Wednesday, January 18, 2017
INDEH A Book is Born!
INDEH A Book is Born!
By
Greg Ruth
Well this last week marked the debut of our long awaited graphic novel, INDEH, and with it the first leg of our book tour. Which doesnt begin to come close to capturing the insane level of what unfurled this week. From its appearance on The Tonight show, to nearly fifteen others, DJing an hour of Springsteen radio songs, appearances in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Chicago and Naperville and signings at Book Court and Barnes and Noble... it has been glorious and weird. By no reckoning what I would call a normal rollout... or maybe it was? What do I know? But the result has been powerful.
The troublemakers at the Hachette offices |
Team INDEH: Jimmy, Greg, Ethan, Gretchen, and Katherine with a K |
Ethan and INDEH on The Tonight Show |
At Book Court |
One of the SO many back to back radio interviews at Sirius XM |
Calvin telling us were wearing the wrong undies |
Doug Miles of Apache Skateboards |
After NYC we deliriously hopped on a 5 am flight to Chicago where we were captained by our
Poor stalwart Paul B protected us from much, but could not shield himself from the sleep deprived snark and ridiculousness of us. |
driver/bodyman/sidekick/familiar, Paul Buchbinder, through the real Chicago starting off with breakfast at Lou Mitchells and meeting up with our fellow panelists for the press conference, RL Stine and Terry McMillan... which was HILARIOUSLY absent of press. This then afforded us about three precious hours to collapse in ahotel room before taking off our suits for an early cocktail and snacks atop the John Hancock building overlooking Chicago and apparently all of the Midwest before heading to a hugely attended discussion and Q&A hosted by Michael Phillips for the Printers Row Book Festival. Giant humongous gargantuan images from the book show behind us! We then raced to our final stop in Naperville, a wonderful black box theater discussion and signing sponsored by Andersons Books.
Bob Stine, Terry McMillan and me, photo by Ethan. |
At Printers Row with Michael Philips |
When we came back to Ethans Late saturday night we were still dizzy from it all, the entire of Sunday. It was nearly too much to absorb- in fact Im still processing. Pitching a book, negotiating the contract for that book, writing it, drawing it and then selling it is a monstrously huge undertaking. and were hardly done yet. We have a number of coming interviews and events leading up to San Diego Comicon through the Fall and Texas bound for the Book Festival in Austin where we are to be keynote speakers following directly in the heels of Margaret Attwood and Gore Vidal among others. The end result is so far, something I have been working towards my entire professional life in comics: to push the medium outside of the dysfunctional minority of the direct market comics world into the broader book world where so many readers and publishers still see it as only a medium for children and superheroes. (which for the record are awesome genres and groups of readers, but simply not the only available to those us who are insane enough to make this field our own). My work with Scholastic is changing that and this is the next brick in this new foundation. Comics is coming into the American conscience in a way unprecedented and has only the vast skies above as limits to what it can do and will do in the years and decades to follow. Ethan and I are beyond honored to be a small step in that direction, and eager to see what follows. Were already at work on more INDEH stories and even a new original crime drama, so keep your eyes out for whats to come. Were not even near finished yet.
We could not have come to this place alone without the aid, guidance and support of so many of you over these last six years. No true work of art is created alone and in a vacuum by my reckoning and INDEH has been complete proof of that. I can never thank you enough for your support and encouragement, and especially for picking up our book and making it land so high upon the venerable NYTimes list. This will kick us forward in a way we absolutely needed it to do. Despite it all neither of us are sudden millionaires nor even a penny wealthier than we were a week ago. And by no means would I say this has been any kind of a normal opening for a book Ive been involved in. In any case we all return back to our lives and this will roll into the past like everything does. It was super exhausting and ridiculously fun. We hope you pick up the book or get a chance just to read it, we like
it a lot. For all the crazy of the past week it was easy because we like this book so much. Never a better testament to following your instincts and passions has there been for me than this. I hope this weird time births more weird times. That we begin to see graphic novel storytelling really stitch itself into our culture more broadly than it ever has been before. Theres too many stories to tell not to do this, and I cant wait to read them.
In the meantime, to pick up a copy of the book at your local independent bookshop which can be found with a simply entry of your zip code, HERE.
To get a hold of Douglas AMAZING and extremely limited edition of INDEH X APACHE skate decks, please go HERE
Available link for download