The things I do for free publicity.

I recently conducted an interview with a reporter from the Uniontown, PA Herald-Standard, a paper from back home, about Teddy and the Yeti and comics in general.  I will say that the interviewer was knowledgeable and didn't ask questions like "they still make comics?" or "is Superman in your book?", which right away means that things went well.  I will post a link when the article sees print, and then we can all marvel at my thrilling answers.

Articles like the one that will be based around my interview are always one part information to two parts promotion, and as such I tried to make all my answers sound important; overall, I tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about.  The danger is that I came off sounding like I was full of myself, and I worry about that - I don't want the heading to be "pompous windbag makes a comic".  We'll see.

At the end of the interview, I asked the reporter if I could e-mail a scan of the book's cover - what better way to showcase the book than with a picture of it! - to which she agreed, and then said "and send a picture with you holding the book, too!"

I was afraid of this.  It's not that I don't want my picture in the paper or that I don't like to have my picture taken.  Let's face it, I'm extremely good looking.  I just imagine people I went to high school with picking up the newspaper and seeing me plastered on page one of the arts and entertainment section.  I imagine they'd look at it for a moment, read the caption, and think "Jeff always was pretty weird."  It's just awkward, is all.  Oh well.  I suppose that a newspaper could put a picture of me on every page if it means they're promoting the book in a roundabout fashion.

The above picture is what I sent to the paper, sans mustache.  I drew the mustache for our purposes here, because as we all know, mustaches are funny.  And look!  Rusty's in the background, too.  Hey, fella!