On Writing
We're publishing a Buddy and Romeo book!
THIS WEEK:
Why we’re actually going “Back to the Drawing Board”
Writing: Finding time and inspiration
“Where Are They Now?” Kappan and Frazzled cartoon publications
BEHIND THE PAY WALL: Bonus comic; development updates on the book; plus cover progress and font trials
Happy Birthday, Taylor Alison Swift.
We are actually going back to the drawing board for real because — we’re making new Buddy and Romeo comics! I’d like to continue making more Buddy and Romeo animated shorts (and plan to) and we feature the characters in our magazine single-panel cartoons on occasion but I never thought there’d be any new Buddy and Romeo comic strips. Turns out there will be beecause…
We’re publishing a book! Buddy and Romeo: Alone for the Holidays. If you’re a paid subscriber, we’ve been talking about this for a few weeks now. Basically, we prepared this book during the quarantine and then abandoned it in the fall of 2020 when it became clear we would all be alone for the holidays and there was nothing funny about it. Hopefully enough time has passed since those dark days and we can see the title as originally intended: as a reflection of Buddy and Romeo’s social and romantic ineptitude.
This photograph was taken over the weekend. While celebrating the anniversary of the day we met, we returned to the coffee shop where we concluded our first date (art museum —> lunch —> coffee shop) and went over the current draft of the book. I’ve smudged/blurred out all of our handwritten notations on this cover page but, if you’re a paid subscriber, we’ll go over those together behind the paywall.
Buddy and Romeo: Alone for the Holidays will showcase Buddy and Romeo through a year of holidays (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Election Day, etc.) with “best of” holiday comics from the original newspaper run as well as some brand new comics that will be exclusive to the book.
It will be published in early 2024.
If you’ve selected “Other,” let us know what you’d like to see in the book. Are you excited? Please share all of your hopes and dreams in the comments.
We started submitting single panel cartoons to magazines in 2017, happened to sell one in August 2018, then didn’t sell our second cartoon until 2020 (and that second cartoon wasn’t even published until this year). We didn’t really start taking it seriously until 2020 (during the quarantine, of course) as we’d spent 2017-2018 primarily focused on Buddy and Romeo and late 2018-2019 on our greeting card line Coffee Lovers’ Christmas.
Since 2020, our Frega DiPerri cartoons have been published in magazines including Weekly Humorist, The American Bystander, The Spectator, and Kappan. The cartoons, which occasionally feature Buddy and Romeo appearances, are licensed worldwide through CartoonStock Ltd.
Here is one of our cartoons from the October 2023 issue of Virginia Journal of Education:
And another from last week in Frazzled:
If you’re enjoying yourself at Buddy and Romeo’s expense so far, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get exclusive comics and commentaries; behind-the-scenes drawings and project developments; and access to this entire Substack archive. Plus, the more coffee we drink, the more we’ll create.