Hello my fellow Grovers! I am very happy to see a growing community of you out there. I look forward to seeing the comments you leave and really dig how you are really into the story as it is presenting itself as well as making guesses as to where the story is going. It really makes my day to see this…just thought I’d let you know and express my gratitude to you loyal readers. Things are in the works for the first volume of Willow’s Grove to be published, as you can see by my mock up for the cover design in an earlier blog entry. The status right now on it is this: I am prepping the pages to size for a 7.5″ x 5″ book as well as looking at my options for a printer. Once all the pages are prepped, I will work on penciling, inking and lettering the cover pages for all the chapters involved (30 chapters for the combined work of Volume 1 & Volume 2), then produce a brief history of Willow’s Grove for folks who have not ever read it before its current story as well as a character guide. This will probably bring the page count to over 200 pages (even more if I throw in the Halloween Special for 2009). All of this in between producing the remainder of Volume 5 and jumping into Volume 6 (which is planned to be an interlude without chapters) and writing volumes 7 through 12! Whew! Lots of work ahead for Willow’s Grove! When all is said and done for the current storyline (and there is still a lot of this tale to be told), I will have enough stuff for a total of 6 books! Whew! (I think I said that already)…

That being said, I need your help. While I am producing and planning this, I also need to spread the word and build the readership of Willow’s Grove, get the word out and grow the community. That’s where you can come in and be an enormous help to me and the strip. Spread the word, tell a friend or two, or three, or ten. Become one of my minions and with a grassroots movement, spread the insanity. If they like it, let them know, if they are on Facebook, that there is a fan page…okay, like page that they can join to get updates of the comic placed on their wall. I am planning on putting on the FB page a flyer that you can print out and put in your favorite coffee shop, college bulletin boards (not on car windshields as if people are like me, I just grumble and ball those things up and throw them away), local comic book shops, where ever you can think. I will be doing the same with them, to spread the word in my community, so together, we can build our Grover Minion Army and let people know about us and this strip you come to read every Monday through Friday. To show my gratitude to you, if you should decide to take this task request and run with it, I will produce for you a custom sketch of any character you want. Just let me know that you have joined the GMA by dropping me an email at karl@kwkproductions.com as well as what character you would like a custom sketch of, along with your contact information (name, address, etc) and I’ll send it to you as a thank you gift for helping build the Grover community.

Thank you so very much for reading and leaving your comments!!

Karl, out!