Zipper Club local fliers!

I've devised another great way that you, gentled reader, can help Brenda and I on our road to making The Zipper Club a sooner reality. The ongoing promotion of our IndieGoGo campaign has entered it's final two weeks and I'm working like the devil to try and see us through to victory.

FLYERS!

That's right, folks! We're about to take it old school, posting up a ton of fliers in any business or gathering place that'll allow us to spread the word, and the best part is, I'm making PDF copies available right here, to everyone who might feel like giving a hand to us! I'm doing two versions of the flyer, one with a special message to patrons of my hometown in Louisville Kentucky, and another copy to be posted up anywhere that people can speak and/or read English!

Print off one copy, print off a dozen, print them off until your printer runs out of ink and hit the streets of your town on our behalf! Anywhere that might allow you to tack one up on their walls for a couple weeks! Each flyer comes complete with a pair of bar codes you can scan with your cell phone to make things nice and convenient for passers by. One code leads to our IGG page, the other to our new and growing Facebook fan page. Post them at comic shops, coffee shops, college community boards, children's hospitals, etc. If you can think of a place, I encourage you to print out a copy, take it there, and ask. Worse comes to worse, they'll just say no!

All Over Flyer

Louisville-centric flyer

But that's not the best part!

If and when you get one posted up, get a picture of yourself taken, standing next to it and link us to the picture with your name and the location that was kind enough to let you post it on The Zipper Club Facebook page, or @ me with it on Twitter @LenNWallace. By the end of the campaign, the person who posts up the most fliers and sends us pictures will get a special treat courtesy of Brenda and I. (Haven't decided what yet, but probably some kind of weird piece of original jam art between the two of us...?)

You don't need to be a donor to the project to participate in this endeavor, either. Money can be tight these days and the effort of helping us out from wherever you are is big enough in my book to deserve it's own reward... Although I will say, if you can donate, even a dollar, it'd help tremendously.

Again, and from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your support, past, present, and future. I just know we're going to make this book happen in a big, big way!

Thanks,
Len N. Wallace

Crowd Funding 101 – A Course For The Not-So-Technologically Inclined

So, I’ve gotten a few emails from people who dig what we’re doing, but have no idea for one reason or another how to donate to The Zipper Club through IndieGoGo. At first, this concept was pretty baffling to me, because it’s become as easy as second nature to me now, and I use these kind of sites all the time. Then I remembered I’m a dude who sits around, burning out his retinas on a screen all day. Not everyone is like me, so what follows is a very simple crowdfunding tutorial for any donors out there who may have been confused about how to give to our project, or even any other one down the line that might strike their fancy.

As much as I’d love to take your personal checks and cold hard cash, alas, there’s a system in place and for us to take all of the money we need to pay for printing this thing that we’ve pulled in so far from all of our donors, we need to meet our goal on the site. If our level doesn’t read $4,000 or higher by May 14^th, 2013, all the money goes back to the individuals that donated to the project and Brenda and I go back to the ol’ drawing board. (We still fully plan on producing the book with or without the money from this campaign, but getting it paid for with these donations will save us a lot of time, headache and our own personal funds.) Plus, going by our perks list, you get some pretty cool Zipper Club memorabilia that you wouldn’t be able to obtain anywhere else. Plus, after the campaign goes on and we (hopefully) get funded, everyone who donated will get updates with all sorts of behind the scenes goodies for the project on our journey to see it in print. In short, we know asking you for your hard earned is somewhat of a tall order we don’t take that lightly. Helping crowdfund projects like The Zipper Club through IndieGoGo and Kickstarter are a fun and rewarding experience that gives you a chance to take part in the creation of all forms of new and wonderful art. I’ve donated to a number of different crowdfunding campaigns in the past on both websites over the years and love doing it.

The bottom line though, is that we can’t do this without you, so without further ado, here are instructions for how to donate to our cause…

How to donate to an IndieGoGo campaign:

1 - Find the campaign you want to donate to. (For purposes of the same shameless self-promotion I’ve become known for, we’ll say maaaaaybe for my book, The Zipper Club.)

2 - Cruise through the campaign’s information for any information on it and see if it raises any concerns for you. (IE: Where your money is going, when you’ll receive your donor rewards, etc.) If you have questions or concerns not answered on the page, hit the "Contact" button on the IGG page to take your questions directly to the person running the page and they should answer.

3 - Now comes the “fun” part. In order to donate to a campaign, you’ll need two things. A membership to IndieGoGo (http://www.indiegogo.com) and a membership to a website called Paypal (http://www.paypal.com). 

The good news is, starting both accounts are free in and of themselves. The reason for the dual memberships are as follows.  IndieGoGo is a site that sends and receives its money through Paypal, which is basically an online resource for you to pay for goods and services online. You can pay for orders through almost any online shop you can think of, quickly and easily via Paypal. Starting an account there is pretty simple and the best explanation for it can be found at the link below.

http://www.ask.com/question/how-to-start-a-paypal-account

4 - After you’ve got your Paypal account set up, you can also use it to pay for any large number of goods for sale on all sorts of different websites throughout the internet. (eBay, Half.com, Overstock.com, etc.) It’s the world’s most popular way to send money online, so mark my words, it’s something you could definitely get a lot more use out of down the road.

5 - Once you’ve got your Paypal account made and secured, head back to the IndieGoGo page that you want to donate to, click on the according price level/perk that you’d like to have shipped to you, and then it will take you through asking you to log into your Paypal account. Once you’re logged in, it’ll ask you to confirm your donation and the amount. Press “Pay” and everything’s done.

Hope that helps!

The Zipper Club is BACK!

So, we're running two weeks strong into our IndieGoGo campaign to fund and expand our first run of short stories for The Zipper Club into it's own full 40 page graphic novel and we've had some pretty incredible donors popping up so far as we stand two-thirds of the way from our goal with plenty of time to spare and plenty of wicked perks yet to be grabbed, including personalized sketches, personalized comic strips that put you in your own three panel Zipper Club adventure, and spots where your name and/or likeness can be used in next year's Zipper Club story!

So, to help encourage more buzz on the book and the story itself, I wanted to share a little something with everyone. Here's an introductory preview in the form of our first two page short story from Grayhaven Comics' THE GATHERING #2. Our first Zipper Club short story!

The Zipper Club is a personal project to me, as a life-long survivor of a congenital heart defect and as someone who has counseled a camp for children like myself and the ones I write about in The Zipper Club for many years. The campaign is to fund a print-run for our book so that we can not just have copies to sell to you fine folk, but also a few to donate to kids growing up with these heart problems who might really need it. Plus, a percentage of any profits Brenda and I make on the project will go to the American Heart Association to help further research in the fight to stamp out all forms of heart diseases.

Join the fun and donate to the cause here: 

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/welcome-to-the-zipper-club

STRAIGHT TO THE HEART

In honor of Creator Owned Comic Day, I figured I'd share another fun little short story I did in the past. A couple years back, I was on a big kick and wrote a rash of off-beat romance comic short stories for an anthology I was hoping to put together, called "Less Than Three". (And kudos if you get the reference.)

One of the few stories that ended up getting fully produced was illustrated by an artist named Brian Defferding, whose work I had become aware of through his own creator-owned comic, School: A Ghost Story. Brian's horrific painted style seemed like an interesting fit for a little horror/love story I called 'Straight To The Heart'. One of the few instances to see Brian's great work in full color.

Hope you enjoy!

THE BUZZ(ES) THAT ALMOST WAS(ES) – PART I

A long time ago, I promised myself once LOVE BUZZ was published, I would find the time to write down the story behind the story. For all I know, the journey in getting the book made might very well be more interesting than the book itself. It's officially been 10 years now, since I first conceived the project and set out to make it tangible, and now here I sit, ready to lay bare for all you budding comic makers out there, the hardships and triumphs of getting published in this fickle industry. From starry eyed beginnings to that triumphant yet punch drunk moment when you finally hold the first copy of your blood, sweat, and tears in your hands and everything in between, this is the story of LOVE BUZZ. The journey that myself, Michelle, Dave, Thomas, and a slew of other people who joined and encouraged us along the way as we forged on over the eight year period to it's completion. It's a long story, which I will break up into six parts along the coming weeks. A nice little companion piece we'll be sharing along the way, with the help of Tim Simmons and the Comic Book Script Archive is the original script I wrote for LOVE BUZZ dating back to 2004. This original draft, clocking in at very nearly 300 pages, includes numerous things that were cut from the book that finally saw print from Oni Press. Needless to say, we cut a significant bit of story out of the final product to get it down to the 184 page mark. I consider sharing the original scripts to be a gift to other young writers out there, to help them appreciate the importance of the editorial process. 

We'll start our story with the same words that have begun so many others before it...

IN THE BEGINNING…


I first conceived of LOVE BUZZ as a long haired young rascal who looked something like this...

My first job as a filing clerk for an insurance firm had eventually yielded me the thousand dollars I would need to buy myself a top of the line (for it's time) digital video camera, as a couple of high school buddies of mine and I sat up a few late nights on weekends, coming up with ideas for short films and features we mostly never got around to producing. These late night gatherings did however inspire me to go off and write a trio of never produced scripts that still sit in the bottom of a drawer somewhere in my house. My first finished work, MIND IS A ROLLING THUNDER, a title I will freely admit that even I don't know what it's supposed to mean, but used because it sounded cool at the time, LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS, a concept I some day look forward to revisiting, about two rival high school "know-it-alls" seeking to rig an election for Class President with their own Manchurian Candidates, and finally, a script called LOVE BUZZ, which share's only two things in common with the book that's in stores now. The title, and the name of it's main character, Norm Raymer.


The original LOVE BUZZ was a story written by a guy who'd known nothing about love, and had only been out on maybe two dates with a girl who ended up getting tired of him and moving onto another guy. Convinced that my first time getting dumped was the end of the world, I began to set pen to paper writing Love Buzz. This first version had Norm getting dumped by a very different version of Maggie Gunther, who went off to date some dude with a Motorcycle, while leaving Norm to ponder what comes next, until he met a girl named Christina who was something else all together more special. The first LOVE BUZZ was written by a man with no experience in the realm of love. Regardless, I showed it to a few friends, who all said they really enjoyed it, including the girl who would become the basis for Maggie in the final incarnations of LOVE BUZZ, and the reinforcement from them kept me going and wanting to write.


Despite my film making dreams dying early, what was done was done. I had officially spent the last two years of my high school career dicking around in class, writing stories and movies that never got made and making wreckage of my GPA. Despite the fact that those things I had written are things that I can now look back and cringe upon, the writing bug had bitten me hard and there was no going back for me. Not everyone figures out what they want to do with the rest of their lives at the age of 16, but I had. I didn't know where I would go from there, but I knew that by sheer determination and refusal to quit, I could get there. My on again, off again relationships with the girl I based Maggie upon stayed rocky for some time, which is all pretty well documented within the book itself, so I'll just skip the back story on that and tell you if you haven't already, to go buy LOVE BUZZ right now off Amazon. 


So, doing a movie was out, at least for the moment. As much as I love reading prose, the idea of writing something as elaborate as a book made my testicles retract up into my body, so that was out. Plus, I had already spent so many months writing the ever bulging screenplay for LOVE BUZZ, which had grown well over the 90 to 120 page limit of most rom-com scripts and by all measures was still growing. It was around this time that I had gotten back into reading comic books in a big way after an several year hiatus, in which I had discovered that girls thought guys who read comics were dorky and unkissable. (Thank God THAT’S not the case anymore, amIright?)

     My realms of comic reading had broadened considerably as I discovered there was more beyond the cape and tights set. Books like Craig Thompson's BLANKETS, Chynna Clugston's BLUE MONDAY and particularly Sean McKeever, Mike Norton, and the Brothers Fraim’s THE WAITING PLACE had begun to made a great cases for a bold format change and new direction for LOVE BUZZ. I had begun to doubt that I could find an artist crazy enough to commit to drawing an almost 300 page book for me, but that’s fine. I took some cartooning classes as a kid. How hard could it possibly be?

     Remember what I was saying about “a healthy dose of self-delusion”?

     Yeah…

     TO BE CONTINUED…

WELCOME TO THE ZIPPER CLUB!

I'm very gracious and proud to bring everyone a peek at the next big thing from me at the moment. It's starting out small, but after multiple talks with the publisher, I hope people will check it out, because as time passes, I feel it could become something very big. 


"Growing up different can be difficult. Growing up like Cliffy Goldfarb or any of the other 1 in every 120 kids in the world born with a congenital heart defect can be harder. Living a life of rules and physical limitations is the norm for these children, making it harder for them to live a life most would consider 'normal'. A life limited of sports, climbing, and the overall rambunctiousness of being a kid like Cliffy can make you feel like the odd one out.

The summer after his first heart transplant, Cliffy's mother sends her nervous young son off to Camp Bravehearts. A place that's unlike any other summer camp, where kids with other varying conditions like Cliffy can be together to compare 'war wounds', and realize that maybe being 'normal' isn't all it's cracked up to be."

THE ZIPPER CLUB

Written by Len N. Wallace

Illustrated by Brenda Liz López

Brought to you bi-monthly and ongoing in the pages of...

It's a story very close to my heart literally, as a grown adult who has lived his whole life with a congenital heart defect, and was given a very small life expectancy when I grew up. Camp Bravehearts is a real place that I've had the pleasure of counseling for over 14 years of my life now. While the Camp Bravehearts in the comic is a little more fictionalized than the real one, the feelings and emotions that come from the comics are very real. When GATHERING publisher Andrew Goletz asked me if I wanted to contribute something all-age appropriate to his new independent anthology series, I spent a couple weeks racking my brain to come up with an idea, until I came up with this idea. This is the most important story I never realized I wanted to tell.


Click here to get your copy of THE GATHERING #2, featuring our first installment of THE ZIPPER CLUB, as well as stories by Jeffrey Burandt (Americans UK), Brian Koschak (Star Wars: The Clone Wars), Gail Simone, (Birds of Prey, Secret Six) and many, many more talented creators. 


I encourage everyone to check out what Brenda and I are doing here, because it's something we're both very proud of. A very personal story from myself, as well as a chance to work with an artist I've been crazy about, and trying my damnedest to work with more and more in the last several years.


Best of all, this is only the beginning!

Hello! My Name Is...

That's right! The Virginian Pilot was kind enough to take a special interest in the book over the course of the last several months, and the fruits of those hours of interviewing me, my friends, artists, and family have come out to being a very extensive piece on myself, Love Buzz, and my life leading up to this point. Among the many other reasons to read the article, I think the fact that they reveal my real name isn't really Leonard Norman Wallace is enough to get people curious. ;)

Rather than spoil it and ruin all of Victoria's hard work, I'll just shut up and let you get to reading the full article at the link below.

Len N. Wallace reveals beginnings of his graphic novel

Meanwhile, I've got a screenplay to get back to work on with a due date of mid-August, but more on that later.

Stay tuned, boners!