You see, I had 8000 copies of the first issue delivered to my home and I spent a whole day sitting in the basement cutting down the boxes they came in to the correct size.  And filling them up again with the right numbers of comics.  And filling out the right brokerage forms.  And putting the right labels on the right packages.  I’d figured that the packaging and shipping might take me a couple of hours.  Certainly no more than an afternoon. 

It took two days.  With no sleep in between them.  Unbelievable. 

You can do all the research in the world to prepare yourself for a job like this, but until you actually have to pry open a painted shut basement window through which to move boxes; until you have to bike around town to hardware stores and postal outlets and copy shops and bank machines and be back home before the courier arrives, –not until then do you appreciate the effort involved. 

On the afternoon of the second day, when the courier finally came and took the whole mess off my hands, I paid a visit to my two local comic shops:  The Shooting Star and Pandora’s Box. 

Neither of them had ordered my book, nor had they seen any of my promotional material.  But they both bought a bunch of copies and put them on their racks.  Good feeling, that.  A guy named Shawn also gave me a stack of free boxes from the back of his store; boxes which were the right size for comics and didn’t need cutting down.  (He also single handedly recommended and sold the first issue of Thieves & Kings to seven customers the very next day.)  Shawn’s a dude. 

The following morning I set out and ripped around town with a box of books.  I was intent on making certain that Thieves & Kings was being sold in every shop in the Toronto area.  For whatever reason, probably because this is my home, it seemed really important that I do that.  And so I hit something like twenty five stores over a four day period. 

Now twenty five stores may not seem like very much, but holy smokes!  There’s a lot of pavement between twenty five stores!  And every time you walk through a door to introduce yourself and try to sell your work. . .  Well, you all know how job interviews make you feel.  Very similar.  Six times a day. 

Four of those stores had actually ordered the book through the official channels.  (And boy, I can’t tell you how good it feels to walk into a shop you’ve never seen before in your life and have the proprietor already know who you are.  Free extra copies to those folks!). 

But, I’ll tell you, not a single place I visited turned me away without putting Thieves & Kings on their racks.  And I met some really nice people along the way.  Despite what some folks say, this industry really is a fantastic thing. 

’Cause you see, the journey may break your feet and batter your heart and try to pull you down, but when it’s all over, you can count your losses and add up your wins, and if you find you’ve come out ahead, then it’s a wonderful sort of tired that draws you into sleep. 

’Till January.  See you all in issue #3.