Books were sent out two weeks ago (on Monday, June 14) and I'm sending out the PDF versions today. Thanks!

The books are here and they look great! I'll be sending everything out this weekend, so watch your mailbox. If you have moved within the last month or two and have a new address, now is the time to send over your current address before I send your book.

Thanks again for all your support. Happy Summer!
((( jess smart smiley )))
http://www.jess-smiley.com

Good friends,

I hope all is well and that your days are filled with life's great joys!

It's been a busy month, as far as A Map in the Dirt goes and the printed books should be arriving at my doorstep in the next few days. The sketchbooks are ready to be sent out, as well as the giant coloring posters and music. Let me know if you have any special requests or last-minute details before I mail out the books (some of you have requested little drawings or personalizations in the books and I want to be sure and get them all). Thanks again for your continued patience---who knew it would take so long to print 500 copies? :P

In other news: I now have a website (http://www.jess-smiley.com), where you can find all sorts of projects I've worked on and I have a full-length graphic novel called Upside Down being published by Top Shelf Productions (http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/upside-down/736).

Some of you have asked about future Kickstarter projects and I've been working on something that I'm considering putting on the site. I'd love to know what you think about it, so I'll let you know more in the next week or so, once I have things figured out.

Thank you so much for your contribution and generous support.

Your friend,
jess smart smiley

So, check this out:

the sketchbooks are being printed RIGHT NOW with the sweetest of sweet covers and should be ready in the next week or two!

As for the book, A Map in the Dirt is being sent out to print today and will be finished in the next couple of weeks. It's being printed on/with archival papers and inks and will have a perfect binding, like a nice book should :)

If all goes according to plan, I should be mailing out all your books, drawings, music and posters by the end of this month!

Thanks again for making this happen,
((( jess smart smiley )))
http://www.jess-smiley.com

As of yesterday morning, "A Map in the Dirt" is fully funded! Hooray!

Once the project officially ends, I'll be able to get your information and addresses and we'll send the book off to print. In the meantime, I have two little projects for you:

ONE
I'd like to put a THANK YOU page in the book as a small (um) thank you for your support. Let me know if you don't want me to include your name, or if you have any other concerns.

TWO
The back of the book will have a few pages dedicated to the process of brainstorming, writing and drawing the book. What do you want to know? I want to put in things you really want to know more about, so now's the time to share.

Thanks again for all your help and for successfully funding "A Map in the Dirt"!!!

>>> jess smart smiley <<<

Welcome, to all of you new backers! Thank you all for your generosity and interest in the project.

With just three days to go, "A Map in the Dirt" needs a mere $150---chump change for all you multi-millionaires out there :P Can you believe that we were at only 30% a month ago?! Crazy. A BIG thanks to my friend James and to Scott McCloud for turning me into a puddle of thankful tears for their incredible support.

Hopefully you don't think this too pretentious, but I thought I would share a little bit about how "Map" got started...

THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING
Something's been building in me for the last year and a half. Something that keeps me up at night and searching during the day. I wanted to put that passion and conviction into a story and I wanted to take all the time that the project needed to write and draw it out.

Going through some of my old sketchbooks, I found bits and pieces of cave drawings, calligraphy, and line drawings and I started seeing connections in the artwork that I hadn't noticed before. There were also whole sketchbooks dealing with food (like the histories of potatoes and asparagus) and of portraits. I decided that I wanted to make an ode to the animals we share this earth with and I decided that the best way to tell a generic story about how we should care for each other and share the beauties that each of us have was through a specific story.

Below are a few of the first pages of ideas, exploring what the story needed and what it would look like. It's strange how a picture can look a certain way in your mind and how a quick sketch can give people a different idea of what the story looks like. Does that make sense? I knew what the drawings and page layouts would look like before I even started, but if someone had just seen the sketches, they would have gotten a different idea of what I was after. That's the power of an image and how changing it, even slightly, can change it's meaning.

6 DAYS
There are just 6 short days left and $525 to go. Now is the time to share the "Map in the Dirt" widget on FB, shout the project on Twitter, email your friends and make things happen!

Make sure they know about the sweet rewards: sketchbooks, original artwork, the book, the giant coloring poster, music, and the new personalized 24x36" poster filled with drawings of you and your friends or whatever you want!

THANK YOU! If you're reading this, then you have pledged toward the project, or are at least interested in it. Thanks for taking the time to check it out :)

It's been three weeks in the making, but "A Map in the Dirt" has finally been launched!

Three weeks ago I decided to make a book out of "A Map in the Dirt" and I knew I wanted to do it via Kickstarter. Their website is such a great way to build a community and to make incredible things happen---I mean, how cool is it that you can be buy original artwork and books (etc) AND contribute to even bigger projects!

I've spent a lot of time researching book printing/binding companies and have found one that is perfect for "A Map in the Dirt"---high quality work and cost-effective. If just 80 people buy the book, we'll have our selves a nice little story book :)

Over the next few weeks I'll be posting some pictures, videos and my thoughts on the story, but I want to know what you'd like to hear. Ask away! What do you want to know?

In the meantime, check out these great reviews of "A Map in the Dirt":
http://avoidthefuture.blogspot.com/2010/03/preview-map-in-dirt-by-jess-smart.html
http://poisonrational.livejournal.com/232898.html