Cheers and tears from a Dead Duck's bill....

Well, it's now October 12th, and I'm five days worth of being a year older. Thirty-five might not look so good on paper, but I feel young as ever, and it was a very happy occasion. I received loads of nice messages and phone calls from my friends and family, and had a wonderful time with Laura eating dinner and walking around downtown Ann Arbor. Aside from the sad discovery that our favorite video store, Liberty Street Video, is closing its doors soon (click here for their website, and I encourage you to buy some of their inventory: $2.00 for hard to find videos, $5.00 for DVD's), I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend my birthday. And the handful of news I have to share with you now is just the icing on the cake!
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SIGNING DATES:

NOVEMBER 27TH, 2009:
Dead Duck book signing at Coy's Comics
301 S. Hamilton
Saginaw, MI 48602
12-2 pm
Call Coy's at (989) 790-1810 for more info
Click HERE for directions

NOVEMBER 30TH, 2009:
Dead Duck book signing at Delta College
1961 Delta Road
University Center, MI 48710
11-1 pm
Call The Delta Collegiate at (989) 686-9337 for more info
Click HERE for directions

DECEMBER 2ND, 2009:
Dead Duck presentation and book signing at Vault of Midnight
219 S. Main St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
5-8 pm
Call Vault of Midnight at 734-998-1413 for more info
Click HERE for directions

You can also get the most up to date listing of my appearances by clicking HERE. In the coming months it will be updated frequently, so bookmark it for future reference!
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DEAD DUCK NEWS STORIES:

These are the latest articles written on Dead Duck that I've come across. If anyone finds any that I haven't mentioned, please let me know and I'll post them here!

THE DELTA COLLEGIATE: My old college newspaper recently wrote a very nice article on me and Dead Duck, including a column by their current staff cartoonist whom I taught in my cartooning classes over ten years ago! Read it below!

360 MAIN STREET ARTICLE: One of my oldest Delta College friends (and fellow Collegiate staffer) Gina Myers has written a wonderful article on me and Dead Duck for 301 Main Street, an art-centric news website. You can read it all HERE.

THE FURRY COMMUNITY: I saw this coming a mile away. There is a community of people known as "Furries". At their tamest, they have a voracious appreciation for anthropomorphic characters (i.e. cartoon animals with human attributes, like Donald Duck or Miss Piggy). At their most extreme, their appreciation turns sexual, with Furries dressing up in cartoony animal costumes and, well, fornicating like the beasts of the forest. Someone from the furry community recently took note of Dead Duck and Zombie Chick, and mentioned them favorably in a list of upcoming comics that might appeal to the Furry community. They seemed a wee disappointed that Dead Duck deals very little with anthropomorphism beyond Dead Duck and Zombie Chick themselves, and were even more let down that Zombie Chick is (in their assessment) basically just a cute yellow girl with an orange bill--not quite anthro enough by their standards. But the book's content won them over, and their brief write-up is positive. You can read it all HERE (Scroll down a bit to find it).
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And last but not even least, one of the cutest gifts I received for my birthday, heck, for any occasion in recent days, was this handmade Dead Duck finger puppet from my friend and fellow cartoonist, Katie Cook.

It's a rare treat to have someone create something for ME rather than the other way around, and Katie gets high points for originality. Thanks again, Katie!

So that's it for now. Obviously I'll be popping back in the coming weeks to alert you guys to book signings and other appearances, but again, you can click on my signings and appearances section of my blog or in the Dead Duck section of my website anytime you want. I promise it'll be up to date and thorough as can be.

Take care, much, much thanks for all the warm birthday wishes, and I look forward to bringing Dead Duck to you as November 25th slowly approaches!

Much love,

--Jay