{"id":5358,"date":"2019-05-15T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T09:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/?p=5358"},"modified":"2019-05-15T12:27:38","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T12:27:38","slug":"right-here-waiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/?p=5358","title":{"rendered":"Right Here Waiting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"ROUGH STARTS<\/span> happen. Our troubles began with the car that wouldn’t start. The night before, we packed for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival<\/a>, while Joakim Drescher<\/a> flew through space and time, from Denmark. We were locked, loaded and ready to head for the North with\u00a0Motel Universe<\/em><\/a> in the boot. Then crickets. We tried one of those portable battery charger things and failed miserably. We gave up and called AAA to give us a jump, but got an F- on the battery test. We wheeled over to the dealership, since no one else in their right mind would have the batteries we needed. And we waited. And waited. And fell asleep. Four hours later, we picked up Sadiya, our TCAF comics mule three years running, and crossed the border at midnight. Most problems disappear once you’re in Canada and ours were not exceptional.<\/p>\n

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Joakim fit right in with our gang. We had another semi-surprise rookie behind the Secret Acres table in none other than Adam Griffiths<\/a>. We told you about Adam when we met him at CAKE<\/a>, but you oughtta get used to seeing him in these parts. We like that guy a lot. We adore Joakim, too, and while we dropped a ton of comics on Saturday,\u00a0Motel Universe<\/em> especially, the real star of the show was probably Joakim’s fucking disgusting Danish candy. Our crew gets husky with the eating, so we put strange things in our mouths on the regular, but the Danes have problems. We still have some of these things, if you’re curious.<\/p>\n

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Major props go to L. Nichols<\/a> and Aaron Costain<\/a>, not only for slinging and signing\u00a0Flocks<\/em><\/a> and\u00a0Entropy<\/em><\/a> and a bunch of prints, but for eating many of those Danish sewer candies on purpose and spreading the wealth. Edie Fake<\/a> held his own at his remote site in the Wowee Zonk room, where we spent a fortune, particularly on Eli Howey<\/a>‘s and Carta Monir<\/a>‘s everything. We also broke a sweat (because it’s hot AF in the WZ room) to hang with our favorite, Eric Kostiuk Williams<\/a>, who had a ton of great stuff as well as a three part name. Next door to us sat Mikal from Centrala<\/a> which is Polish but based in London and wins our Most Beautiful Overall Spread Award, and triggered some serious book image issues for us. Kitty corner we found Kevin Czap<\/a>, who remains ever present but who refused to eat that vile candy, and his Czap Books<\/a> imprint took our money in exchange for new Cathy G. Johnson<\/a> and Liz Suburbia<\/a> books, plus a new\u00a0Ley Lines<\/em><\/a> and a new Four Years<\/em><\/a> by Kevin himself, because there is nowhere Kevin is not. Also, Kevin has hair now. We caught a sneak peak at Georgia Webber<\/a>‘s upcoming and expectedly brilliant and so fucking depressing\u00a0Vivian’s Image<\/em> (and brace yourself). Floating World<\/a> dropped the new Carlos Gonzalez<\/a> (YES! FINALLY!) so we could get our weird on, and there was some debate as to whether the new, collected Joe Decie<\/a> stories are funnier than Kelsey Wroten<\/a>‘s Cannonball<\/em><\/a>, but everyone’s a winner. So, yeah, comics are alive and well all over the world and TCAF, in case you were wondering.<\/p>\n

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We could discuss our haul, dumplings, and Kid Koala<\/a> all day, but we know you want the dirt. Yes, Sunday night, after the Tranzac<\/a> party, which gave us the opportunity to thank everyone who makes TCAF happen every year, a bunch of us went naked clubbing (and no, not all of us, if any of you Secret Acres spouses are reading this). Oddly, at closing time, we had just been talking to the Beat<\/em><\/a> herself, Heidi McDonald, about how sex-positive, queer-positive, trans-positive and all-around inclusive things have become on our side of the comics fence. As Secret Acres is queer-made and generally pretty queer, we take some great delight in this. For the record, Sunday was not a free-for-all (loving these hyphens). Instead, we got a drag show, a heated pool, respectful flirting, and people of all ages, races, genders, orientations, shapes and sizes. As for yours truly, well,\u00a0after wobbling around on a busted leg all weekend, those squishy rubber beds upstairs were great for taking a load off. No pun intended, but it’s a free country up there, so go ahead and infer all you want.<\/p>\n

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Now that we are back stateside, we have other things on our minds. We demand you join Joakim and L. both, on Thursday the 23rd at Desert Island<\/a>. The fun starts at 7PM sharp, plus FREE BEER. Joakim and L. both will have other new stuff, in addition to\u00a0Motel Universe<\/em> and\u00a0Flocks<\/em>, and who knows when you’ll see that stuff again? You will see us again, and sooner than you’d think as we have CAKE to serve up and another shiny new book:\u00a0Rust Belt<\/em><\/a> by Sean Knickerbocker<\/a>. That one should come with warning labels.<\/p>\n

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Back in a few…<\/p>\n

Your Pal,<\/p>\n

Leon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ROUGH STARTS happen. Our troubles began with the car that wouldn’t start. The night before, we packed for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, while Joakim Drescher flew through space and time, from Denmark. We were locked, loaded and ready to head for the North with\u00a0Motel Universe in the boot. Then crickets. We tried one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5358"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5358"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5388,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5358\/revisions\/5388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}