When we set off for New York to find a publisher, I had no idea what would happen. What a surprise ending it was…though I’m pretty sure we are not at the end of the Wireman story. This is how we rolled on our last two days in NYC. First we visited some students at the amazing PS 145. Even though they were some of the youngest students we worked with, they were fully ‘schooled’ about Wireman and the first to guess–without clues–what character I cast myself as in the comic.
Here’s one great video, and you can see more at youtube.com/suestauffacher!

They interviewed like old pros…

They were so thoughtful that they asked if they could have a set of comics to help a young boy who had just moved to New York from the Dominican Republic. We left one with Chelsea, their art teacher.

Our time was short, but we made sure to have a ‘shazam’ moment, knowing we were heading to our presentation the next day.

On Saturday, we prepped for our library visit. Adults are always much harder of an audience than children. Teacher Andrew Hendricks was nervous to speak in front of the library audience. He and Sara sat in the sun and took deep breaths. It was the most beautiful day!

But when we sat in the room presenting, he did a fantastic job–and at his interview afterwards! Betsy Bird, our facilitator and host of the literary salon, was a great interviewer. She also made time for interviews after. Our audience bought a bunch of Wireman comics and wished us well. I’ve already heard from attendees on Facebook and through my website.

If this were a TV show, I would have a publisher walk up to me at the end of the presentation and say, “This is a wonderful idea. I don’t know why no one has thought of it before. But I want to publish Wireman right now so kids everywhere can enjoy it!”

But this is not a TV show. In real life, we celebrate that we did the very best we could. We love that so many new readers have been exposed to Wireman, and we have faith that we will attract the right people to the project to help it continue, grow and succeed. So that’s what we did. We celebrated outside the library, and we got on the train for New Jersey, picked up our car and started driving home.

Only the three of us (Sara, Gretchen, Sue) met all the students and were present when they spoke about Wireman. On the way home, we agreed that Wireman has to continue. Readers love it too much for us not to keep trying. We’re not sure how, but we have faith that everything we need will come to us at exactly the right time.

Here are two artists renditions of Volume 3, Issue 1–the next comic in the series (that is currently only inked). What do you think? How will this story end?