"C" is for "Cloneasaurus"

It’s rare that I bow to the court of public opinion.  There was a long period during the early ‘00s (aughties?) when people said I shouldn’t wear black jeans.  Well, guess where those people are now?  Probably still in the same place I left them, honestly.  I haven’t really given it much thought.  But the black jeans?  Oh, yeah.  Those got worn.

If there was an overwhelming public sentiment regarding my work, which, let’s just be honest, there isn’t, but if there were, I think it’s that you all want a BRAINEATER JONES sequel.  That’s one of the sentiments I hear echoed now and again.  In fact, it’s the most common sentiment I’ve heard so far, although to be fair it might just be by dint of the fact that BRAINEATER is my most reviewed and most popular work. 

Just so you don’t think I’m going to leave you hanging on that regard as I move on to the real meat of this blogpost, I’ll just kind of say that for a variety of personal and professional reasons a “straight” sequel to BRAINEATER will not be coming any time soon.  That being said, for those of you who are absolutely chomping at the bit, a cartoon series is genuinely in development which I think will be better than a straight sequel because it will feature all of your favorite characters, which, as you know (SPOILER ALERT!) can’t happen in any sequel.  And there will also be an interquel short story which I just put the finishing touches on and I expect to be published later this year.  More on that in due time, but, again, the reason I did this was so that everybody can see their favorite characters and I don’t have to do the heavy lifting of creating a new cast.

Whew, that went on way too long.  What this post is really supposed to be about is the latest public sentiment I’ve been (kind of) ignoring.  The second most common statement I’ve been hearing from reviewers lately is that they want their own cloneasaurus.  For those of you who haven’t read BILLY AND THE CLONEASAURUS yet (and, to be fair, what are you waiting for if you haven't?) this is an artist’s depiction of one:



Notice anything...off...about this variant cover?

As you can no doubt tell, Cloney, as he is affectionately known, is a small, velociraptor-like creature that has been cloned from a roast beef sandwich.  Long story short, the geneticists of the future only really had access to cow DNA, but only really believed that creatures looking like dinosaurs existed.  Trust me, it’s funnier in execution than listening to me try to explain it.

So here’s where I hit a brick wall.  People seem to want their own Cloney.  And I’d like to give it to them, but I have no idea about the mechanics of that.  I feel like somewhere on the internet I should be able to find someone who would make plush cloneasauruses to order.  So I’m crowdsourcing this out to you, dear blog readers.  Understanding that by no means is my book popular enough to justify a 500 or 1000 stuffed animal run, are there any artisanal options out there?  Etsy or something like that?  I miiiight be willing to underwrite, say, a 100 stuffed animal run if I could get a few people to pledge to buy one.  But mostly I think a “create on demand” would be the best model unless Cloney plushies take off and start selling like ho’cakes. 

So let me know in the comments what you think.  Thanks, everybody!