About once a week, I’ll be updating my beloved bloggy readers on things going on in my life. It’s the most efficient way of getting news out. I thank you for your indulgence.
GARAGE SALES. I’ve learned that a pandemic isn’t the best time to hold my Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sales. While some of my regular customers have bought a lot of cool stuff at great prices, I’m not getting the traffic I need to sustain the sales any longer. Here’s what the finale of my 2020 sales will look like.
I will not be scheduling individual garage sale appointments until Monday, September 14. I’ll schedule appointments that week through Saturday, September 19. Appointments will be scheduled from 9 am to 7 pm on those days, with the exception of 9-noon on that Friday and Saturday. To make an appointment, e-mail me.
My final open-to-the-public sales will be on Friday, September 18, and Saturday, September 19, from 9 am to noon. Masks are required. Only two shoppers at a time will be allowed. However, if anyone is still waiting to shop at noon, I’ll extend the sales beyond noon.
My final by appointment garage sales will be scheduled from Monday, September 21 through Friday, September 25, from 9 am to 7 pm. After that, I’ll be packing the garage sales away until April or May of 2021. Depending on the weather and the state of the nation.
If you’ve been holding off expecting some enormous blow-out sale at the end of my garage sale season, don’t do that. While I have done that in past years, I’m not doing it this year. Right now, there is so much terrific stuff at ridiculously low prices in my garage and almost no one has seen it. I’ll take my chances that next year will be a better year for my sales.
As it is, I am confident that anyone who comes to my garage sales this year will be able to get a lot of comics, books and more for their money. Though I can’t spend hours each day adding new stuff to the sale, I will be doing some restocking every day until these sales have ended for the year.
Now let’s get to the more interesting stuff...
TONY WANTS TO HELP COMIC-BOOK SHOPS. Comic-book shops are our first responders and still the backbone of the comics industry. They’ve supported us even when publishers have not acted in their own best interests. Unfortunately, my own limited resources have prevented me from taking part in things like the original art sale organized by Gail Simone. I can’t donate what I don’t have and haven’t been able to afford for many years now. Almost all the original art that I had was sold the last time I went years without any comic-book writing assignments.
When I sign at conventions or by mail, I charge a modest $5 for my signature. At conventions, if you bring a witness from one of the fine grading companies, I charge $15 per signature because, let’s be honest, you’re looking to increase the value of that comic book or other item.
From now until the end of the year, if you’re a comic shop owner or manager, I will sign comic books for your customers for free. I will sign Isabella-written comics that you have in stock for free. Here’s how that will work.
You send the comics to me at 840 Damon Drive, Medina, Ohio 44256. They must come with detailed instructions as to where they are to be signed and with return postage-paid packaging for their return. I’ll sign these comics and get them back to you as fast as humanly possible.
I know this isn’t as impressive as selling original art, but it’s what I can do at this moment. It’s also not all I’m going to do to help support comic-book shops. I plan to roll out two other things in late September or early October. Keep watching the bloggy thing for information on those.
WRITER FOR HIRE. I’m currently preparing a book collecting some of my countless shark movie reviews while adding additional material on those movies and writing several new reviews that will appear in this book for the first time in print or online. This project will keep me busy until early October. It's the first of a series of books collection my horror/monster movie reviews; each book will have a different theme.
GARAGE SALES. I’ve learned that a pandemic isn’t the best time to hold my Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sales. While some of my regular customers have bought a lot of cool stuff at great prices, I’m not getting the traffic I need to sustain the sales any longer. Here’s what the finale of my 2020 sales will look like.
I will not be scheduling individual garage sale appointments until Monday, September 14. I’ll schedule appointments that week through Saturday, September 19. Appointments will be scheduled from 9 am to 7 pm on those days, with the exception of 9-noon on that Friday and Saturday. To make an appointment, e-mail me.
My final open-to-the-public sales will be on Friday, September 18, and Saturday, September 19, from 9 am to noon. Masks are required. Only two shoppers at a time will be allowed. However, if anyone is still waiting to shop at noon, I’ll extend the sales beyond noon.
My final by appointment garage sales will be scheduled from Monday, September 21 through Friday, September 25, from 9 am to 7 pm. After that, I’ll be packing the garage sales away until April or May of 2021. Depending on the weather and the state of the nation.
If you’ve been holding off expecting some enormous blow-out sale at the end of my garage sale season, don’t do that. While I have done that in past years, I’m not doing it this year. Right now, there is so much terrific stuff at ridiculously low prices in my garage and almost no one has seen it. I’ll take my chances that next year will be a better year for my sales.
As it is, I am confident that anyone who comes to my garage sales this year will be able to get a lot of comics, books and more for their money. Though I can’t spend hours each day adding new stuff to the sale, I will be doing some restocking every day until these sales have ended for the year.
Now let’s get to the more interesting stuff...
TONY WANTS TO HELP COMIC-BOOK SHOPS. Comic-book shops are our first responders and still the backbone of the comics industry. They’ve supported us even when publishers have not acted in their own best interests. Unfortunately, my own limited resources have prevented me from taking part in things like the original art sale organized by Gail Simone. I can’t donate what I don’t have and haven’t been able to afford for many years now. Almost all the original art that I had was sold the last time I went years without any comic-book writing assignments.
When I sign at conventions or by mail, I charge a modest $5 for my signature. At conventions, if you bring a witness from one of the fine grading companies, I charge $15 per signature because, let’s be honest, you’re looking to increase the value of that comic book or other item.
From now until the end of the year, if you’re a comic shop owner or manager, I will sign comic books for your customers for free. I will sign Isabella-written comics that you have in stock for free. Here’s how that will work.
You send the comics to me at 840 Damon Drive, Medina, Ohio 44256. They must come with detailed instructions as to where they are to be signed and with return postage-paid packaging for their return. I’ll sign these comics and get them back to you as fast as humanly possible.
I know this isn’t as impressive as selling original art, but it’s what I can do at this moment. It’s also not all I’m going to do to help support comic-book shops. I plan to roll out two other things in late September or early October. Keep watching the bloggy thing for information on those.
WRITER FOR HIRE. I’m currently preparing a book collecting some of my countless shark movie reviews while adding additional material on those movies and writing several new reviews that will appear in this book for the first time in print or online. This project will keep me busy until early October. It's the first of a series of books collection my horror/monster movie reviews; each book will have a different theme.
Around mid-October, I’ll be available for new paying assignments. Comic book scripts, comic panel and strip writing and pretty much anything else that interests me. I’m not looking for projects that have to be crowd-funded before I get paid. I’m not looking for any back-end deals. I won’t say never because maybe someone will come along who I really want to work with or with characters/concepts I really love. But, honestly, I have literally hundreds of things of my own that I want to write. If you’re not guaranteeing me a good paycheck, you’re gonna have to sell me on working with you.
Among the things I'll certainly avoid going forward are signing a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) without any real knowledge of a project and then having the publisher refuse to put their brilliant ideas on paper. No, they wanted to talk about them. Which could lead to confusion about who created what. No thanks. On the time-tested theory of “hope for the best, expect the worst,” I want a solid paper trail. And, yes, this happened to me a few months back. Fortunately, I refused to agree to this demand. The NDA I signed is worthless because I was never shown anything I could disclose.
If you have a project that’s challenging and fun, I could get into that. If you have a tight deadline, I’m not into that. When I was a young and foolish writer, I often took on jobs that bailed out an editor or publisher...and ended up compromising my own schedule of commitments. I’ll be 69 in December. I’m not going without proper rest because you’re in a schedule bind.
Yeah, I know I sound like a grumpy old writer here. I’m all three of those things. But I’m also a guy who will do great work for you, who will promote the great work for you and who will never lie to you about my ability to meet your deadline or my interest in doing your project at all.
I do prefer to conduct most of our business via e-mail. While it’s sometimes pleasant to spend two hours on the phone being told your life story, that’s two hours of my life and your life that we will never get back. Let’s save it for the work.
There are things I can’t do anymore. For example, unless an editor gives me a copy of Mutants for Dummies, I doubt I could write the X-Men as they exist in the current Marvel Universe. I’ll never tell you I can ride a horse when I can’t.
I work best and most successfully without a lot of editorial input. I want to write my stories, not yours. If you want your stories, I encourage you to write them yourself. Conversely, if you want me to write something in a vast and convoluted universe, I would want your help in crafting stories that please both of us.
Don’t be shy about contacting me. I’ll be friendly and honest as we discuss whatever project for me you have in mind. I won’t hold it against you if it’s wrong for me or I’m wrong for it.
I do ask you make at least the initial contact by e-mail. In these unnerving times, I’m just a day or so away from unplugging the Casa Isabella land lines. I’m very easy to reach via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. I look forward to hearing from you.
Begging your indulgence, there are other bits of Tony business that I couldn’t squeeze into today’s bloggy. Come back tomorrow for Tony Talk II. In the meantime, stay safe, stay sane and try to be good to one another.
© 2020 Tony Isabella
Among the things I'll certainly avoid going forward are signing a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) without any real knowledge of a project and then having the publisher refuse to put their brilliant ideas on paper. No, they wanted to talk about them. Which could lead to confusion about who created what. No thanks. On the time-tested theory of “hope for the best, expect the worst,” I want a solid paper trail. And, yes, this happened to me a few months back. Fortunately, I refused to agree to this demand. The NDA I signed is worthless because I was never shown anything I could disclose.
If you have a project that’s challenging and fun, I could get into that. If you have a tight deadline, I’m not into that. When I was a young and foolish writer, I often took on jobs that bailed out an editor or publisher...and ended up compromising my own schedule of commitments. I’ll be 69 in December. I’m not going without proper rest because you’re in a schedule bind.
Yeah, I know I sound like a grumpy old writer here. I’m all three of those things. But I’m also a guy who will do great work for you, who will promote the great work for you and who will never lie to you about my ability to meet your deadline or my interest in doing your project at all.
I do prefer to conduct most of our business via e-mail. While it’s sometimes pleasant to spend two hours on the phone being told your life story, that’s two hours of my life and your life that we will never get back. Let’s save it for the work.
There are things I can’t do anymore. For example, unless an editor gives me a copy of Mutants for Dummies, I doubt I could write the X-Men as they exist in the current Marvel Universe. I’ll never tell you I can ride a horse when I can’t.
I work best and most successfully without a lot of editorial input. I want to write my stories, not yours. If you want your stories, I encourage you to write them yourself. Conversely, if you want me to write something in a vast and convoluted universe, I would want your help in crafting stories that please both of us.
Don’t be shy about contacting me. I’ll be friendly and honest as we discuss whatever project for me you have in mind. I won’t hold it against you if it’s wrong for me or I’m wrong for it.
I do ask you make at least the initial contact by e-mail. In these unnerving times, I’m just a day or so away from unplugging the Casa Isabella land lines. I’m very easy to reach via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. I look forward to hearing from you.
Begging your indulgence, there are other bits of Tony business that I couldn’t squeeze into today’s bloggy. Come back tomorrow for Tony Talk II. In the meantime, stay safe, stay sane and try to be good to one another.
© 2020 Tony Isabella
Tony, I should have posted a lot earlier, but hopefully you are already aware that Comet TV has been airing a Godzilla Labor Day marathon. What's particularly interesting is that all of the movies (so far) have been the original Japanese dubs with English subtitles.
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