still out on which that's going to be. We're coming back to California on Monday.

The following Saturday (June 5th), I'll be appearing at the Borders Books and Music in Pleasant Hill, California. This is my first-ever Borders event. The Saturday after that (June 12th), I'll be at SF in SF with Deborah Grabien. This is my first-ever SF in SF. Sensing a trend yet?

Somewhere in June, I have to cram in a few rehearsals with Paul Kwinn, my partner in crime, because 4th of July weekend is the combined Westercon/Conchord. I'm Westercon's Music Guest of Honor, and Conchord's Guest of Honor (Paul is the Conchord Toastmaster), and I guess that means we shouldn't suck. July 10th, I'm with Jennifer Brozek at Third Place Books in Seattle; July 17th, I'm with Jennifer Brozek at Borderlands Books in San Francisco. The weekend after that is the San Diego International Comic Convention, which is going to be huge and exhausting, as always, and the weekend after that is Spocon, in Spokane, Washington, where I'm going to be their Music Guest of Honor. (Tanya Huff is their Writer GoH. Urban Fantasy Mafia in the house!)

August is Australia. And the Campbell Awards. And the twitching.

Somewhere in there, I need to finish The Brightest Fell and make some serious headway on Blackout, since they have, y'know, due dates. I only have five more Sparrow Hill Road stories to write, which is a good thing, but they're some of the most important in the series, which is less good. So if I seem a little hyper in the weeks to come, it's just because I have replaced my blood with embalming fluid and espresso.

Whee! Convention season is fun!