So yeah, my back still hurts. Enough that drawing the strip is quite painful. This is pretty bad timing because we are trying to finish up the strips for Volume 4 so we can get it off to the printers in time for PLA in March.

It has been suggested that we have some friendly cartoonists do guest strips. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but have been putting it off. This seems like an opportune time to do it.

We already have a few strips from talented folks ready to go, but I thought I'd put out a general call to any cartoonist who'd like to do an Unshelved guest strip. Here are the rules:

1. You write it, you draw it. What interests us is your take on our characters.
2. Keep it clean, keep it true. Unshelved is a family-friendly strip. And we feel strongly about our characters, so make sure Tamara doesn't suddenly start eating burgers.
3. You keep the rights, but you let us run your strip on the site and in our next book. We can't pay you, but we'll give you a bunch of free copies. And we'll promote you and your URL in the process.
4. Specs: 600x200 for the web version (600x210 including the copyright line) in GIF. Big and high-res in TIFF for the book version. Black and white and grays only, please. We don't need any Sunday strips.
5. We'll have to say no to some of them. It's nothing personal.

Send it to me. If you want to run a script or rough sketch by me before inking, all the better.

Update: We have some great strips coming in - it's going to be an interesting week! I'm thinking these will run the week of the 13th.