So a couple months ago, I went to Worldcon in Reno. While I was there, I had dinner with some friends of friends. One of those people was artist and illustrator Lee Moyer.

I like graphic artists. I like them because they do something I can’t, which effectively makes them magicians.

They’re also fun to have dinner with. You can get them all worked up about the weirdest shit. They’ll get all frothy talking about color. They’ll doodle on napkins. They’ll criticize the layout of the menu.

Best of all, if they have an ipad with them, you can look at their stuff while you’re waiting for your food to show up. This is not something you can do if you are, say, an author who writes 400,000 word fantasy novels.

At that particular dinner in Reno, Lee did have his ipad on him. He showed me some of his work: book covers, posters, commissions….

“Hold on,” I said, pointing at a tiny thumbnail. “What’s that?”

“Oh,” he said, “That’s a project I’m working on. They’re pin-ups based on literary figures.”

He brought it up on the screen:

“That’s really cool,” I said.

He smiled and pulled up another one:

I had to look at this one for a while. The Twain reference was obvious, but this…

“Oh god,” I said. “That’s Hawthorne, isn’t it? It’s Hester Prynne from the Scarlet Letter. She’s got an A tattooed on her chest!”

He brought up another one:

“That’s got to be Dickens, right?”

Lee nodded.

“What are these for?” I asked.

“A calendar,” he explained. “Literary pin-ups.”

“That’s something I’d hang on my wall,” I said. “Sexy but not smutty. Clever. Bookish. Where can I buy one?”

“I’m having trouble finding someone to print it,” he admitted. “I think people would love it, but the big calendar companies don’t seem interested.”

“You have twelve of these?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s pretty much all ready to go.”

I looked at the sexy chimney sweep. She smiled at me.

“Hell,” I said. “I’ll print it.”

Lee looked at me oddly. This is not a thing authors normally say to illustrators.

“You see,” I said, “I run a charity called Worldbuilders….”

* * *

Fast forward to today.

The calendars are back from the printer and they’re gorgeous. We pulled out all the stops with satin finish and nice heavy paper. They really turned out nice.

I was going to wait until we officially started Worldbuilders to put them up in the store. But the truth is, I’m too excited to wait….

So instead, I’ve decided to give y’all a chance to order the calendar before the fundraiser officially starts up this year. Not only can you get some of your holiday shopping done a little early, but if you order now, we’ll be able to ship them out to you right away, before Worldbuilders starts making things crazy busy around here.

If you’re curious what some of the other months look like, here’s a peek at the back cover:

(Click to Embiggen)

A few additional notes:

1. As always, all the money you spend in The Tinker’s Packs goes directly to Worldbuilders.

2. If you order three calendars, you can get free shipping anywhere in the US. (Or 8 bucks off international shipping.) Just enter the code: LITERACY when you’re checking out.

3. You might want to order sooner rather than later. We’re probably not going to do a second print run of these, so when they’re gone, they’re gone….

4. [Edit 7:30 AM] Please be aware that there are two *different* calendar listings in the store. One of them is for art collectors. It’s signed by the artist, and it doesn’t have any holes punched in it. We’re only doing 50 of those, and we’re selling them for 75 dollars. The regular calendar is much more reasonably priced….



And one last time, just in case you missed the link to the store.

Share and enjoy, folks.

pat

P.S. If you don’t know what Worldbuilders is, you can take a peek at last year’s fundraiser over here.