September 12, 2008
Working hard on hammering out the 20-page Top Secret Project for the next issue of True West. Robert Ray is a huge help, finding all of the several thousand images I have created in the last four years for this opus.

The Top Secret Writer disagrees with me, but I feel like we need to get the complete story out and published, or we'll never finish it. It's an epic tale, with many, many great scenes, but I've had to prune it all down to just the main plot points and then illustrate it so that our readers will get it.

When we were discussing whether to use all caps on the balloons, or U&L (upper and lower case), I said, "whatever serves the graphic novel look the best." To which, Robert laughed and said, "I don't think most of your readers even know what a graphic novel is, much less what it looks like."

Ha. He's probably right, but if we're going to have any mainstream traction I want it to adhere to the form, at least in that respect.

We'll see. The hardest part was culling Paul's elegant writing down to bite size bits and still get the story arc and main plot points in. Still not finished, but we anchored about five pages with the right mix between art and narrative and we'll see where it takes us.

I feel good. At least it will finally be out there. And besides, I imagine a few of you are tired of hearing me talk about it.

"Expedience is the Mother-in-law of Invention."
—BBB