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Okay, time for some updates.

Y the Last Party was unforgettable and amazing and raised eleven grand for CBLDF. Here's some video recapping the night (WARNING! If you haven't read the last issue you may want to avoid the massive spoilers contained herein!):

Y: THE LAST PARTY

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I'm still stunned whenever I think back on that night, all the amazing things said about the book, meeting fans who actually camped out to get tickets, and of course that monkey (couldn't get enough of her!).

It took a few days to really recover from all that, both physically and emotionally. Physically because I was still pretty ill despite the soothing effects of antibiotics, the dusty LA air really didn't help, and sleep was crazy wonky. Emotionally because, well, that's a lot of excitement to deal with out of the blue after spending two weeks in bed. Saturday I was spent (watched Juno in the Hotel room) and Sunday, after an incredibly grueling day dealing with some bad directions, blazing sun and unco-operative cabbies I flipped out. It took a trip to Griffith Observatory and a lovely encounter with some honest-to-goodness infinity to set me right again.

And then on Monday we got stuck at LAX for ten hours.

We've been back in Vancouver for a couple of weeks now and I'm still dealing with this fucking flu. The worst of it is gone but the fatigue and ear thing is a lingering pain in the ass.

Still working on the Leah Moore short story. This should have been done weeks ago, Christ! I'm just getting back into the groove here aaaand...

Once that story is clear I get to start on that formerly-super-secret project. If you haven't heard yet, on the night of Y - The Last Party in LA I got the go ahead from the editors to announce the next book I'll be working on:

IDW's Doctor Who.

Wooo! So happy about it.

And how did all this come about?

Last year I was on the Bendis Board chatting with fellow Who maniac Alysha McK about whether a Doctor Who comic would be a good idea. Alysha of course wanted to write it and I jumped in saying that I'd have to draw it. As we giggled on about that, writer Tony Lee joined the thread asking if we were serious about this and to write him.

He e-mailed me about how IDW was working on acquiring the rights and asked if I'd be interested in drawing an arc. At the time I was already stressed from the Y schedule and wasn't sure about committing to another book so soon. It was also at this time that I got some contact info for Doctor Who Magazine. They run a 9 page strip every month and that, to me, seemed much more manageable. I talked with Alysha about pitching a story for the strip instead and we put together an outline.

The story, which we kept short thinking it would have a better chance as a little fill-in, was not well received. They wanted a bigger, juicier storyline and that would require a lot more work to flesh out. After squeezing out what little free time I could getting the pitch together there just wasn't any left to work this out into something more expansive and still get Y out so I let Alysha know that I had to hold off for a while.

And that was that, or so I thought.

A few months later we're at SDCC and hanging out with our Bestest-Friend-in-the-Whole-Universe, Aussie writer Shane McCarthy who's all excited about landing a gig on IDW's Transformers. At some point during the weekend Shane introduces me to Chris Ryall and we all get to talking about Doctor Who which is looking like it's going ahead. I still wasn't sure if I would be able to do a whole arc for them but then the conversation turned to doing a Who story with Shane. Well, that I couldn't resist. I let Ryall know that I was interested all right but it would have to be some time after Y ended. He said there was already a team put together and (BBC approval willing) Shane and I could do a fill-in arc later and that would be great.

So a few more months go by. I hear from Shane how the Transformers arc is booming into a beautiful, sweeping epic and he probably will have to focus on that for the rest of the year. No Who until some time later. No problem, I need to focus on Y anyway and time off afterwards would be sweet.

After the Dublin con (where I met Leah) we're in London and I'm signing books at Forbidden Planet when I meet a gentleman with a message from Chris Ryall to contact him. That night I hear back from him via e-mail that there's an arc by Tony Lee being put together and was I still interested? Sure, but after Y.

Another month goes by and Tony Lee is letting me know that a script is nearing completion. It would be ready by New Year's, only a week after Y ends. Well that's a little freaky. By now I'm exhausted and really wanting some time off. A few more e-mails and there's word that this could start in March. That could work. And Leah's story should fit into that time frame nicely.

Our flu/pneumonia month has made all that a bit more challenging of course but that's how it goes sometimes.

And here we are.

And I still want to work out the bugs on the DWM story damnit!

;)