Our comic book in Volume 3 is progressing nicely. Out of the 24 pages 4 are inked, 2 more pencilled, 4 more blocked and scripted, and the rest blocked and plotted. So yes, there's still lots of writing and drawing to do but it's happening at a pretty rapid pace and I'm feeling confident about sending the book to the printer in mid-April. That will get it to use by late May or early June, well in time for ALA in late June.

Yesterday our RSS feed was requested over 2000 times, for the first time. That's still less than a quarter of the number of people who get our strip by email, but the RSS number is climbing more rapidly. And I know anecodotally that a significant portion of the unsubscribes from our email list are going to the RSS feed. I'm not an RSS person myself - perhaps I haven't found the right reader yet - but I'm fascinated by the phenomenon. And I'm decidedly neutral about how people read it. Email? RSS? Web syndication? Water cooler? It's all okay by me.

We've added another speaking engagement to our 2005 calendar, and are waiting for confirmation on two more. On September 19 Gene and I will be trucking down to Redmond, OR, where we'll be keynoting the Central Oregon Regional Library Conference (which consists of the Deschutes, Jefferson, Crook, and Eugene public library systems). These more local talks are good news for Gene who, as I've mentioned, isn't big on the airplanes.

At this point I'm nearing full on weekday talks for 2005 as I have a limited amount of time I can take off my day job. Weekends are still a possibility. But if you are already thinking about 2006, this is the best time to start booking us.

Update And one of those confirmations just came in. We've accepted an invitation to speak at the University of Illinois, Urbana on June 23, a couple of days before ALA begins in Chicago.