Drying Out My Masterpiece Number 2703: Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen

Showing posts with label Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen. Show all posts

Go to Paris for Six Dollars

You may remember that, about a year ago, I wrote and illustrated a funny book about an uncomfortable trip to Paris I took once with two of my friends. It was called, Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen, and it cost about $25. I was somewhat baffled at the time as to why it had to be so expensive. Now that I've published a few more books, in color and in black and white, I know the reason: color pictures are expensive to print.

So, just to see what happened, while I was publishing the Birds in Beards Coloring Book, I went ahead and re-published Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen, but with black and white pictures. The price went down dramatically: $5.98. The price went down from about $25 to about $6! So, in case you never bought it because it was too expensive, I totally understand, and now I released it as a cheap second edition! It's the same book exactly, just with black and white pictures, and cheaper.

The quality is still pretty good (or, you know, in relation to how it was before).

I prefer this picture in black and white. There's something about a black and white rainbow that I find amusing:

This is just a screen shot, so it's too small to read, but the plane says, "Air France 'you can smoke on the plane,'"
which was true at the time the story takes place.

I guess it's confusing, but I'm leaving the color version of the book still for sale, too, because it has such good reviews, and also because some people really like color pictures. But if you want the new, cheap, black and white version, click on these words. The new cover looks like this:

It's out today, everywhere! Yes yes yes yes yes~

If you're still uncertain, here is a sample of how it looks with the pictures added.

Find the full book Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen here!

And I seem to be the star of Gocomics today, too! ("Frog Applause" rocks my world. Always.) Crazy times.

Everyone I know is reading this book...

I accidentally published the book already! (I know what you're thinking, With your level of professionalism, Shoshanah, how could this happen?) The Kindle version of Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen is still set to be released on Amazon on March 27th, but at Createspace, they already have the paper copy for sale! And that's wonderful. "Why not?" I say. Why not.

I've already sold a few copies. (Maybe people noticed the sidebar there?) I got a copy myself, and I'm sure pleased with how it turned out.

It's actually quite pretty inside. If I were to try to be completely objective, (which is impossible) I would say that the story would have been mediocre, on its own, but once you add all of the illustrations, it becomes something much more special. And kind of messed up, actually. But in a good way? If that's possible. I've never seen anything quite like this book. I'm so glad that we have Createspace and Amazon, because this book really doesn't fit into any of the usual genres. I mean, I wouldn't send this to an old fashioned publisher. I would just assume they wouldn't take such risks. But now, hey! Here it is! And it's beautiful. Purchase your copy here. (Or preorder your Kindle version, coming out next week, which is quite a bit cheaper. [You all know you don't actually have to have a Kindle, right? You can read it on whatever you're reading this on. It's called the Kindle App, and it's free to download.])

Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen is Almost Done!!!!!!!

I'm finishing up this week. I did create a new cover image. I really loved the old one, but I was reading up on the elements of a good cover, and I realized the old one was too detailed. Most people, when they first see a cover on Amazon, see only the thumbnail, and on many devices, the thumbnail is actually the size of your thumbnail. Looking at it smaller, you can't see the goofy eyeballs or the quote, and the colors make it look like a serious book:

So, even though I really liked the old one, and I appreciated your feedback and the small change Professor Batty made, I made something new, with one bold image and big letters:

It looks weird because it's a weird book.

I think I may have been subliminally influenced by Christina McMullen's cover art, especially the lettering.

And then I had to write the dreaded blurb. It's difficult to describe your own work. I resorted to a list. Lists are fun. Here is the "blurb":

This book contains:

1. People with weird names.
2. Drawings of the people with weird names.
3. No fewer than 117 sexual propositions.
4. An explanation of the nightly moving of the Eiffel Tower.
5. One reference to Joseph Campbell.
6. A scary part in a tunnel with bones.
7. Over 130 original works of “art.”
8. One good painting.
9. A friendship.
10. An un-friendship.
11. French hippies.
12. A demon.
13. Hunger.
14. An argument over a sandwich.
15. An unnecessarily long description of The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault (see number 8).
16. A trite (but bittersweet and heartfelt) ending that says something like, “We’ll always have Paris.”

You might notice that I'm including The Raft of the Medusa. I didn't include it originally, because I was wondering about copyright laws, but it seems to be perfectly legal. Of course, me being me, it isn't exactly The Raft of the Medusa. Here's a close up of part of it:

March 27th, everyone. March 27th is the day. I have made many new illustrations and done some heavy editing, and I hope you all find it spec-tac-u-lar.

Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen: More Drawings

(If you are new to this blog, take note: the following are drawings for a book I'm working on which will be titled, Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen (A picture book for adults). I published my rough draft as a serial here on the blog.)

"You know, I think they put the Eiffel Tower in at night. Little frogs come and carry it away to a safe place. Because we took the Metro into town, and we were walking, and walking, and walking, and where was the Eiffel Tower? It was nowhere. Nowhere to be seen. When Hemingway said, "A Movable Feast," he was alluding secretly to the Eiffel Tower. Those French people don't really like all of these Americans in their city all of the time. They do their best to keep us away with disdain and rudeness, but still, we keep coming. So they hide the Eiffel Tower sometimes. For fun. You really can't blame them at all. We are very annoying, talking about money openly and our medical problems, eating our synthetic health foods. Nondairy creamer. We are almost intolerable."

The next ones are all for page numbers. These are hasty sketches- since they are going to be tiny in the final product, I haven't been spending too much time on details. Also, I've got to do 117 of them!

I seem to have made a lot of them look like famous people or people I know. Or is it my imagination?

This one looks like Gerard Depardeau to me.

Nobody knows what the nose knows.
(Used to be a feature on the local news program
when I was growing up in the Bay Area.)

This guy I knew in high school who was really annoying.

So judgemental!

This one looks to me like David Bowie. Or possibly my friend Andrius Gramauskas.

And this looks like some actor I don't remember the name of... but familiar.
Do they just all have common faces?

I don't think I'll show you every single drawing, but you get the idea.

Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen: Numerical Coincidences

"There are 24 beers in a case and 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not." -Dad*

So, I've been editing and re-writing Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen, (which is a serial I wrote here on the blog, but am now putting into book form), and I noticed something interesting: it was exactly 117 pages long. 117, you may recall, was the number of Frenchmen who propositioned us in France. And then I got this moment of inspiration: What if every page had a Frenchman on it?

And what if the picture was just a little thing, where the page number was? What if the drawing of the Frenchman was the page number?

It would solve a little problem I had with the feeling of the story, which was that you didn't really get the sense, reading it, that men were constantly paying us lots of attention. I think, when you read it as written, you sort of forget about these guys. While we weren't terrified or anything, Ludmilla, Zgjenyue and I were always at least a little bit aware of men watching us. They were always there. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Or a good thing. It just was. We had no idea what to make of it.

Anything I did to make you feel the presence of all of these men would seem to be this feminist statement. If you want to take it as such, I don't mind, but I'm just putting it out there: this is what happened. And we enjoyed our trip, for the most part. If I had Frenchmen interrupting the flow of writing all of the time, announcing their presence there, it would be like hitting you, the reader, over the head with Frenchmen, and I do not want to do that. I accept that things are different in France. They have different customs there, and that's how it is, when you travel to other countries. People are different. That's pretty much why we go, isn't it?

So, I'm thinking, this idea about just having a little drawing of a Frenchman on each page, a tiny drawing in the corner? That kind of works for me. They'll stay in your consciousness, that way. The reader will understand that they were always there, but they aren't hitting you over the head. At least, that is my hope.

I can't remember what they all looked like, of course. I think I remember they were all between seventeen and forty-five years old, and they were all white. And I feel like they all had brown hair. Is that possible? Well, it doesn't matter. I'll just draw Frenchmen. They all look like this:

Every man in France looks exactly like this, right?

I do remember a few things that they were doing, if not how they really looked. Like, there was definitely a dude walking his baby:

And he seemed so wholesome!

And then I wonder, should I make the men seem a little bit sleazy? Because, really, asking to have sex with someone you don't know is kind of sleazy- at least where I'm from, it is.

Strangely, they all had page numbers tattooed
on their faces, as though someone were
trying to tell me something...

Of course, when I make it into an e-book, it will all be screwed up. E-books are not the same number of pages as paper books. I guess I could put a disclaimer at the beginning:

*I hate to give you the wrong impression. I'm sure I've never seen my dad drink more than 23 beers in one day.

Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen: Character Sketches and Other Drawings

This is going to make no sense at all. Once in the book, in context, all will be clear. (I mean, I hope all will be clear!) For now, enjoy each drawing individually.