We’re just days away from the first six :01 titles showing up at your favorite bookstore!

Like many of you who’ve been writing me, I’m thoroughly enjoying Eddie Campbell’s behind-the-scenes glimpses as he counts down to his book’s release. The Fate of the Artist continues to get tremendous buzz and anticipation, right around the world.

Right now I’m in the Four Seasons hotel in Houston, Texas, for the Texas Library Association and the Bluebonnet acceptance. Blogging in a nice hotel bathrobe is a treat. I should try this more often. Starting today, I’ll be sprinkling in some of my own little moments, behind-the-scenes of these books we’re doing.

With our first list, we launch a brilliant new series called The Lost Colony by Grady Klein. He’s a newcomer in graphic novels, with some remarkable work behind him in editorial illustration and animation. Book one of The Lost Colony is The Snodgrass Conspiracy and when I first saw sample pages of it, I knew this was work of visionary brilliance. The more I work with Grady and the more I visit his weird and wonderful little island, the more that first impression is confirmed.

When I get submissions of work that’s entirely digital, I mostly cringe. It tends to feel like Photoshop owns the artist, not the other way around. Not so with Grady for whom it just happens to be the right tool. In his hand, it’s the pen, the brush in which we get a true author’s handwriting.

There’s so much in The Lost Colony world that defines why First Second was started in the first place: a personal voice, innovation, high adventure, skilled artistry and excellent writing, and throughout it all, an author wrestling with things, exploring –– and doing what he loves. I’ll champion that any day.

Each episode has a clear focus but in the course of the whole series, an over-arching story is unfolding, continually revealing surprising depths and contradictions to the island’s characters, and their tangled relationships. Book 2 is due out next Spring, and the ones after that each Spring to follow.

More about discovering The Lost Colony in next entries, along with some glimpses —like this one— from the second book, which is called The Red Menace. Glorious stuff. I haven’t been this excited about a new series since the first seasons of the Simpsons.