If you’re in the Tulsa area it would be great to see you at my second book signing and lino print demonstration, 1PM on Saturday, Sept. 13.
The Barnes & Noble Store is across from Woodland Hills Mall on 71st St., and the store staff has offered to help me live-stream the event on Facebook, so there’s an opportunity to watch right from your couch!
In other news, I expect to be traveling to London in October to speak at Dickens Day at the University of London. I’ll have more info about this soon.
Every year the University of London hosts “Dickens Day”, a prestigious event that features speakers on a chosen topic of interest to fans and students of Charles Dickens. It was exciting to see that this year, the topic is “Dickens and Art”, and in a flash it seemed all my efforts were suddenly coming into focus and timed perfectly for the stage my project is currently at.
Of course I could say I’m speaking at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London, but come on, “The Dickens Society” just sounds cooler!
Continue reading “My Journey to Speak on BLEAK HOUSE at Dickens Day 2025”I know many of you have been following this story, especially those who have come close to being victims themselves until they tickled the google and ended up right here at this blog. One of my new correspondents, Tom Hanlon, went the extra mile and actually made a complaint to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), and also, as of this writing, has made a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission at ReportFraud.ftc.gov .
Below is the FBI report in full, except for redacting some of Tom’s personal info. I won’t put links in here for the two earlier posts because they’re linked in the official report.
Continue reading “Scamming an Artist – Part 3: Dude! The FBI!”Things always appear easier before you actually do them. It appeared that using the “Expanded Distribution” option for a book published on Amazon would make BLEAK HOUSE more widely available, and it did, sort of.
I’ve been operating under the belief that I could do book signings in Barnes & Noble stores. There are two in Tulsa, and of course there are other, smaller bookstores in most of the bigger small towns in the region. As it turns out, I could indeed have book signings in these B&N stores, as long as I was in the correct distribution channels that would allow these stores to order my book. If they can’t get the book on their shelves, there’s no reason for them to host the event. No matter how nicely you ask, there’s no way around this logic.
Which leads to the obvious question: WHAT are “correct distribution channels”?
Continue reading “Distribution beyond Amazon”I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the work of other linoleum artists. The fact is that since I seek out and view so much art on Facebook, my feed these days is almost exclusively art of various types, from Golden Age comic art to Disney animation, character sketching, political cartoons, Renaissance work, cave paintings, you name it. And I like it fine!
What has really grabbed my attention of course is the work of other linoleum artists, which I find utterly humbling. I’m very happy with the work I do, but in essence my pieces are a single image printed in black ink on white paper, and if you’ve read my posts on my “Christmas Carol” experiments, you know I struggle with anything more complex.
Continue reading “Today’s Linocut Artists”I did my first book signing on Saturday May 3, and Katie Varner the owner at The Same Page bookstore, was nice enough (and tech-y enough!) to live stream it on Facebook. So I have a 33-minute video that, well, I found pretty hard to watch, so it took me awhile to trim it down to about eight minutes. It’s posted after the continuation below.
Now I’ve set my sights on expanding to bigger venues, and top of the list is Barnes & Noble, which has two stores in Tulsa. I visited both stores yesterday and the folks there couldn’t be nicer, but I found some small complications with the process as I imagined it.
Continue reading “My first book signing – Video!”Some of you have already seen my original post on this story, first published on Nov. 18, 2024, but I’m keeping it alive because it’s important as information, and as an educational tool. Since I published it, I’ve received emails from eight other creatives who almost got scammed, except they paused to do some online research and quickly ended up at my post.
For this post I’m simply publishing all eight emails, last names deleted for simplicity (though some said, sure, use my name) so I don’t have to comb through all their responses.
Continue reading “Scamming an Artist – Part 2”Yes, it seemed like a good idea. It’s been a few years since I’ve advertised on FB, and though the process was a bit multi-layered, I got through it and managed to run an ad. It didn’t help!
But BLEAK HOUSE is a different project, and it was more about getting the word out a little wider than it was about making sales. I decided I could spend $91 on running this ad for a couple of weeks, fine-tuning audiences interests, geographical area, and other parameters.
Continue reading “I know! I’ll advertise on Facebook!”You may have ended up here in response to my latest email announcement, all nice and formatted with images and new info. I’ve been wanting to make this improvement for some time and I’m happy with the results. Above all, it contains an “opt-out” option at the bottom which is just polite, but I never had the means to do it in a standard, email-friendly format.
It means a lot to have the support I’ve gotten from many friends and even strangers in this journey. The book is out in the wild, I’ve gotten my first press coverage in our hometown Claremore Progress, and I’ve lined up my first book signing.
Continue reading “Inspector Bucket Superstar”Well folks, I first want to thank you for stopping by to read my posts here. It’s been a labor of love even when it’s a struggle because this book and this project are something I believe in. I don’t think I would have stuck to all this if it weren’t!
So I would like to announce the following:
BLEAK HOUSE, by Charles Dickens and illustrated with 40 new linoleum prints by Gerry Mooney, is now available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DTG8DLCJ . Paperback, 650 pages, $30. I’m not planning an e-book edition.