My dog is addicted to jerky! Found some salmon jerky at the local big chain pet mart a few months back and my dog, Sune is addicted to it. It is a sure fire way of getting her to come inside from her digging expeditions (I swear she is part groundhog!). Went to restock on the supply today and sadly, they were sold out. I saw another kind of jerky for sale made of duck and thought, what the heck, let’s see if she likes this (stores should really have samples so we puppets of our pets can buy something they will eat and not turn their noses up on once we get it home and opened). Got it home, opened the bag and she was like a crack addict mugging me for a fix! Gave her a piece of it (gotta make it last in these harsh economic times here at the Grove…maybe we should just catch lizards (not Bob) and turn them into jerky as she seems to get a kick out of eating those in the back yard…guess you need a quick snack for energy when digging craters in the dirt that was once grass) and she was in heaven! Her eyes were wide in excitement as she nommed on the dehydrated duck flesh (did you even chew it, girl?) and was begging for more…guess that means she likes it. As I am writing this, I can hear her in the kitchen yapping for more…I just know when I walk out there, she will be looking at me and moving her head in the direction of the counter where we keep it, then back at me, then back at the counter as if to say “Well, what are you waiting for slave? Slip me some more JERKY!”

While looking through my archives I discovered something very interesting; I have more Willow’s Grove than the numbers reflect. Although today’s strip is WG 495, I have up through 502 (for Monday, February 7, 2011) uploaded and awaiting autopublish. If you add the number of strips I found from the past runs of Willow’s Grove (and the name it was before I called it Willow’s Grove…Uncle Cho’s Bar & Grill) in 1989-1990, 1991-1993, 1999-2000, 2003-2005 & 2008-present, come that Monday mentioned above, I will have presented 782 total strips (Three of which actually never saw the light of day. I inked one and two others were only in pencil as back then, I was publishing on MWF, pre-Wordpress/Comicpress, which meant a lot of manual updates :D). Now my dilemma: How do I accurately reflect the number of strips without cheating the current run while at the same time not ignoring the history, which apparently is richer than I once thought? You may remember I was in a similar pickle nearly 18 months ago when I started doing Sunday strips as an experiment, along with the 2009 Halloween Special along with several holiday one shots…the number just wasn’t reflecting the actual run…so I adjusted it. Do I now go and make the change to the numbers again, and then one day go back and renumber all of the others to match?…whew, that would be a lot of strips to change the numbers on…or do I just jump up in numbers now and not worry about it, or just stay with the current numbering and just have everyone know in the back of their mind, this numbering system is for the current phase of WG (2008-???) but there are 280 other strips that came before? Either way, before this year is out, and if I maintain the current publishing schedule, we will see WG 1000 sometime in early December!

Your comments, suggestions, advice is welcome (just go ahead, leave a comment below)…I do know it is only a number and I know that number is higher than my current audience (LOL) but all the same, it is rather cool to think I’ve been hacking away at this thing for that long!

(oh & btw, I will be scanning the three, never before seen strips from the 2003-2005 run, to ink and post on the history page, as well as the other 277 one day in the future after that…so stay tuned!)

This just in: Willow’s Grove has joined the collective known as Spider Forest! What is Spider Forest, you may be asking yourself? Simply put, it is a collective of web comic creators pooling together to better themselves and other members as well as cross-promoting of said member web comics. It has been on the interwebs since 2004 and has a very nice line-up of comics. You should really check it out.

You may remember we were once part of the WebComic Planet Collective, which was (and the members of this former collective still are) a great group of creators that worked at basically what the Spider Forest folks are doing. I enjoyed my time with the WCPC before its untimely death, and enjoyed being a part of a group that could share ideas, methods and help cross-promote each others comics. When I saw that the SF was taking applications (via @kezhound over on twitter) so I gathered up my stuff and applied. A couple weeks later, I got the email that I was accepted and jumped right in (which explains the uppermost banner at the top of the page now)…YES! Along with my plan to visit local comic stores to post advertising, I am hoping membership in the SF will allow for more exposure and bring in new readers.

BTW, I don’t know if anyone has seen my little blurb on FB recently, but I am starting a new promotion to try and get more Willow’s Grove: The Kidnapped Saga Volume 1 moving…I, Karl, will not get a haircut until 1000 books have been sold. More updates on this to come!