GUNS N ROSES, ALICE IN CHAINS, CAR WOES, ILLINOIS TRIP and RINGO STARR!!!

Hey friends. An absolute whirlwind of a weekend. Let me try to recap:

Thursday, I go to see Guns N Roses/Alice in Chains at Ford Field in Detroit. The opening night of the Guns reunion tour! While waiting at Hockeytown Cafe for a table before the show, we notice someone coming in who looked oddly familiar. My friend said "Hey thats a pretty good Ringo Starr lookalike." I look again.

"No, THAT is Ringo Starr!" Ringo was playing a show that night at the nearby Fox Theater and decided to go to Hockeytown Cafe for some pre-show eats. Amazingly, no one was bothering him and he only came in with one person. All them young folks probably didn't recognize him. He was literally 2 feet away from me at one point! My friend followed him and stealthfully snapped a pic:

"I'm very happy to be here!" Yes, I have now seen both surviving Beatles in the flesh!!!

I settled down for a couple mixed drinks and a nice BBQ burger.

Then on to Ford Field. Alice in Chains took the stage at 8:30 sharp and man did they sound great! Duvaul sang Layne's parts extremely well. They played all the hits too. Sean Kinney had a drum cam which they showed often which was great. I'm a big fan of his drumming. They played old stuff, new stuff... all of it well worth the price of admission. 

Jerry Cantrell had the vintage "Honeycomb" guitar he used to record all those old 90s albums!

Finally Alice in Chains left the stage and GUNS N ROSES came on literally 25 minutes later. Like, ON TIME! WOW! and Man, they were fucking killer. 25 songs. Deep cuts and covers like COMA, THE SEEKER, WISH YOU WERE HERE jam and so much more. Awesome, awesome show. 

Reports of Axel Rose signing badly are greatly exaggerated. He sounded awesome!

Everyone needs some DUFF in their lives.

Grand finale pyro.

I'd highly recommend anyone check out the Guns N Roses reunion tour. I got some audio from the show that I will play on my podcast in the future, so look for that. But yeah man. They put on a great show for us. Amazing!

Friday, I get up early and head to Port Huron to get my son Cody. The day before I got an oil change and they said I had a major oil leak and the whole bottom of my Bat Blazer was wet. I'd need an overall tuneup to the amount of like $600-800! UGH. But they said if I put oil in the car every stop or so, I'd make it to Illinois for my trip I planned. So once returning with Cody after a 4 hour drive, we drove the 7 hours south to Carmi, Illinois to see my dad. He was in good spirits and happy to see us.

Saturday we spend all day looking at the car. Surprise: NO OIL LEAK AT ALL. I have no idea what that guy was telling me at all. But I did massively overfill the oil on the trip down so that had to be drained and we put new oil in. I also desperately needed new tires so we drove to Evansville and had those replaced. Car is good to go for another long while hopefully. It was good to see lots of my family on so short a visit. And much thanks to Steve at S&E Auto in Carmi for dealing with my car woes.

I was juggling a lot on Saturday. Emotionally, with being down there and seeing mom's grave and all those things to some drama up north at home. It wasn't a good day and I was even more stressed than possible. But I just chugged water and tried to stay calm and enjoy myself. I spent time with dad and we had a good talk. Finally late Saturday we headed back home. Cody and took the long drive all night and finally arrived home at 4:30am. I was simply mentally and physically exhausted. But now I'm home and taking care of business. I'm working on getting the Starslam books sketched and other things taken care of. Lots to juggle. But I'll make it happen. It's what I do.

Anyway, back to the grind. At least I got my son here this week to keep me company!

Cheers, T

Kickstarter: LAST DAY!

Hey everyone. Sorry for the lack of updates in a week and change. Been busy! Kids have Thanksgiving week off and thus, I don't get use of my computer all day! This past weekend I took a surprise trip 8 hours south to southern Illinois to see my folks. My step-mom is having some issues with her cancer and so I thought they could use a nice surprise visit, even though it was very short. But I am back after a crazy couple days of driving and no-sleep. Last week also, I was 100% focused on getting my Marvel cards done and out the door. I got two more sets coming I gotta work on, but I got time on them.

For now, lets talk STARSLAM!!!

As of this writing, there's less than 26 hours left. Home stretch. We're now at almost $2700!!!! FAR FAR beyond what I asked for initially. I am really blown away by the support for this book. And best for me, about 95% of the people pledging are people I don't know! So I am gaining new readers with this Kickstarter Project, which is what this whole thing is about.

Crunching the numbers: After I pay for printing and shipping costs, I will not clear much for personal funds. Maybe around $500. I didn't think I'd have to ship so many books. Also, I neglected to charge extra for overseas shipping. But I am happy as hell to eat the cost on it so that people can read my stuff. The fact that they checked me out at all means the world to me. So NO COMPLAINTS at all on my end! This whole thing was about getting new eyes on my stuff and this certainly has done that!

The book is 110% done and waiting for launch day. I got my files in my drop box, ready to place my order with Greko printing. All is set. And guess what else... This last week, I started work on STARSLAM #2!!!

Today I pencilled page nine. So I am already NINE PAGES into it! The sequel will come soon. Don't want to rush it. But I can say its bigger and bolder than the first one. Real good stories and tons of sexy time in it. And to those waiting on other stuff from me: Its still coming. But after the instant success of STARSLAM Book #1, I just had to rush work on starting a sequel. I had the outline of a script already but I fleshed it out after I got initial funding and started thumbnailing and researching. This week, I started on it. I want to stay ahead of the game. So sometime next year, I will launch another Kickstarter for STARSLAM 2, and it will (hopefully) be as successful as the first one! We shall see. One thing at a time.

I urge you all to jump in on this book. Join the kickstarter for Starslam by choosing your reward right HERE - It is done tomorrow night at 10pm. The perfect end to Thanksgiving!!

I want to thank everyone who their notes, RT's, pledges and kind words during the last 30 days. I especially have to toss out thanks to people like Dean Stahl, Brett Pinson and Tim Fischer, all who helped me out greatly in the production of this book. I couldn't have done it without you! Starslam started as a whim idea back in 2008. It was rejected twice at SDCC by two erotica publishers. It was a webstrip that sort of failed to get lots of readers to the site. I didn't have any way to reach out. But Kickstarter has done it for me. I have gained an audience. I hope I earn them by delivering a good book that they all enjoy! I look ahead to all the books I gotta personally sketch, sign, include commissions in and all that, and its quite overwhelming! But I am excited as hell to start on it! Thank you all!

Lets drive this baby home!

Cheers, T