Blood, Sweat and Tears

In assembling the anthology I knew that it would take not only money, but blood, sweat and tears. I had already achieved the tears after some frustrating weekends of misprinting and kid-interruption. Whereas I haven't actually sweat yet, I've put a great deal of effort into the books (by the end, each book takes about twenty minutes to a half hour to make). Now for the blood. For each book I take a 24"x40"-ish piece of 2-ply chip board and cut it down to the 5"x7"-ish format. It's thick stuff, this chip board. Well, I'm on my second board and I'm getting tired and ready to move on. Five minutes later the Xacto blade slips and - right into my finger, through my nail. Yow!
So we rounded up the kids, went to the emergency room. Three to four stitches and a handful of hours later and I'm painting covers. Each is hand painted and hand bound. We have completed nine for our Philadelphia contributors who should be getting them this week. We're taking it by region (midwest, international, new england, etc. ). I've been set back a bit by this whole wounded finger issue, but luckily I had some completed boards so I can work on them for awhile.

I knew at some point there'd be blood. It was just a matter of time.