If you wanted to shake a stick at a bunch of calendars, well, this might be too many of ’em. I’m trying to decide if this is a gaggle of calendars, or maybe a passle of calendars, or (I hope not) a lamentation of calendars; it might be a spiral valley of calendars, or even, possibly, a conspiracy of calendars.

It is, anyhow, more calendars than any one of you is likely to need. But like someone I knew once said, "It takes all kinds of flowers to make a garden". So maybe just one or two of these would look good in yours. Next to the hydrangea, I think.

So, as you’ve guessed, it’s calendar season once again: that season when you get to spread twelve months of wall decoration and timeliness, not to mention dentist’s appointments, out in front of you so you can admire just how much time and novocaine lies ahead. And as I do every year I’ve tried to give you options, there, from the Thrilling Tales to Retropolis to Celtic Art and vintage graphics.

A special note this year is the new "Lair of the Clockwork Book" calendar, from my ongoing serial at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, with airships, rockets, robots, and the Clockwork Book itself.

Anybody who does creative work on the Web has to have a special place in their heart for Felicia Day and her web series The Guild. This ragtag dream team of filmmaking guerillas, starting with basically nothing (and continuing with basically nothing) has somehow managed to survive for five seasons in their adventures across the dangerous seas of sponsorship, promotion, merchandising, and whatever you call the craft of making a series with what amounts to two potato peelers and a large helping of good will.

We’d all like to be Felicia Day and Kim Evey when we grow up.

So when I heard a call for donations of merchandise for the upcoming fifth season of The Guild, I was all over it. What’s not to like? On the one hand, I could contribute something that – like so much else – The Guild just didn’t have a budget for; while on the other hand it can’t hurt to be associated with something whose karma is as good as The Guild’s.

The problem the Guild team faced was that this season features a very large number of background actors. Most of the scenes take place on the floor of an imaginary convention (MegaGame-ORama Con!) and they were shot on the floor of an actual convention at the Long Beach Convention Center; but those 140-odd extras all had to be dressed like con-goers and – I assume – there could be problems if they were wearing graphics from licensed, franchised films and books. So the Guild crew needed lots of T-shirts in all sorts of styles, colors, and sizes.

A whole bunch of those T-Shirts, as it turned out, came from me.

It all came together very quickly – at the last minute – and it wouldn’t have happened at all if my printer, Printfection, hadn’t stepped up to the plate and turned out the shirts at a frantic pace, and even upgraded the shipping so the shirts would get there in time. Seriously: this would never have worked out if the elves at Printfection hadn’t done some special magic. Thanks!

Season Five of The Guild is now up to its ninth (of twelve) episodes, and it’s featured some astonishing cameos from the likes of Nathan Fillion, Neil Gaiman, Eliza Dushku, and others. All through the season to date I’ve been watching the background for something I could point at and say "Hey! I did that!"

But since my shirts are mostly on the background folks, I’ve nearly waited in vain; back in episode one I got a full-screen eyeful of my Celtic Knotwork Biohazard T-Shirt from Saga Shirts; but on the whole, there hasn’t been much that was obvious – ’til this week, anyhow. I’m happy to see that the grim sentinel of The Game’s own booth is sporting my "This Is NOT Rocket Science" shirt from The Retropolis Transit Authority. My shirt has lines!

So unlike most of those who are watching The Guild this season, I’m spending a lot of time staring at the chests of everyone on screen. At least, I think that’s unusual. With three episodes left to go I’m hoping for another major squeeable moment.

So, okay, that Neil Gaiman scene counted, too. The guy was incredibly funny. He just need a different shirt. 🙂

Sometime last week I started in on the illustrations for the third (and final) act of The Lair of the Clockwork Book. When, exactly? No idea. It’s all a blur. But here we are with an invigorating cup of tea, so maybe I’ll remember later. In the meantime, clicking on the above picture will begin its unstoppable, relentless embiggification.

Captain Bonnie Scarlet is one of Tallie’s favorite clients. The stories Captain Scarlet trades to the Clockwork Book are, Tallie’s sure, second to none; and while her need for secrecy makes her visits rare this Captain of the Space Pirates will join Tallie and the Book in, let me count ’em, um, around January.

Captain Scarlet will be with us almost to the end of the story… and so will Tallie’s Foreign Legion cap, which I’ve now decided is the finest hat she’s got.

There won’t be much time for hat-juggling as we near the end of the story: things get hectic once we’re sure what the Book is after and why, and quite a few threads will manage to weave their way back into the story as Bonnie Scarlet discovers just how the Clockwork Book hopes to succeed. There will be ballistics; there will be frantic televideo calls; there will be gravity. Also, there will be tentacles.

Did you make it all through the summer without remembering to cover up that torso of yours? Jeez, I can’t take you anywhere. But just in time for the long weekend I’ve got a tempting sale on t-shirts from The Retropolis Transit Authority (including the Thrilling Tales T-shirts!), Saga Shirts, and Hot Wax Tees.

Until September 6 you can save a ginormous $20 on any order of $75 or more. Since the three shops share the same shopping cart that means you can split the difference between Ctheltic Cthulhu, Nat Gonella’s Ray Gun, and a Jitterbug or two. Which ought to have you covered*.

All you need to do is enter the ridiculously long coupon code OhYeahLngWkends and then you can nurse your tired typing finger(s) while basking in the warm afterglow that you enjoy when you’ve saved scads of greenbacks. Provided, of course, that your backs are green**.

You’ll be seeing Osgood Finnegan again, around late September, in The Lair of the Clockwork Book. For the moment you can see his airship sailing out over… someplace. Click it, and see it swell into world-dominating magnificence!

The new illustrations are moving along at a respectable pace – that surprises me, since I’d been dreading the number of new things I’d need to build for this one. But between my working quickly, on the one hand, and cheating outrageously, on the other, things are going well so far.

I’ve even been thinking about exactly what comes after The Clockwork Book and Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS. Part Three, obviously: but there will be a new serial to figure out too. I keep having these urges to fold in something I was working on awhile back – but since that one nearly destroyed my brain last time around I have to question whether that’s a very good idea.

It all depends on how much I like my brain, doesn’t it?

T-Shirts (at The Retropolis Transit Authority, Saga Shirts, and Hot Wax Tees) are on sale with $5 off any order at all (nope, no minimum order) through August 21; you just need to enter the coupon code WHAT$5 during your checkout.

That’s completely eclipsed by the other sale, through August 27, which offers you $15 off an order of $50 or more on posters, blank books, wall clocks, and other merchandise. You can find my Celtic art posters and so on at Celtic Art & Retro-Futuristic Design, while the Retropolis art, as always, makes its home at Retropolis. For those items, use the coupon code ANN0813.

Just don’t get ’em mixed up; WHAT$5 is $5 off any T-Shirt order, while ANN0813 is $15 off a $50 order for all that other good stuff.

 
*okay, I made that part up.

[tags]t-shirts,posters, celtic art, retropolis, retro future, coupon[/tags]

So I’ve left Nat Gonella here, in the laboratory of mad Doctor Rognvald – more or less – because my current stint on the illustrations for Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS has come to its end.

For the past week I’ve been working on another web project that’s still a ways from being ready for prime time. That one’s a commercial site for all of my Celtic art merchandise, just as I did with the Retropolis site for the retro-futuristic side of my brain.

I had meant to finish the Celtic Art Works site before the holidays last year… but Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual just wouldn’t let me go. This year, I’m making a stand.

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

But on Wednesday I plan to sit back down with The Lair of the Clockwork Book, where I’ll remain for a couple of months as I keep illustrating weeks out ahead of what you see on the Thrilling Tales site. With the occasional diversion into the ten million sidebars I have to write for The Celtic Art Works, I should get where I need to be on time, on all fronts. I think.

I hope to be able to (soon!) show you a pretty neat thing that I hinted about back in April – a tie-in with something that’s so much more popular than I’ve ever been that I feel a little funny about showing up with it at the dance. Shouldn’t be too much longer. I’m sure I’ll have this cummerbund figured out by then.

On the slopes of the volcano Fremrinamur in a remote and ashy part of Iceland where only mad scientists thumb through the real estate section of the local paper, the Space Patrol has established its camp around the well defended tower of mad Doctor Rognvald. Here we’re very near the beginning of Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS… although in a total refusal to conform I’m actually about a quarter of the way done with that story’s illustrations.

You can click the picture above to initiate an explosive form of embiggification which, although terrifying, is Entirely Safe When Used as Directed.

This is the second illustration in the story. I still haven’t managed the first one: I guess I can’t take the pressure. But anyhow I’m nearing the end of this weeks-long excursion into TWO BRAINS so soon I’ll reset my own brain, and get back to The Lair of the Clockwork Book.

Come to think of it, during those last anxious weeks of the Clockwork Book I never realized that I’d passed the halfway mark. Over half those illustrations are done now… when I include a bunch that you haven’t seen yet, but I have.

There is a web project that I really need to make some progress on, and I’ve been asked to do an illustration for something else, too. So once I’ve finished two more of the TWO BRAINS pictures I’ll probably try to race through those two things before the big reset.

Through July 25 you can save up to $7.80 per shirt on any t-shirt order at all from The Retropolis Transit Authority, Saga Shirts, and Hot Wax Tees: just enter the coupon code FantasticNewColors during checkout, with no minimum order.

The discount varies from one type of shirt to another; but, for example, it’s $7.80 off the price of a dark long-sleeved T-Shirt; $6.60 off the price of a dark short sleeved T-Shirt; $6.30 off the price of a ladies’ baseball jersey; on so on down the line.

You may know that arithmetic and your humble correspondent aren’t on speaking terms, but even I can tell that those are some pretty sweet discounts. Just in time for OhMyGodWe’reAllGoingToMelt week, here at the Secret Laboratory.

From now through July 15 you can get 30% off on qualifying orders from The Retropolis Transit Authority, Saga Shirts, and Hot Wax Tees by entering the coupon code GoBig50 during your checkout.

"And what is a qualifying order?", you ask. Before I answer I dip my nose well into my mug of coffee, and I mumble to myself while counting on my fingers. Because it’s a little hard to explain. But on most orders of three shirts or more you can save 30% – yep, a nice, fat 30% discount. The discount’s based on something you can’t see, though, and so it’s confusing.

It all depends on the cost to produce a particular shirt, not the retail price: so while three dark colored shirts (which are expensive to produce) qualify for the discount, three white shirts (less costly to produce) don’t. On the other hand, an order for two dark shirts and one white shirt will qualify. So if you try it on an order and the coupon code doesn’t work, well, you could always throw another shirt in there to push it over the top, and yes, I do know exactly how self-serving that sounded, believe me. But it’s true.

This includes a couple of redesigns of my "There’s an Art to Rocket Science" and "Having a Swell Time in the Future – Wish You Were Here!" shirts. Along with, you know, everything else.

And if you’ve made it this far you should also know that there’s a similar deal for 40% off on orders even larger (call it a minimum of five of the more costly shirts). To get that one, which I heartily recommend, use the coupon code GoBig100.