Category Archives: books

The Pencil Eaters, Volume 2

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Somehow or other, I did it again: a literary journal written and illustrated by children. I used tax credit donations to pay for professional printing, which saved me about 5 hours and really provided a superior product. Although these books cost a little more than $7 each to produce. This year we have fiction, poetry, 3 interviews (1 real, 2 not), 4 songs (3 original, 1 a parody of “Eye of the Tiger” called “Nose of the Panther”), a very silly book review, and a lot of drawings is lions, plus a few other things.

Tuesday we had a release party and literary reading. The kids catered it so there were a LOT of cookies. We had about 40 people I’d say, which is not a bad turnout for a literary reading.

If you would like to support the arts and writing programs, you can visit this site: https://www.tusd1.org/donate

Select “Lineweaver Elementary” from the school menu and “Writing Program” from the item menu. If you are an Arizona resident, you can apply this money to your state taxes and even if you’re not a resident it’s still tax deductible.

The Hungry, Hungry Book Drop

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The librarian asked me to decorate the book drop in such a way as to make it appear more prominent and obvious. A lot of kids don’t seem to understand that you can’t just leave your library book in some random place on the circulation desk. I mean, you can, but you can’t expect it to get checked in. It will just sit there, unnoticed, and then, when you try to check out a new book, the person at the circulation desk will explain to you for the 57th time how libraries work. And you’ll insist that you DID return your book. And the adult will explain it to you for the 58th time. And then you’ll find the book in the random place where you left it and get angry because SEE you did return it. And then we have to explain how libraries work for 59th time.

You’re probably an adult and don’t need me to explain how libraries work. And the kids shouldn’t need the explanation either BECAUSE THEY’VE ALREADY HEARD IT. But kids need a lot of repetition.

If you put your book in the book drop it will get checked in. If you don’t put your book in the book drop it won’t get checked in.

If you put your book into the book drop and then try to check a new book out 30 seconds later, your book will also not be checked in because clearly if I’m talking to you at the desk I can’t be looking in the book drop at the same time. They’re like 20 feet apart. If your issue is immediate you can give your book directly to the person at the desk. But, generally speaking—book goes in book drop; staff retrieves books at regular intervals when they have time to look; staff checks books in.

it’s not rocket science. But it’s not getting though.

Hence this hungry, hungry hippo. I don’t know how long he’ll last, but I had him laminated and mounted him on cardboard so hopefully he’s tough.

When I finished making him but before I had him laminated, I sent a picture to the Fox, who said he was liable to give kids nightmares. So I went back and made his eyes less creepy and the kids who have seen him so far thought he was great.

Nobody has fed him any books yet but I’m sure he’ll get something tomorrow.

The Pencil Eaters Volume 1!

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As mentioned before in this blog, the way I live is that I think of insane things and then I do them. And 2 years ago I had the insane idea of producing a literary journal written entirely by 8–10 year olds. Couldn’t get it rolling last year, but AMAZINGLY it came together this year.

it’s 80 pages long, it’s got poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and drama, and it’s also illustrated by the kids. It took them over 6 months to create and it took me about 30 hours to slap it into its final form. (I typed their work in Google Docs and laid it out in Photoshop. I made a lot of mistakes (typos and such and apparently lost 2 poems 😔) but I did my best and I think the kids appreciated it.

Obviously, they chose the title.

We celebrated with a release party and literary reading this afternoon. Now I’m thinking about how I can improve it next year. I’m hopefully we can get volume 2 professionally printed because stapling 100 of these things was not fun. But it’s always nice to finish a big project.

He was shortish and oldish and brownish and mossy

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And he spoke with a voice that was sharpish and bossy.

Just a small commission to recreate the Lorax, a cryptid who was truly ahead of his time, so far ahead of his time that it was 35 years between the publication of the original source material and the film version (retitled An Inconvenient Truth) starring former future United States President Al Gore as the Lorax. And that film was also ahead of its time, and no one wanted hear the Lorax’s message then either, and now the world is on fire. And I don’t even have a truffula seed.

Tra-la-la. We knew what we were doing 100 years ago and we could see the effects 20 years ago when we still had a chance to fix it and now it’s too late. Tra-la-la.

Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics Volume 4!!!

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Something’s different here.

It’s here at last! Volume 4 of Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics is now available from Michigan State University Press.

What’s that you say? This doesn’t look like an indie comic? Indeed, Michigan Salvage, edited by Lisa DuRose, Ross K Tangedal, and Andy Older is a academic collection, the first part of which contains scholarly writing about Campbell’s work, the second part of which includes pedagogical essays, and in between the 2, obviously, is a new BJC comic by yours truly, which, of course, straddles the scholarly/pedagogical divide.

In addition to the 15-page comparison of Q Road and Once upon a River, this volume also contains my 5-page comic lesson plan for teaching literary criticism to young people (every chapter has a corresponding lesson plan), as well as a chapter in the teaching section (“Fiction Friction: Teaching Bonnie Jo Campbell to Second Language Writing Students” by Doug Sheldon) that discusses using my previous comics to teach Campbell’s work.

Due to the…professional…nature of the book, I wasn’t able to share this work before publication (I actually did the bulk of it in 2020, during the first 2 months of lockdown) and I gather I still may not share too much of it here, but true fans will certainly want to purchase this lovely volume for their home collections. (It’s academic publishing, so I receive no compensation other than a contributor’s copy, but this was the most labor intensive comic yet; it took 250 hours.)

I made a lot of different decisions with this comic, which isn’t like the others; it’s more of a compare and contrast essay between the 2 novels rather than a simple retelling of short stories. It’s really text-heavy. But I’m pretty happy with it. There was a minor mix-up in the printing process that made the pages…less effective, but I’ve already received an apology and a promise that it will be rectified in the next printing.

And now…well, I really can’t say much about it, but I guess I can reveal that I have the final text for Bonnie Jo Campbell’s new novel, forthcoming from WW Norton in 2024, right here on my very own computer. Like I really may not say much about it, but I think I can say this: it is going to blow people away. It’s going to be included on reading lists and win prizes and inspire articles and discussions. It’s going to make a huge splash. It’s going to have legs. It’s so good. And when it’s released in January of next year, Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics volume 5 will be there, scurrying after it.

Fans of Bonnie Jo Campbell and Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics will definitely want to buy this book. And if you don’t own the first 3 volumes of the comic, they can be purchased ($6 for 1, $10 for 2, $12 for all 3) from monica.ilene.friedman AT gmail DOT com.

Happy Halloween!

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halloween crafts

Spooky, Creepy, BooOooOoo! BooOooOoo!

My friend the Vampire Bat used to send really elaborate care packages on Halloween and Valentine’s Day, handmade cards, candy, little seasonally-appropriate presents, the whole megillah. They were pretty special, to be honest, and I loved receiving them, but over the years, reciprocation became difficult. I had a family and work and didn’t always notice when holidays were coming up, let along make time in my schedule to plan for them a month in advance. And I guess I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t show my appreciation properly, and eventually she announced that she wasn’t going to put forth the effort anymore.

So now, sometimes, just to mess with her, I do send her handmade holiday gifts.

These little images—the “Spooky” owl, the “Creepy” spider, and the “BooOooOoo! BooOooOoo” ghosts—are from the packaging of some stickers that came in one of her last Halloween gifts to me, and they were so cute that after I stuck the stickers on things (what did I stick them on? I have no idea) I save the boxes with the intention of using them for some All Hallow’s Eve crafts for my friend. That was years ago, but when I found a random pair of metallic silver skeleton mermaid socks at Target (Target really goes all out with weird sock designs) I realized this was the year.

While playing around with the pieces (too bad I cut them up before this idea came to me) I realized that I could make a tiny card (the Vampire Bat likes tiny things) and then I realized I could make tiny books!

Unfortunately, I had used up all the printer paper printing out draft versions of a new comic book and neither The Man nor I work anyplace where we can reasonably steal printer paper anymore, so I had to use heavy card stock for the paper. It was harder to cut and my notebooks would have fewer pages, which would be hard to turn, but I soldiered on. What you do is you line all your pages up, clamp them together, and then apply liberal amounts of glue on one side. When it glues, the pages are basically bound together. Then you glue a bit of ribbon over that glued edge, to reinforce it. I used ribbon to bind the covers together and shore up the cardboard, and then I glued the paged into the cover. Viola!

For the card, I just used a piece of manilla folder to bind the 2 sides together. Lately, I’ve been trying to use up, rather than hoard, the vast quantities of art/office supplies I have been carrying around the country for 2 decades. The ransom letters and all the other words came out of a single issue of The Smithsonian.

My friend liked the gift (of course!) so now I can share it here.

The Trespasser

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american salvage 1 trespasser_edited-1

Can’t imagine what Google must think of me after some of the queries I ran to get source images for this comic. The worst part is that I didn’t get any relevant results for “cum stained mattress” and had to improvise anyway. 

When I told the Fox that I was gearing up to write volume II of Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics, he told me that after I finished the first one I swore I would never do anything like that again. I literally have no recollection of saying that. It’s probably like having a baby, where your brain blocks out the level of pain you experienced so you’re not too terrified to do it again. I’m not terrified at all. After spending 300 hours drawing 8 pages for Linda Addison, an estimated 56 hours to draw 14 pages sounds like a cakewalk.

It seemed important to keep the style consistent between the 2 books, meaning I’m back to hand-lettering, which is very time consuming, but didn’t take as much time as I remember it taking. At any rate, I realize that even reverting to conventions like drawing most of the lines with a massive weight of 4 pixels and making people’s eyes look like tiny dots in any face that doesn’t take up the whole panel, I can’t revert entirely to the style in which I draw last year, because I learned so much in the process of drawing the first book that no matter what I do, the drawings are going to look better.

Another thing I noticed as I wrote the text was that my brain let go of the idea of summarizing. I’m not telling the story the way I did with “My Dog Roscoe.” I think this is Linda Addison’s influence, because everything she does is about poetry, including her prose. This comic seems to have more poetry to it than the early comics in the last set. It’s about “The Trespasser” but it doesn’t exactly tell you everything that’s in “The Trespasser.” It seeks to communicates the feelings and theme of “The Trespasser.”

To my mind, it’s a story that functions through juxtaposition. There are 2 girls who never meet in person, but who are heavily influenced by the artifacts of each other’s lives, and we’re forced to compare and contrast the characters while they are comparing and contrasting themselves, so that dictated the layout of the comic. This story is really rich in symbols, too, and it was hard to choose which ones to use. In particular, Bonnie Jo spends a lot of time describing the objects moved by the 16-year-old, but I think the portrait of the 13-year-old with her gymnastics trophy surrounded by bronze animals gets at the heart of it. I didn’t realize that bronze figurines of dinosaurs and farm animals were common things to collect, but according to Google Image Search, they must be.

A lot of people think of American Salvage as being a more androcentric book, but this story feels connected to the themes of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the plethora of dudes who don’t understand women soon enough.

My Book Is Not about Dead Trees

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screen-shot-2016-11-23-at-12-58-34-am

DON’T CLICK ON THAT LINK! IT’S NOT A REAL LINK! IT’S JUST A SCREEN SHOT!

Someone thought I wrote a book about dead trees. But it’s not about dead trees. It’s printed on dead trees! Big difference.

That’s right, The Hermit is a paperback now. I certainly hope that the legions of people who told me they really, really, really wanted to read my book but they really, really, really couldn’t read it digitally will buy it. The ebook is $5 and the dead tree version is $15 but my margin is about the same on either one.

Do you want my dead tree book? You can buy it by clicking on this sentence.

I’m terrible at marketing, but, with much difficulty, I did manage to send out an email blast. The Man will do some more specific marketing of the book when we get back from Thanksgiving, but for now, I sent out this broader email, which sort of outlines all the ways a person could help my career simply by clicking links on the internet. It’s great if people buy things, but they can help out even without spending money. This is what I sent:

Let’s face it: I am hilarious. And talented. And deserving.

If you disagree, go ahead and click on something more stimulating.

If you believe that my work does not suck and that the world would be a better/prettier/more exciting place with more Monica, then I hope you don’t mind taking 5 minutes out of your life to give me a little boost, keeping in mind that I’m a person who rarely asks for help and who has never sent a mass email blast, and this probably makes me more uncomfortable than it makes you.

How can you help Monica? The possibilities are myriad and varied.

For example, you could purchase my contemporary fantasy novel, The Hermit, in electronic or in its long-awaited paperback format.

Have you checked out either of my QWERTYvsDvorak sites?

On QWERTYvsDvorak.com you can enjoy out a visual history of my artwork, including the increasing popular Dragon Comics, which are apparently pretty funny, and even funnier if you already know me.

On my RedBubble site, you can buy T-shirts, pillows, tote bags, travel mugs, art prints, cell phone cases, stickers, and numerous other useful and attractive household items featuring my original design.

Click around and you might see something that appeals to you. If you do, all I’m asking is that you share it with your social networks. Like a page on Facebook, or Tweet it on Twitter, add a heart on RedBubble, hurl it into the void on Ello or Google+ or Livejournal, or email it to your grandmother.  Of course, if you want to buy a hoodie, notebook, or coffee mug from my shop, I’ll be eternally grateful, but if I’m not selling anything you want or can afford, you can still help. Please take 5 minutes out of your life to help shove my work out into the universe and convince Google that my life has relevance. Every click, upvote, and repost counts.

Of course, if you don’t believe my life has relevance, feel free to delete this email.

Not sure where to start? Here are some of my more popular pages:

Comics (I’ve drawn hundreds!)

Funny: https://qwertyvsdvorak.com/2016/08/17/superkids/

Controversial: https://qwertyvsdvorak.com/2015/12/15/the-problem-with-symbols/

Political: https://qwertyvsdvorak.com/2016/02/02/2-ways-of-looking-at-socialism/

Sad: https://qwertyvsdvorak.com/2016/02/03/the-things-you-carry-a-comic-from-my-subconscious/

Designs  (I’ve got dozens! And most designs are available on most products!)

A T-shirt for kids who love My Little Pony and seahorses

Blue morpho butterfly notecards

Dress with a Rainbird design

Golden Barrel Cactus Flower duvet cover

Quick links for the technologically timid:

Click here to buy an electronic version of The Hermit on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hermit-Monica-Friedman-ebook/dp/B01HAN68L4

Click here to buy a paperback copy of The Hermit: https://www.createspace.com/6729470

Click here to browse my RedBubble design portfolio: https://www.redbubble.com/people/QWERTYvsDVORAK/portfolio

Click here to read my blog:

https://qwertyvsdvorak.com/

If you don’t want any stuff, but do want to financially support a working artist, you can donate directly through my Patreon. Patreon is a site where patrons can directly support artists by making small monthly donations. Even as little as a dollar a month is welcome. Donate $15 more and you can receive a small token of my esteem.

Click here to donate directly to my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/QWERTYvsDvorak

All the sites mentioned here are trusted, secure sites through which you can safely make payments.

If you would like to purchase a copy of my Bonnie Jo Campbell Mothers, Tell Your Daughters you can send $5 and your mailing address to my littledragonblue@gmail.com PayPal account.

Perhaps it’s just my biased opinion, but I happen to think that both the real-paper version of my novel, or any of the charming products in my RedBubble shop, would make spectacular Christmas, Hanukkah, birthday, unbirthday, or just because presents for all of your loved ones. Other people buying my work would certainly make a spectacular present for me.

In any case, I wish you a delightful, happy, and whimsical holiday season.

Rawr,

Monica

(Dragon)

The Hermit and the Coyote, a Cell Phone Case, and Marketing

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Screen Shot 2016-07-26 at 11.15.13 PM

Keep your phone warm and fuzzy.

Some people fail. Some people fail spectacularly. Kaija failed mythically, and now she’s trapped in the part of the fairy tale when the monster appears.

When Kaija couldn’t find contentment in the human world, she checked out, turned in the key, and went off the grid. For fifteen years, she’s lived between worlds, hiding in the desert, holding herself apart from nature just as she has from civilization, but when disaster strikes, she finds that no woman is an island. She is dragged, kicking and screaming, to the realization that no woman is an island.

The Hermit is a novel for adults who still love fairy tales, people searching for transformation and magic, readers open to contemporary fantasies with elements of horror and romance, grown-ups who still wish they could talk to the animals.

Not that Kaija wants to talk to the animals–she’s a hermit, after all, and hermits don’t want to talk to anyone–but she can’t make them stop talking her. She can’t force them to quit sharing their fears about the legendary monster stalking the Sonoran Desert. She can’t run away anymore; she’s run as far as anyone can go. If she wants to maintain her sliver of solitude, she’ll have to shrug off the hermit’s mantle, gather allies from both worlds, and go on the offensive to defeat the true monster.

The paperback version of The Hermit will be available this Thanksgiving, but if you want to read it now, it’s already available in the Kindle store ($4.99 for 426 pages of delicious mythopoetic rampage) for your reading pleasure.

If you just love the cover, you can purchase the image of Kaija and her coyote companion on this cell phone case (and pretty much anything else on which you can emblazon images) in my RedBubble shop.

Confidential to all the people who, according to my stats page, woke up this morning, visited QvD in search of a new comic, and got nothing at all: better 15 hours late without a comic than no update, right? If people love my comics as much as they say they do, I hope they’ll consider laying out $4.99 for my book. It’s like reading my comics, but you create the pictures with your brain, so they’re much better drawn, and the word part lasts a lot longer.