Essential Update

August 14th, 2008 | Uncategorized

Gahlord my web guy is about to unveil a makeover of this site. I’m trying to figure out a way to put up info about my new book, The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For. This isn’t it…this is just some basic info until I can get it together to do something proper, because people keep asking me about when the next book is coming out.

EDTWOF cover

The Essential DTWOF is coming out this November. It will contain all the strips I created since the last collection (Invasion of the DTWOF, 2005). It will also include about 70% of all the regular DTWOF episodes I’ve done since I began writing about Mo et al. in 1987. I wish it were a complete collection, but that just wasn’t possible for various reasons. I edited it so that it still makes sense as a continuous narrative–and it was kind of nice to be able to toss some of the weaker material. Also, I couldn’t include any of the extended narratives, the little graphic novellas that would run at the end of my collections, like about Raffi’s birth, or Sydney’s hijinks at the MLA Convention. (I’m going to try, as per NLC’s suggestion, to run some of those here on the site.)
Anyhow, Houghton Mifflin is publishing the book, which is really awesome after my decades in the small press trenches. They’re doing a really nice job, it’ll be hardcover, and they’re sending me on a tour and everything.

You can get a little more info about the book and even pre-order it if you’re so inclined at these handy links. Indiebound, Powell’s, Amazon.com

38 Responses to “Essential Update”

  1. KarenE says:

    Congratulations! Looking forward to seeing it, please come to London Ontario as part of your tour!:)

  2. Feminista says:

    I for one am looking forward to the latest anthology.

  3. The Cat Pimp says:

    Looking forward to seeing it (and treasuring all my first editions, including the one the rabbit tried to eat.)

  4. shadocat says:

    Any trips to the Midwest on the tour, I wonder? (like maybe St. Louis, or Kansas City?)

  5. Alex K says:

    Putting up more shelves in the Bechdel wing of the library… hey, it’s well worth it.

  6. falloch says:

    Come to Glasgow! Glasgay! festival 1 october-9 November
    see http://www.glasgay.co.uk

    or maybe next year!

  7. Pam I says:

    Meanwhile those old paperbacks need looking after. Cat Pimp, wrap them in tissue. There’s a copy of Complete DTWOF on offer at $100 at Redbrick Books . (I have a saved search with Allibris, just in case I find room for one more book.)

  8. Duncan says:

    Hardcover?! Dewd! So it is. I still have all the old collections plus Complete DTWOF, but of course I’ll buy this one for the newer strips. Congratulations.

  9. ksbel6 says:

    Congrats Alison, I am totally pumped about a new book for the shelf as well!

    And I vote with shadocat…try to make a stop in KC 🙂

  10. meg says:

    So there will be no short collection of the material following *Invasion…*, just *Essential*?

  11. Sonya says:

    Ooh, a tour. Come to Minnesota! Come to Minneapolis! Or, hell, so long as I’m begging, come to Duluth, so that I don’t have to take the greyhound down to the Cities. You could give a reading in my apartment, that’s fine with me. I’ll make cake and tea.

  12. Alex the Bold says:

    Come to Princeton. In New Jersey. It’s the Princetoniest place on Earth!

  13. Dale says:

    I rather like the little extended stories at the end of the books – the novellas, as you put it. Why not publish a book from them? Maybe add a few more? Obviously I’m biased, but I’d certainly purchase something like that. Just my two cents…
    Does your tour have a stop in Atlanta? Say, at Charis, the womens bookshop in Little Five Points? (nudge nudge say no more)

  14. Ellen O. says:

    From what I remember from an earlier post, the publisher decides what bookstores Alison reads at. Maybe something’s changed, but if not, best to check in with the Appearances section and plan your travel around it!

  15. Pookie says:

    Yay! Definitely come to Kansas City! Shado and I will throw you a party. Says me, who knows Shadocat not at all.

  16. chriso says:

    Hurrah, I can’t wait! I have been re-reading all the anthologies and I am like a drug fiend sweating for more DTWOF. Hopefully you’ll make it to San Francisco.

  17. TREACLE says:

    Come to beautiful Cornwall, UK. Or more specifically, Newlyn a lovely fishing village in Cornwall. I too will provide bed, board pasties and cream teas!!

  18. nonimus says:

    Why did you have to cut some strips? Was that the publisher’s decision?

  19. Sophie in Montreal says:

    Montreal! Montreal!! I can translate for you!!!
    (Yes, I am shameless.)

  20. Nato says:

    Wait, so now do I have to throw out all my *other* DTWOF paperbacks?

  21. cybercita says:

    wow, pam i, really, a hundred dollars? i have a copy in pristine condition, for which i confess i paid one one hundredth of that price at a library book sale.

  22. rinky says:

    Come to Melbourne, Australia. Come and meet your Melbourne fans at “Hares and Hyenas” bookstore.

  23. Pam I says:

    @ Cybercita – $100 is the asking price but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what they will get. But yes Ms AB is now officially collectable. And I confess to having two copies of Fun Home, a reading one, and a keeping one. Both of them are the much superior US hardback version, the UK one was a floppy softback poor cousin, they must have made that decision before the $ sank against GBP. We can still afford some nice things here. I now have my order in for the StatexState book, it’s due to arrrive on my birthday.

    I’ve switched my book buying lately to looking for secondhand copies before just ordering from Am***n – often an earlier hardback is cheaper than a new paperback, and I like that pre-owned feeling. I have somehow drifted into trying to collect all the books in an old nature study series called Wayside and Woodland, from 1900s onwards. They tap straight into my recollections of wandering country lanes (unescorted, so what?) and looking for all 32 British Mammals. The little books are lovely things with inscriptions re endeavour and school prizes, and now cost about two pounds. We still have those 32 mammals, just, and a few new ones – beavers, mysterious wild cats, the odd wolf…

  24. wanderin says:

    The Essential DTWOF is coming out this November”

    A fuckin’ happy birthday for sister Scorpions! WooHOOOO!

    Nato, hon, that’s not nice.

  25. Xena Fan says:

    Nice cover but I think it should have ended with Sydney being caught by Mo. Sydney always struck me as being a bigger gossip than Mo….

  26. cybercita says:

    pam i, i have lately come to the joy of buying books online. a few months ago i came up with the idea of looking for books by dorothy canfield fisher {obscure but wonderful novelist who wrote about turn of the century new england} on google — and found every one that i had ever dreamed of owning, but could never find, at my local used bookstore for a dollar apiece plus shipping.

  27. cybercita says:

    oops, i should have edited myself a bit better. that should have said “could never find at my local used bookstore”.

  28. lisa says:

    Congratulations! I thought it’d be paper; I’ll definitely buy the hardcover and hope you’re due for a stop in Seattle.

  29. C. says:

    So it won’t include the strips predating the Mo storyline (as collected in *DTWOF* and *More DTWOF*)?

    Are all the out-of continuity strips gone? Good thing you didn’t run my ad from the characters; union, cause it would’ve made no sense.

  30. BDOC1992 says:

    I woke up about 5 AM from a deep sleep, feverishly visualizing my original signed! copy of DTWOF- The Sequel, which is missing. Given away no doubt in a fit of mad nostalgia to some baby dyke of recent acquaintance. Oi. I lay awake for half an hour-my ever sweet and sympathetic companion mumbling whether everything was ok. Then I finally leapt up to come search the internet to see if it was really, truly, irrevocably unpurchaseable.

    What a relief to come to the mothership here and see this post.
    Your still adoring B(aby)DOC fan, Northampton 1992.

  31. BDOC1992 says:

    p.s.Can you believe this?!? Just for the heck of it, I checked the second-hand sellers on Medusa.com and this came up:

    ” First Edition, 1992, INSCRIBED by author Alison Bechdel on the half title page: “for Christine–feel better soon! Alison Bechdel”, an odd sized (almost 5 1/2″ X 8 1/2″) trade softcover that has obviously been read a few times and is slightly rubbed at the corners, with slight cover soiling. Gay Lesbian comix. 133 pages.”

    My name is Christine!!!! coincidence? I think not. You are indeed everywhere, AB.

  32. hahaha!
    that’s pretty remarkable, Christine/BDOC1992.

    Plus it reminds me of my very favorite Edward Gorey moment, in his book The Unstrung Harp. Mr. Earbrass (the well-known novelist) “has driven over to Nether Millstone in search of forced greengages, but has been distracted by a bookseller’s. Rummaging among mostly religious tracts and privately printed reminiscences, he has come across The Meaning of the House, his second novel. In making sure it has not got there by mistake (as he would hardly care to pay more for it), he discovers it is a presentation copy. For Angus–will you ever forget the bloaters?

    Angus? Bloaters?”

    And the drawing is of Mr. Earbrass looking both blank and stricken as he picks this book up out of the 2-shilling bin.

  33. Ian says:

    I imagine authors write all kinds of rubbish at signings. I sometimes feel it must be quite a high pressure situation and you need to keep the lines moving.

    Mind you, I’m someone who takes 3 days agonising over how best to write a birthday card, only to give up and put something generic instead.

    PS Aren’t bloaters some kind of a fish? It sound fishy, so to speak.

  34. BDOC1992 says:

    Horray!!! The site is back up again. Now I can risk typing at last. Good thing in my star-struck wonder I left the computer on and the page reverently open when I left for work. For the past 24 hours, I couldn’t get the DTWOF site up, so when I came home, after taking at least 5 screen shots of your reply and then cutting and pasting it into a word document, I finally decided I was just never going to be able to shut down the computer again.

    If you would be willing to make stop at this Cambridge area community college, for which Dr. Gilhooley foolishly left DTWOF State (no doubt for a *non*tenure track position), it would be my honor to squire you to the archives and even to Yarmouth Port, MA where most things in the Elephant house are just as he left them. (See, “Gorey and friends at home in Yarmouthport in 1992,” http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/03/edward-gorey.html) And speaking of fish, if you eat them, there is an excellent sushi place near his house. Winter would be an excellent time for a visit. It is possible to stand on the barren beach and mumble cryptic things to the frozen breakers.

    But I digress. I simply want you to know that 17 years later, you have saved my life again. Seems like it’s been twice that long since my 1991 pre-Northampton days when I would ride around on the bus back and forth from my violence against women lobbying NGO job (Biden Bill days) and read DTWOF, desperately longing to leap into its pages. No girlfriend, no community, but a desperate desire for true love and lesbian revolution.

    Now I find myself five years into a PhD in Hebrew Bible in the Near Eastern Languages and Male Evangelicals Department– the days of topless photo ops in front of the white house long behind me (the 1993 LG-gasp, B! Rights March). Sure, I’m seeing a therapist, I am recognizing the need to deal with the accumulated internalized homophobia of more than half a decade in my second academic incarnation (Ginger has nothing on me)– but it’s my new regime of daily devotional readings from my old copies of DTWOF which is actually saving my soul. Just think, after passing for “sir” all through the 90’s, it’s taken a newly out girlfriend and half a dozen 20-something trans friends to catch me up on the Later Day Queer Nation. Polymorphous Polygyny pun intended.

    Oh Alison, what would I do with out? How did I go without for so long? Come to Cambridge!

  35. BDOC1992 says:

    dear lord, that would be violence against women PREVENTION lobbying NGO job. they really have colonized my brain out here in the academic bible belt.

  36. The Cat Pimp says:

    See, I’m sittin’ here all superior, because *everyone* comes to San Francisco to do a reading. So, I’ll just throw a sweater on the seat at Bounders or Buns & Noodles and hang out for a while with Nurse Ingrid and my other DTWOF fans. (Maybe bring a few converts, too.)

  37. Ian says:

    There’s a lesbian-feminist bookshop in Liverpool as well. We’ve even had Armistead Maupin do a signing there!

  38. Roz Warren says:

    Armistead Maupin is a lesbian? Who knew?