Sneaky Previews

Hi all! In a continuation of last weeks blog, we have more book previews to take a peek at!

Quarantined

Story: Michael Moreci

Pencils and Inks: Monty Borror

Colours: Lauren Anne Sharp

Letters: Jim Campell

Snow

Story: Richard McAuliffe

Art: Valia Kapadai

Letters: Jim Campbell

The Empyre

Story: Stephen Aryan

Art: Adam Bolton

Babble

Story: Lee Robson

Art: Brian Coyle

We also have another preview of Simon Wyatt's Unbelievable!

Check back next week for more!

Countdown BICS-2 Weeks

So much news - so little time!

Secure all personal belongings and keep your arms inside the car at all times...

Burke and Hare: Reaching the Heart

Here we go then, with the last of the pin-up previews. This week we have Hugh Parker, Gary Erskine and Frank Quitely:

Hugh Parker

Gary Erksine

Frank Quitely

Layer Zero:Choices ebook sampler

Just in time for BICS we now have the Layer Zero: Choices sampler up as an ebook.

Take a look inside for a preview of each story, the pin ups and creator biographies.

Snow Job

Valia Kapadia has been getting in the mood for some desire and depravity, ready for BICS. Hang on, that didn't come out right!

What I meant to say is that she has been creating some amazing concept pieces as part of her style experiments for Snow.




Go on, admit it, you're already a little bit frightened, and even worse, a little bit temped.


Roy Huteson: Artist Double Header!

Not, in fact, a rare example of the two headed comics creator, but Roy Huteson, who is the first artist we have to be working on both a Vigil book and an Original Graphic Novel at the same time - and we snapped him up for both books in the same week.

Having been doing dark and stunning work on Daemon Seeds (the prequel to Daemon by Alasdair Duncan) for Layer Zero: Survival we are delighted to have him on board for the full book.

Alasdair said:

"Roy has the ability to put a highly detailed and realistic drawing right next to an impressionistic almost abstract piece of artwork and make it work as a whole. His biro doodles alone are worthy of display and his style has given me as a writer so much more freedom with the story."

Daemon Seeds

And then later in the week Roy sent us his bleak, inspiring, tinged-with-madness character concept sketches for how he would approach Crowley: Wandering the Waste. As soon as Martin Conaghan (editor), Martin Hayes (writer) and I clapped eyes on them we knew we had to have him.

Crowley: Wandering The Waste

Taking Over The Airwaves: Insomnia Podcastpalooza!

You've read about them, you've seen the pictures, and now thanks to the wonders of modern technology you can also hear their actual voices!

• Richmond Clements on Small Press Big Mouth
  
  
• Stephen Downey and Andrew Croskery on the Sunnyside podcast

And next week will see Cy Dethan interviewed by Comic Book Outsiders

New Signing: Terminus

We are very pleased to announce that we have signed a second book by Michael "Quarantine" Moreci last week.

"In an imagined 2033, advances in genetics have allowed a person’s physical and mental health to be known from birth. Those who are a danger to society—the poor, terminally ill for being a drain on healthcare economy, or those deemed prone to criminal tendencies—are removed, housed in government-operated facilities.

For some, on the surface, it’s a better world, until a government agent is murdered—the first murder in nine years—and the façade begins to slowly peel away."

Terminus is a sci-fi noir described by Michael as "Blade Runner meets The Constant Gardener mixed with A Clockwork Orange."

You can read more about the genesis of the story over on his blog.

Michael was at the Windy City Con this last weekend getting the word out about Insomnia.

Not only did he give up time - but it was his first wedding anniversary. However he is keen to point out that he is not a bad person, or a bad husband. His wife was gone most of the day as well at work and being the best judge at a pie contest ever :)

Huge thanks to him for that.

Small Press Expo

If you are going to be in the Maryland area on Saturday the 26th September then you'll be able to check out some Insomnia previews, enter the competition to win one of our new books, and find out some more about us by stopping by Mickey Farineau's stand at the Small Press Expo.

Mickey got in touch with us to see if he could do anything to help with promotion at the show after hearing me on Comic Racks a couple of weeks back.

It was an incredibly generous offer, and right out of the blue. Things like that are what makes it so great to be part of the indy comics world, and they restore your faith in human nature.

Thanks Mickey!

Fallen Heroes Special Edition

We will have a limited number of copies of the Fallen Heroes Special Sketch Edition for sale from the stand at BICS.


This edition will contain a section called Lost Passages which are scenes that never made it to the final version of the book and Barry's reasons for why they were left out (including his original opening chapter).

There will also be a section of the book called Fallen Heroes Sketchbook where comic book artists (some of whom have worked for Marvel and DC) have given their interpretation of some of characters from the book.

Sketches are provided by:

Emma Vieceli, Scott ‘Atomic Robo’ Wegna, Andie Tong, Leigh ‘2000ad’ Gallagher, Steve Sims, Gary Seaward, Jimmy Bott and Michael Schwartz

If you cannot make the show, or want to be sure of having a copy, then you can pre-order the book directly over on Barry Nugent's own site.

I wish I could share the things we've been talking about for the comic adaptation recently as I'm so excited about how it is taking shape - but they are not quite ready to go outside on their own yet!

And Finally...

Happy Insomnia birthday to me! Yes, today is one year to the day that I joined Insomnia on the management side as Creative Director.

The year has flown by, and it has been a wild wild ride. It's a wonderful time to be involved with comis right now.

Thanks to everyone, especially all the creators, for showing me such a great time.

Next week I'll putting up a Ptiching and Portfolio Review FAQ to help those of you coming to see the Insomnia Crew at BICS and try to make the whole experience as painless as we can.

If anyone has any particular questions they'd like covered drop me a line and let me know.

Countdown: BICS-4 weeks

Here we are at BICS-4 weeks, more on this below, but first over to Crawford Coutts for the low down on what happened at the MILK launch and exhibition opening:

MILK Delivery

On Thursday night, MILK, the graphic novel and the exhibition, were launched at the Fine Art Library, located within Edinburgh’'s Central Library.

Around 50 people (significantly over capacity!) attended the hour-and-a-half long event – including a large number of the Edinburgh and Glasgow comic creators, numerous family members and former co-workers of Stref and some longer-distance folk who’d travelled up from London just for the launch.

Many other Insomnia creators came to see the event, reporters from the local Newspapers and even a Film Producer. Thankfully, we purchased more wine to cater for the large number of people! It was incredible to see such a brilliant turn-out and Stevie seemed delighted to see so many familiar faces that he’'d not seen for many years!

Piles of signed copies of the book rapidly disappeared and we received an endless stream of compliments about the art, production and print quality. I don’t know if this was the alcohol talking, but the enthusiasm and excitement about the book and exhibition was extraordinary!

We also had copies of Cages and Cancertown on sale at the event along with previews of other titles currently in development.

We received lots of interest from the Directors of the Libraries and the Edinburgh Art council in the hope we can work together more in the future, provisionally continuing the MILK exhibition to other libraries and looking at future Insomnia exhibitions and running similar workshops and events to the pilot scheme we’ve been running at the Essex Libraries.

After all the wine was consumed, many books were signed and sold, Winker Watson’s final outing original pages had found new homes, our first exhibition and book launch came to a close.

“To the Pub!”

A saying that is customary after these sorts of events, or so I'’m told.… We headed across the road to The Villager where some great networking took place, and lots more alcohol was disposed of.

Thank you very much to everyone who attended the launch, I am very grateful for your support and your interest in what we’re producing.

I'’m very grateful to the library staff who were extremely helpful with the organization of the exhibition, preparation and running of the launch. I look forward to working with you again in the future.

Also a big thanks to my better half, Audrey, who ran the “bar”, with the help of our good friend’s Corrie and Richard, who ran the signing table and till for the whole evening.

And finally, thank you to Victoria Wine for the loan of their wine glasses –the event would not have looked quite so sophisticated with plastic cups!

The MILK Exhibition continues until the end of September and the remaining copies of the limited edition signed copies of the book are now available from Amazon and all good book stores.

• Details of the Exhibition
• Details of the Book
  
• Buy MILK from amazon
  

BICS 2009 Update: Convention Special Offers

As usual we will be doing a number of convention specials on new and existing books.

This year the offers will be:

• 3 for £20 on all standard edition books
• Any special edition + one standard edition for £20

Standard Editions Con Prices

• Burke and Hare (RRP £12.99) Con Price £10
• Cancertown (RRP 14.99) Con Price £10
• Cages (RRP 10.99) Con Price £8
• Layer Zero Choices (RRP £9.99) Con Price £7

Special Editions Con Prices

• Buskers (RRP £14.99) Con Price £12
• MILK (RRP £19.99) Con Price £15

You can pre-order to collect on the day, or to be sent out by post (paid by cheque or paypal) so long as you order by 3rd October.

MILK and Buskers special editions are limited to 100 copies.

To reserve for pickup or to pre-order and for payment details you can email me at nichola[at]insomniapublications.com

Soon I'll be posting a list of our creators who will be at the show.

Burke and Hare Gallery Preview One

Looking forward as we all are to BICS 2009 we will be counting down to the big day by showing previews of the pin-up gallery from Burke and Hare as we gear up for the launch.

First out we have Stuart Beel, Stephen Daly and Nulsh:

By Stuart Beel
(and PJ Holden)

By Stephen Daly

By Nulsh

You can meet Martin and Will at the Insomnia stand at BICS 2009

New Artist Signing

Today (just in time for blog news update) we signed up an artist I have been wanting to work with for some time, and waiting for the right project to come along.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present Valia Kapadai.

Valia's work has already been in an Insomnia book, Layer Zero Choices, and she keeps up an incredible workrate with links to projects she is working on seeming to pop up every other day!

Valia will be working on Snow by Richard McAuliffe. We only had to see one page of sketches to know how perfect she would be for the story, nailing the look, mood and personality of the character right from the off.



More on this, and some previews very soon.

Valia and Richard will both be at BICS 2009, and we will have some limited stocks of Valia's mini comic on the stand as well.

Sharing the Love

Three loves to share this week:

• Michael Moreci has a prose noir short story Blurred Lines over on A Twist of Noir. You can also read more about the background on his blog.
  
  
• Adam R Grose has an ebook preview of Phoenix: A Warrior's Tale out for your reading pleasure. The book will be released through Clown Press on 13th of October. Described as an "an ‘onomatopoeia’ sequential graphic art novella , and illustrated by Tony Suleri it is something very different and well worth a look.
  
  
• The ever busy Geek Syndicate also have an ebook out, and this one includes sound and video! If you only know them from the podcast take a look and see what else they get up to, and find out more about the other parts of the expanding Geeky Syndicate Network.
  

And finally...

In our news snippets this week:

• You can catch me interviewed on Comic Racks this week. The Racks ladies Iz and Stace are both all kinds of awesome and made me really welcome.
  
  
• We are going to be at the London MCM Expo the 24th and 25th October, in the Comics Village section. More on this very soon.
  
  
• The Insomnia APA is taking shape nicely and is up at almost 70 pages now.
  

Phew - well, back to preparing for the events - we want to show you all a good time!