4.8.12

PALE CROW: Inaugural Issue!



Thanks to the efforts of D.Michael Kingsford and other members of the Cellar Door staff and friends, the first issue of Pale Crow is now available for your enjoyment, inspiration, and education! Pale Crow will be available at the beginning of each month. Its pages include reviews, serials, articles, horoscopes and a calendar letting you know about great local events.

You can get the current issue (and future ones) by clicking the links in the left column of this blog.

Make sure to send any letters, questions, comments and the such to us at Cellar.Door.Boo@gmail.com (for now).

2.8.12

The Luminous Jillian Phillips


The Needled Tailor

Jillian M. Phillips


He has sewn himself
to my side and I,
so desperate to feel loved,
and honored,
and protected,
have let him.

He has taken his silvery thread
so delicate,
so translucent,
and fastened himself
securely to me.

He has opened himself
to give me a chance to see into him;
the gaping hole,
a chasm of hope and desire,
so wide I am not sure
if it is too deep to swim
or too far to reach
across to other side.

He has come to me seeking
to be valid and wanted
and I feel stronger,
more secure,
more needed,
more myself.

He has lent himself to me
as a harbor,
as a pattern already cut,
a place for me to come home to.

But, I do not need his home,
his stitched protection,
his remnants of greater love stories
patched together like a haphazard quilt.

He has sewn himself
to my side
and I have had
to let the thread unravel
until I am no longer
sewn to him.



Cellar Door is honored to announce that Jillian Phillips, an uber talented poet and writer hailing from Eau Claire, WI, will be joining us as a guest blogger. She's been widely published in various formats including multiple issues of our anthology.

Make sure to show her plenty of literary love.

20.7.12

Cellar Door: Coloring Book

Hey all. In case you missed the mass mailing, here is the announcement for book 5! Deadlines should be following shortly:


Greetings, friends, and hurry down the steps. It's cool and dry down here in the cellar, and we've much to discuss! It's been a hectic few months... We've celebrated our successful kickstartings and produced two simultaneous books of startling quality and style. We could not have achieved any of this without your collective faith and support. We'd like to quickly thank and quickly apologize. Quickly! We must be quick because our hunger and ambition is not to be sated. “More!” our hearts cry out. The ink isn't yet dry on our last books and yet “More!” is all we hear from the confines of our rattling skulls. And so the staff has met to form such a frantic conspiracy to call for...
Cellar Door
Coloring Book
an anthological experience of color in art, fiction, poetry, and sequential form.
Cellar Door, the literary and visual arts publication is calling for work inspired by, motivated through, or wrapped in glorious color for its next exciting issue to be released in the fourth quarter of 2012.
We're calling this one Coloring Book, though not the kind that might beg the attention of a worn box of crayons. We're dividing the book up into a dozen different colors like chapters with similarly inspired works grouped together. We want this book to be a visual feast, explosive like 'diet coke and mentos' for your eyes. Every piece will be tied to a particular color, either metaphorically, such as the blueness that settles over a would-be mother burying yet another still-born, or directly, such as the blue of a bucket of smurf blood. Do you have a story that speaks purple? Do you have a painting that feels olive? How about a poem that makes you want to rhyme with orange? Submit!

The Process

Chapter Choosing!
                Coloring Book will be composed of chapters of similar works divided by color. In order to be accepted with the color of your choice be sure to submit in a timely manner. We will not entertain requests for specific colors. Send your work as early as you can.
Submitting
                Please send all submissions to Cellar.Door.Book@gmail.com. Include your name in the e-mail only. The submission should only contain the title, content, and page numbers formatted in standard MLA.

Rights
By submitting your unpublished work, you understand that, if accepted, Cellar Door is acquiring First North American Serial Rights which gives us the right to publish your work for the first time in the North American market. You, the author retain all other rights to the work and will be contacted for permission if we plan to include it in any future collections. If the work is not published within nine months of acceptance all first rights are null and void. Any use of your material in the format of Podcasts and MP3 will be protected under the Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial - No Derivatives 3.0 license (seehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ for full details). Basically this protects your work from any attempts to use it commercially or creating derivatives not approved by the creator of the work.

Contact
                If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at Cellar.Door.Book@gmail.com.

17.7.12

On the Near Horizon

 Hello out there! Not only should there be more blogs to check out on here pretty soon but ALSO more neato stuff to buy, read, and generally make you a better nerd...I mean person...I mean nerd.

First of all. Soon we should have all of the books on here for purchase. You won't be finding them on good old Amazon and such for a while (those things cost more than our growing pains budget can handle). We are also working on making PDF and kindle versions available to our great audience ASAP. If you have any experience or advice with these sorts of things make sure and drop us an e-mail at Cellar.Door.Book@gmail.com. 

Also wanted you to know that if you were one of our loyal supporters in the Kickstarter campaign to print books three and four, you should be receiving a survey soon asking you to identify your choices for the incentives. Be on the look out. We're going to get everything out to you this month!

For this reason, we ask that our talented and faithful contributors continue to be patient in obtaining their contributor copies. We have to take care of the debts and then you're up! Always send us a note if you have any questions.

                                   


10.5.12

Nate Hamel - Radio Star!

The Tattoo Ad Challenge

Nate Hamel in the Studio!

Hey everyone! This is some really rad news! Freelance illustrator/comic book artist Nathan Hamel has won a radio contest with Alice 105.9 that is going to get him prime tattoo advertising space on the arms of one of the hosts. In return he is going to create a comic turning said host into a superhero. This is so cool. Nate, a teacher at the DEAD Academy, a staff member of the Denver Comic Con, a contributor to Cellar Door and many other awesome things has vowed to remember all of us as more opportunities for advertising and events come up through this wacky and wonderful experience.

Thanks so much Nate!

You can listen to his winning phone call and subsequent studio visit by checking out the links above.

- Michael

27.4.12

Sneak Peak! The art of the six-page intro for "Ancient"






Hey everyone! Leila here.

"Cellar Door: Ancient" is coming along fantastically! We're at 230-ish pages! It's funny to think back a few months ago when I thought I would only receive ten submissions and would have to buff up the book by adding filler pages. This is not the case at all, and I'm super impressed with the talent in this book! The final count is 26 artists and creative teams. That means 26 short comics, all ready to be held in your summer hands within the next few months!

The art you see above is the six-page introduction comic that I drew and colored for the anthology. I usually draw my comics very tight and detailed and it was unbelievably refreshing to loosen up, not worry about what my employers wanted, and just do what felt right for me to draw. I kept the coloring simple with a limited color palette, and I actually had fun coloring a comic for the first time!

I felt like I could breathe with this short comic and it's definitely inspired me to draw more simplified comics for myself in the future. It also helped remind me how important personal projects are. After a few years of doing art for other people, it was nice to do this one without worrying about creative restraints. Don't get me wrong, I love the paid work I'm doing now, but I need to take a break from them sometimes and do what I want to do.

I hope you enjoy the little preview! We'll be keeping you posted with release dates, you saucy readers, you.

26.12.11

"Ancient" Creative List as of today!

Holy mother of Santa, do we have a spectacular list of artists (and writers) for Cellar Door: Ancient!
I just got the first official finished comic by the illustrious Sam Spina, as usual. He's a punctual dude. I heard from his girlfriend, Samantha, that he was laughing out loud to himself as he drew this comic. It's four pages long and this is only the first page, so you'll have to buy the book to see what he was chuckling about!!

Mr. V, another splendid Denver artist, is second in place for speed so far, having turned in his finished inks only a week ago!

I have a list of over 20 artists who I'm totally psyched about. I also have three scripts that need artists to draw them, so if you're an artist looking for a script, email me!

My line-up of artists so far:

Sam Spina
Mr. V
Ron Ruelle
Oi Bob Parks and Berto
Jake Roth
John Peters
Nate Hamel
Tim Winkleman
Perri Smith
Madeline Keller
Anjuli King
Celso
Justin and Andy
Dan Connor
Lucas Schneider
Tyler Brown
Laurissa Hughes
Amanda McManaman
Scorpio Steele
Nick Van Over
Joe Oliver
Jen Goodland
Melanie Gilman
Charlito LaGreca
Antholy Aleman
and
Jon Garza!!!

Thank you to everyone who submitted ideas! PSYCHED.