Thank You!

May 05

Just wanted to give a shout-out to everybody who participated in our May Day AIRlift! I’m still tallying the receipts and order numbers you sent me, but my guesstimate is that we moved between 100-120 books. Whatever the number turns out to be, that’s the number of dollars I’ll give to the Koru Foundation.

Thanks again!

By the way, anybody who feels a burning need to follow the minute-by-minute account of my life can find me on Twitter @g_willow. That’s all for now.

May Day AIRlift

April 24

Friends and colleagues,

As most of you know, the first volume of my comic book series AIR debuted last month. Drawn by the incomparable MK Perker, AIR is the story of Blythe, a fight attendant with a fear of heights who is drawn into the race to develop a radical new form of flight based on Aztec technology. She also falls in love with a guy who might be a terrorist. It’s a look, through a surrealist lens, at the nature of borders, identity and travel in our post-9/11 world. Though fans have been calling the series entertainingly bizarre and unexpected, I feel quite sane when I’m writing it. Who knows what that says about me!

Happily, the trade has been getting good reviews. Two weeks ago, MK and I learned we’ve been nominated for the Eisner Award for best new series. We’re totally psyched; this is a great honor. But I’d still like to kick things up a notch.

Whacky as it is, AIR is a book with a message. So, for every copy of AIR bought this May Day (Friday, May 1st), I will donate $1 to the Koru Foundation, a UK-based charity that helps impoverished communites the world over develop low-cost renewable energy projects, bringing climate-friendly electricity to villages without a single light bulb. Ironically, the people most threatened by climate change are those who had the least responsibility in creating it. I saw this firsthand in North Africa, where desertification is already destroying ancient farming cultures. By acting now, we can help ease the burden on our planet while bringing power to communities without it.

Here is what to do:

1. On Friday, May 1st, click here to purchase a copy of AIR: Letters from Lost Countries from Amazon.com
2. Email info [at] gwillowwilson [dot] com. Write ‘May Day AIRlift’ in the Subject line. In the body of the email, copy and paste your Amazon order number. Do NOT include any financial information, your address, or anything else! Just the order number.
3. Sit back, wait for your book to arrive, and feel good about having done something for our planet.

A copy of this email is available here on my website. Feel free to link to it, forward this email widely and/or post this message to your blogs. I appreciate your support.

All best,
Willow

NOTE: A lot of people have been asking if they can buy from their LCS or another website. The answer is yes, absolutely. If you buy from your LCS, send a scan of your receipt instead of an order number. Make sure to black out any personal info (account numbers, addresses) first. 

I’m Really Still Here, Honest

July 12

I’m pretty swamped with Butterfly Mosque edits, AIR and Another DCU Project, so by the end of the day I cannot bear to look at my keyboard anymore. If I owe you an email, this is why you haven’t gotten it. It’s also why I’ve been updating the blog so infrequently. But I am still here, and I hope--I keep saying this--that things will calm down soon.

Quick updates: I’ll be at the San Diego ComicCon starting the afternoon of July 24. I have signings at the Vertigo booth every day, so if you’re coming to the Con and you’d like to say hi, stop on by. Bring your copy of CAIRO, OUTSIDERS, COMIC BOOK TATTOO or whatever else you’d like me to sign. I’ll probably be at the Image booth for the COMIC BOOK TATTOO group signing as well.

Though I’m not blogging a lot, I am still very much On The Internet, so if you’re looking for casual intellectual chit-chat, go to TalkIslam. I participate in the discussions there most every day.

Speaking of COMIC BOOK TATTOO, COMIC BOOK TATTOO! Order your copy now! It’ll also be in big music stores and comic shops. I like my story less now than I did when I wrote it, but it’s a fantastic book, Neil Gaiman writes the intro, and if you like Tori Amos, you’ll never have another chance to experience her music this way. I got my first Tori album at thirteen (fyi, this is too young to be listening to Tori Amos), so I was really excited to participate in this anthology.

That’s about it. More soon. Promise.