First, I know a lot of people are drumming their fingers, waiting for me to run the Love-Your-Indie drawing. It won’t be too much longer, I promise. There was just a very high number of entries, and I have to do a certain amount of data entry before I can run the drawing itself. Add to that I’ve been pretty busy with work and there’s your explanation for the slowdown.

Different subject: Over on Twitter, I mentioned that when I go to a ballgame I like to keep score in the back of whatever book I’m reading. I’ve had a couple questions about the habit over there, which reminded me that five years ago I wrote a mini-personal essay on the subject for a great magazine called Readerville (now defunct, although they remain active as a webzine/internet community). Tho’t I’d reprint it for anyone who might be curious… it appears after the jump. And yeah, the above image was scanned from my copy of Don Delillo’s Underworld.

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I’m more happy than I can easily say to hear that Locke & Key has an Eisner nomination for best Limited Series; that’s a helluva thing. I’m especially happy for Gabriel Rodríguez, who has worked his ass off, attacks the story with ceaseless energy and humor, day-in and day-out, and who puts together some of the best sequences in the field. The story as a whole is a team effort, and has involved a lot of hard work and late nights from editor Chris Ryall, letterer Robbie Robbins, and colorist Jay Fotos.

I was nominated for Best Writer, as well, and, y’know, to put it delicately, I’m shitting myself. I’ll probably put up a longer Eisner-related post at some point in the future, but for now, I just want to say congratulations to everyone else on the ballot, and pass along my thanks to the judges. For me, anyway, this summer’s pilgrimage to ComicCon just got kicked up about ten notches. Full Eisner Award Ballot Here.

Also: Locke & Key: Head Games #4 came out today. Here’s the cover, and a two-page preview follows the jump. SPOILER ALERT: Bad shit happens.

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The window to enter the Love-Your-Indie contest closed last night; my thanks to the hundreds of people who played along. Some folks were sending their entries by snail mail, and I want to give them time to get their receipts to me, so we’ll wait on the drawing for a week or two. Many people have written to ask if their entries were valid. I haven’t closely inspected each one, so I don’t know if I’ll wind up throwing out some more, but as of yesterday evening, I had only outright rejected a single entry, and that person was contacted and given a chance to reenter. So if you think you’re in, you almost certainly are.

On an entirely different note, Israel Skeleton, who used Gabriel Rodríguez‘s design to make a real life Ghost Key, is at it again, this time with the Anywhere Key.

Israel, the consummate craftsman (translation: obsessive), wants me to note that this is only a very rough prototype. Y’know. Presumably because it doesn’t work. Yet.