So, Emerald City went very well, indeed. As always, a great show, lots of wonderful people, and a chance to reconnect with folks that I haven't seen in a while. The fans, as always, were uniformly pleasant and excited -- there seems to be a lot of anticipation for the "Gotham Central reunion" that'll be the four issues of Daredevil I'm doing with Ed and Michael.

On a business end it went well, too, though, again, I'm embargoed on what I can, and can't, talk about. Looks like a new project got locked down, which is good. Most likely that'll see print in early '09, maybe February. I have to admit that I'm getting a little frustrated about not being able to share the things I'm working on. Only a few more months until several of the cats I've been hoarding get to leave their respective bags.

Of the many highlights for me, though, was finally getting to meet Philip Tan in person. Up until now, we've been communicating on the phone and via email, so it was great to finally be face-to-face. He confirmed my worst suspicions: not only is he frighteningly talented, it turns out he's really, really, really nice. He's also incredibly enthusiastic, which is even better -- when the artist is charged up about the project, it's infectious. Philip was also kind enough to do the first sketch in my new "Question-themed" sketchbook. ( I think it came out pretty damn well. )

Saw Southworth and his terrific lady, Michelle. The Stumptown pages are really cooking. I feel bad for the workload we've put him under; you do work-for-hire, you're already dealing with established characters, for the most part, reference readily available. Matthew's got to invent everything from scratch, and especially with the first couple issues, that means designing and detailing not only the regular cast, but also all of the regular sets. He's got an attention to detail that's terrific, and that I think will serve the book very well, indeed. He, James Lucas, and I, got to talk a little bit, and we're pushing back the launch to October. Better that we have everything ready than to rush it, we agreed, and frankly, none of us wants the book coming out with the delays I caused on Queen & Country. Flip-side is that Matthew and I are going to try to work on an eight-pager for distribution at San Diego, along with some other promotional material.

And I got to see Lieber's art for issue one of Whiteout: Night, though only briefly. The irony in having to go to a con in Seattle to see what he's been working on didn't escape either of us, but we're both so damn busy here, we barely have a chance to connect. We've resolved to change that. So I suppose I ought to call him, huh? I'm always amazed looking at Steve's work; there's such an effortlessness to his detail and character, and I know he puts hours in to make it appear so, but the effect is striking.

I'm grinding away on three different scripts this week, trying to get them all squared away before returning to the novel. Had a come-to-Jesus with my editor and agent last week, after sending off the first 35K words or so, and my editor was effusive (though she's yet to receive pages from me an say "this is utter crap", so I take it with a grain of salt). Looks like we're on the right track. I'd rather have sent the whole manuscript, to be frank, but as I was toying with a somewhat radical (or at least, from Bantam's end, unexpected) change in style, both David and I felt Kate needed fair warning. Turns out it was a wise move, but she's for it, which makes moving forward easier. I'll resume the keyboard punching in earnest early next week, I suspect, once research for this new section is completed.

And now...work.

Headed up to Seattle tomorrow for the Emerald City ComicCon. I'll be at a table with Jen and mercuryeric. I'll have some books to sell, stories to tell, and if it goes well, all will be swell.

I'm very sorry about that last sentence, and I beg your immediate forgiveness.

There's a DC Nation panel on Saturday, from 1 to 2 pm in "Panel Room A," which I suspect I'll be asked to sit on. Dan DiDio is out for the show this year, so if nothing else, he'll be endlessly entertaining as he frustrates fans. As for my part, I've actually got no idea if I'll be up there, because just about everything I'm doing for DC is still under information embargo at the moment, which inevitably leads to me repeating, over and over again, "I can't answer that." So maybe I'll be the one who's endlessly frustrating.

Oni Press will be well-represented at the show, as well, and Sunday from 11 to 12, again in "Panel Room A," they'll be having their Quiz Show. Apparently, I'm on that as well, along with Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O'Malley, and Jennfer Van Meter, who, for those of you who still haven't figured it out, is the same Jen from Paragraph One, above. Bryan's very talented wife, Hope Larson, will be at the show, as well.

I like this show; Jim Demonakos has done a terrific job with it, and it's one of my favorite of the circuit, one of the few I actually get excited about attending every year. The Portland Crowd tends to be pretty thick in attendance, as well, including most -- if not all -- of the Periscope Studio crew. I'll also get to see Matthew Southworth, which is great, because Stumptown is inching its way ever-closer to a release; we're hoping for the first issue in September.

Work is continuing apace. The novel has reached a crossroads. Should know which direction I'm taking it in the next two days, and once that's decided, then it's just a matter of typing the draft as fast as I can. I'm running about two weeks behind (according to my personal schedule), and I'm eager to make it up, as other work (primarily comics works) is back-burnered for the time being.

Philip Tan -- who will also be at the show this weekend! -- is continuing to deliver amazing pages on FC:R. I get leery of posting stuff without permission, but if you've checked out his blog, you can see some of his work-in-progress.

So, this story has been slowly escalating over the last week. Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and this...I'm really hoping I won't have to tag a disclaimer on the new novel saying "This was before the war."

And in entertainment news, the new Bond film is having consistent car trouble.

I'm leaving for Calgary at oh-dark-thirty tomorrow morning, to attend the Calgary Comic Expo. I've heard nothing but good things about this show from everyone I know who's ever attended it, and I'm quite looking forward to it. Hoping to score some Avatar: The Last Airbender swag for the kids, maybe a sketch or two.

Of course, this means I'll be missing the Stumptown Comics Fest for the second year in a row, which means, once more, I'll be out of town while Matthew Southworth is actually here. I'm getting a little worried that he thinks I'm avoiding him.

Last note -- Checkmate chat with meself and mercuryeric at ComicBloc tonight, don't forget!

There's an interview with me up at Newsarama right now about the next thing with my name on it that'll be coming out from DC, Final Crisis: Revelations. Look for a companion interview with the amazing Philip Tan, as well. If you've seen any of his art, then you'll understand why I'm willing to use the word "amazing" to describe it.

So we have an official announcement, now, of at least one of the things I'm working on, Final Crisis: Revelation, five issues of 30 pages each, Crispus Allen and Renee Montoya sharing pages again, though each of them in a much-altered form. The Spectre and The Question. Has to go down in history as one of the all-time oddest team-ups ever, which is probably one of the reasons why I'm enjoying writing it so much. First issue is out in August, I believe, so yes, it's a wait, but I think it'll be well-worth it.

( Here's a little taste of what Philip's doing. )

While we're on the topic, the ancillary material for the The Question: The Five Books of Blood hardcover that's coming out in June was finalized on Monday; we've included some six pages in the back about the Montoya Journal, including images of a couple of the props that didn't make the final cut for inclusion. I've written some commentary about the journal, the process, the ideas behind it, and the like. For those of you who were intrigued by that particular flight of fancy, it's definitely Value Added Content.

I promised a couple of posts back to explain the quiet that has descended here... and it's going to be relatively quiet for another month or so as I finish the draft of the tentatively-entitled new Kodiak novel, The Walking Dead. That's priority right now, and until I get out of the Very Dark Place that is this novel, I'm not going to have a whole lot I want to share, or even will feel like talking about, I suspect.

A week from today, on the 24th, mercuryeric and I will be doing a live chat at the ComicBloc Foum, starting at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific. I expect it'll last 90 minutes or so, but it may run longer. If you're not registered at the 'Bloc, I believe you'll have to be to participate, but I could be wrong, as I've yet to actually do a chat there.

And then there's The Blue Religion, a new short-story collection edited by the blazingly-talented Michael Connelly, including shorts by the man himself, Laurie R. King, Alafair Burke, and many others. I'm one of the others, and the short is entitled "Contact and Cover." Fans of A Fistful of Rain might want to check this out, as the story is told by Tracy Hoffman, and gives a little insight into what her life on the job was like before making detective.

( Here's the cover for the collection. )

Finally, an unsolicited endorsement. Find E. Benjamin Skinner's book A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face With Modern-Day Slavery.

Buy this book.

Read this book.

Read the parts that make your heart break. Read the parts that make your eyes burn. Read the parts that twist your stomach.

Read this book.

Then find someone else, and make them read this book.

And while they're reading it, get to work, and any way you can, in any of the ways that Skinner suggests, join this fight.

Odd week. Lots of pre-writing work. Read all of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass for reference, and the frustrating thing is that I can't even tell you why I did this, nor can I show you any of the fantastic art that's been coming in on the nameless project.

See, if I'm going to be frustrating, at least I have the courtesy of being consistently annoying.

Leaving for Vegas in a couple of hours. The piece that I mentioned being interviewed for is up, should anyone be curious. I'm quite looking forward to the Comics Fest, even if the trip will be a short one--arrive today, depart tomorrow night. That's hardly enough time to enjoy Vegas.

Looks like several other projects all took steps forward this week, as well, some large, some small. At least one of them I'll get to start writing next week, after I finish the next issue of Stumptown.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Back from the California Adventure, which consisted of three days in Fresno with Jen's family. Came back home a couple days ago to an empty house, as she and the kids stayed to linger with her father, sister, and her sister's kids. Christmas is not my holiday, and while I appreciate elements of the pageantry, and can enjoy a well-decorated Christmas tree as much as the next bloke, it still remains very much Not My Holiday.

But all that's beside the point at the moment. Quiet house means I get to do what I want, when I want, how I want (what the late Spalding Gray would've referred to as a "naughty treat"). This has mostly manifested in alternately writing and catching up on the Netflix pile that's been sitting and waiting for the last three months, which should tell you just about everything you need to know about my schedule. Watched Owning Mahowny, Ratatouille, and the last of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Enjoyed them in pretty much reverse order, there, from least to most. Really thought Ratatouille was lovely, and it hit my mushy buttons pretty well in that patented Disney-can-make-you-cry-in-the-first-five-minutes-if-we-want-to fashion.

Owning Mahowny was great, and if you're interested in such unsolicited recommendations, here's mine -- see it. Philip Seymour Hoffman is fantastic. I've quite liked him in the little that I've seen of him before, but this one sealed the deal -- the man kicks ass. Now I'm looking forward to Charlie Wilson's War even more than I was before.

Got another one or two I'd like to watch today, but we'll see. I'm in the last 24 hours, here, and I suppose I should use the time to nail down as much of the next issue of Stumptown as possible, as the current fire on Checkmate is out, for the moment. More news on that front in the next couple weeks, I expect.

I've been pondering what to write here, and the fact is, there's too much and there's not enough. The show, frankly, is becoming more and more of an ordeal every year. It has wonderful things to recommend it -- the fans being the highest amongst them (and yes, even the strange ones) -- but it is also, rapidly, becoming not only grueling, but in some places, outright dangerous. You get some shill from some booth or another shouting about a free giveaway, or, worse, actually throwing freebees into the crowd, and you have a near riot. I tried moving my kids towards the 4000 to 6000 aisles on Thursday before noon, and I was sincerely concerned for their safety (and that was with me carrying the four year-old). We eventually gave up altogether.

Floor layout is insane at this point, the artists are being (literally) driven out of the hall, and Big Media is taking more and more room. Congestion in the aisles is absurd. The fastest way to move these days is to actually leave the hall altogether, and then re-enter it at another point.

Thus will it ever be so, I suspect.

The Greatest Sin one can commit at San Diego (and by extension, I suppose, any other major convention) is To Stop In The Middle Of An Intersection To Have A Chat. People who do this should be dragged, by their genitals, out of the hall. Seriously. It's akin to parking your car in an intersection, and it's only because we are not creatures made of Detroit steel and fiberglass that such sinners aren't run down into a smooth and easily-applicable skin cream format.

Okay, that's out of my system.

My big announcement was Stumptown, which you can read about here (and please note, Anthem is supposed to be, I think, Bantam), and here, if you're so inclined, and which frankly just about everyone had suspected anyway, and which would have been bigger news if we'd had a hard release date. But given the unmitigated disaster I created with the Queen & Country publishing schedule, I think we're all going to be a lot happier if there are multiple issues in the can before we start soliciting anything, so I'm okay with that. Best part, frankly, was finally getting to meet Matthew Southworth in person, after spending the past couple months in email correspondence. He is a great guy, smart, quick-witted, and rather absurdly talented, and I think we hit it off pretty well (though that may be because I bought him, Stefano, and James Lucas dinner on Thursday night to seal the deal). It was great to see Stefano again, as well -- I've known him for the past several years, but we've never had much opportunity to just hang out and talk, so that was a delightful bonus.

Friday was Whiteout day, which was extraordinarily surreal. Jen, the kids, myself, and DHS were given an escort to the Very Special Place in Hall H, whereupon Jen and the kids went one way, and David and I went another. The "another" was, essentially, a con waiting room stuffed to the gills with Important People (and I recognize that, by saying such, it may appear that I am including myself in that number; I am not. Joel Silver was there. Sir Ridley Scott was there. James Hong was there (which may not mean much to you, but this is one of my all-time favorite films, warts and all). That kind of Important People, not the-guy-who-wrote-the-graphic-novel-the-movie-is-based-on important-with-a-small-"i"-people. Those were just the ones I recognized, mind you.

Arrive in said room, and just as quickly am marched out of said room with Dominic Sena (Dominic: Hey, Greg! Crazy, huh? Me: Hey, Dom. Yes!), Joel Silver (Joel Silver: GREG! GLAD YOU MADE IT! LOOKS GREAT! Me: Thanks Joel...(see, he's already out of the room, because we're running late)). Very Nice Publicist Alison and her Assistant (I assume her assistant, she was responsible for moving me around, quite literally) Cecilia lead the charge. "Where's Kate? Where's Kate? Anyone seen Kate?" No, no one's seen Kate. Somewhere in this I learn that Kate had a birthday, though it's unclear if that's today, the day before, or the week before.

New room. Full of People With Television Cameras and People With Microphones. They are stacked, as the Army would say, ass-to-nuts, crammed in a line. They stand on masking-taped "x"s, on which are written things like "E!" and "Starz!" and "XBox Live!" and "G4!" I see, out of the corner of my eye, the poster for the first time. Then I'm literally being shoved after Dominic, who's been shoved after Joel (who, I cannot imagine for an instant anyone even considered shoving) in front of the cameras. Two minute sound-bite interviews.

This, Geoff Johns tells me later, laughing at me with glee, is called a "junket."

"Hey, we're at Comic Con with Greg Rucka! And Greg, so, tell us, what did you do on Whiteout?"

"Hey, we're at Comic Con with Greg Rucka author of the graphic novel Whiteout! So, Greg, tell us about the movie!"

"Hey, we're at Comic Con with Greg Rucka! Greg! What's Whiteout about, man?! It looks cold!"

Everyone speaks with exclamation points at these things, I rapidly learn.

And so I answer. As quickly and well as I can. But never quickly enough, because Cecilia, bless her heart, has to keep leaning in to say, "okay, that's enough, next," and so on, down the line.

The reason, incidentally, we bless Cecilia's heart -- and Alison's -- is that, with cameras come lights. And it's the hottest day of the con in San Diego. And we've had to rush from the hotel to the end of the convention hall for this. And I shave my head, let's not forget. So I am sheeting sweat. Literally, it's beginning to visibly soak my shirt. Cecilia and Alison spot this, yank me from the line behind the backdrop, and hand me a wad of paper towels. So if you see footage where I appear to be holding brown soggy junk, yes, that's paper towel laden with my sweat.

God is in the details.

We're almost done with the line when we're all yanked out of it. "They're ready downstairs." "They're ready?" "They already showed the footage! Hurry!"

Whisk. Into elevator. Flanked by security guards, as well as bodyguards, now. Out of elevator. Whisk. Into very dark hall. Onto stage. Like that. Probably a very good thing it's like that, too, because I have just enough time to think, "hey, doesn't this hall hold like 5000 or 6500 people or something like that? Y'know, that's an awful lot of people who'll remember if you say something totally fucking dumb--"

And then we're sitting there, taking questions from the audience, and trying to explain that, yes, Kate is coming, there's been a traffic delay (which I don't doubt; there's a railroad track that runs parallel to the convention hall and which, oddly, freight trains seem to actually use. Very large freight trains. Kate, we learn, is on the wrong side of the tracks.) At some point I see Lieber in the front row of the audience, a big grin on his face. This heartens me like you wouldn't believe, as I have not seen the trailer. I ask to see the trailer. Lights go down. Trailer is run. Trailer, I learn, was cut together specifically for the con.

Trailer is very, very cool. I hope trailer will be online soon, so people can see that it is very, very cool.

Lights come up, and now Joel's gone, it's just Dom and me on the stage.

Then Kate arrives and steals the show, which, frankly, she should do.

We finish, we're whisked back stage. Jen and the kids come back. Dashiell is very happy to see Kate -- they hit it off in Montreal when we visited the set. Kate is happy to see Dashiell. Whisk. Upstairs. Joel vanishes. Whisk. New room, Dominic, Kate, and I sit at Very Long Table. People enter 10 at a time. They get signatures on posters. They leave. Rinse. Repeat. Whisk. Kate vanishes. Whisk. New room, round-table interviews, Dominic and me sitting at, yes, round tables, with reporters from various publications, online and other, from various countries, the US and other. Ten minutes, whisk, new table. Ten minutes, whisk, new table. Ten minutes, whisk, new table.

"Okay, you're done. If you want to get something to eat in the Green Room or something, feel free."

DHS and I go back to the Green Room. All the food? Pretty much gone. Eat brownie. Drink water. Stagger out with box full of posters to give to the Oni guys. David, bless 'im, has managed to get signatures on a handful of posters for the Oni guys. I give Steve, who's signing at the booth, a stack as well, and we both exchange a "holy shit" moment, as we have been doing since they actually started making this thing.

Catch breath. Go to signing at Bantam booth. Give signed copies of Private Wars to anyone who asks, and several people who don't. Rush to cocktail party I cannot locate, even with Google maps (I swear to God, the location I went to was boarded-up, and when I called the number, got a not-in-service message). Stagger back to hotel to find Jen and the kids, and learn that Dashiell's running a fever, which is another story.

Surreal day.

More to come.