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Click here to read about the making of the book.

By January 2012, we’d suspended Season 2 of our webcomic. On reflection, it wasn’t the best idea to post that while Kyle was simultaneously working on the book. The deadlines started to clash, and we agreed the book should take first priority.

What’s more, as we were posting the new pages, we were already noticing a lot of changes we’d like to make before it became Book 2. It’s MUCH more fun to create something new than revise something old. Neither Kyle nor I were looking forward to finishing Season 2 of the webcomic only to redo most of it for publication.

If nothing else, working on the first book taught us the value of getting it right the first time. We were no longer even comfortable having Season One online, knowing how much had already been improved for the book. It felt an awful lot like having your mom post your baby pictures online. So we took the whole comic offline.

Kyle finished the revisions in May. We went through a few more rounds of editorial changes and suggestions, all of them for the better. By July, we were finally ready to color the book, which was the last stage of the process from our end.

However, there was a problem. The initial colored files we had used for the webcomic were too small for publication. We tried stretching the files, but that didn’t work. It soon became painfully clear that all 160 pages of the book would have to be colored entirely from scratch. For our hardworking colorists, Christina Mackin and Sarah Barrie Fenton, that took a few more months.

But, wait — there’s more! Part of Kyle’s approach for Smash was to finish the art in pencil instead of ink. We always liked the sketchy quality this gave his work, but it made computer coloring more difficult because most of the lines weren’t closed. That meant Christina couldn’t use the paint-bucket feature in PhotoShop to fill in a swatch of color in one, simple click without it bleeding into the rest of the panel. She had to color every space in by hand. Believe me, it was a long, slow, painstaking process.

Add to that the damage to Kyle’s wrist from the extra pressure he had to exert by hard-penciling instead of inking, and we decided that future Smash books should be inked. But to ink all 160 pages of the first book would set us back even further, so we plowed ahead as best we could.

The final colors were completed in January 2013. We sent the last pages to Mary Lee and Nathan, feeling a sense of relief sort of a lot like this:

Now comes the really interesting part, at least for me: the run-up to publication. I’ve always wondered what was involved in pre-publication, from marketing to advance galleys that are sent to bookstores, libraries, and other interested parties, and I’m curious to witness it firsthand.

I’ll do my best to keep you updated with all the details as I learn them. Just a couple of weeks ago I discovered, quite by accident, that the preorder for our book is already listed on Amazon (and a few other places).

That was also when we found out SMASH Book One: Trial by Fire is scheduled to be published on September 10, 2013!

So now, when we chat with friends and family, we can watch their skepticism melt away as our publication date marches ever closer — and the daydream inches toward reality. More to come as events unfold!

We went back and forth on changes and suggestions with our editor at Candlewick, Mary Lee Donovan. Kyle doesn’t like drawing thumbnails, so he put together rough sketches of new pages and panels. Sometimes Mary Lee and our book designer, Nathan Pyritz, weren’t sure what they were looking at. A few panels had to be redone entirely to make the idea clearer for the reader.

This process continued until September 2011, when Kyle was given the thumbs-up to start drawing the finished pages.

Kyle wasn’t the only one who had work to do. Although there were no significant changes to the plot, there were scenes and moments I wanted to expand on, not to mention those 30 new pages that had to be created from scratch.

In addition, Mary Lee had a few concerns about dialogue. The one I remember most vividly was a discussion about the the bad guy Pulse saying, “And now this is happening!” while shooting at Smash during a chase. Mary Lee wasn’t familiar with the phrase and was confused about its intended meaning. After several attempts to explain the pop culture reference, I sent her a YouTube clip from Anchorman where Jack Black tells Will Ferrell, “And now this is happening!” before he kicks Baxter the dog off a bridge. I have no idea if that helped or hurt my position, but the line survives.

It’s important to note that none of this was a drag. Mary Lee prefers handwritten notes to email, so she sent each of us a print-out of the comic with her notes in the margins. We couldn’t have been more excited to receive that bulging package!

When I opened my copy and sat on the couch to read, I paused for a deep breath, expecting at least some of the notes to sting. Instead, I was thrilled to find a ton of useful critiques and suggestions, most of which had never even occurred to us. Our eyes were being opened wider and wider.

Smash was our first comic work — not only together, but at all. Even for lifelong comic book readers, there’s a learning curve.

While writing the scripts, I had a tendency to pack each page a little too full, so that Kyle was trying to cram ten panels into a single page. (Nowadays, I wouldn’t want him to draw more than six, though I prefer four.) I also over-wrote dialogue balloons, sometimes to compensate for a detail that wasn’t clear in the artwork, and other times just because… well, I couldn’t leave a panel BLANK! C’mon, there had to be WORDS there! Even if the words were flavorless and served no practical function, readers can’t be trusted to just look at a PICTURE and figure out what’s happening, even with an artist as skilled as Kyle!

Now I learned the folly of that thinking.

It took Mary Lee’s notes to make Kyle fully appreciate the need for establishing shots to orient the reader with their surroundings before jumping into the action. Frankly, Kyle never liked drawing backgrounds — he wanted to get right to the “good stuff.” Several of Mary Lee’s notes expressed confusion about the setting of a scene, especially when there was a jump in time or place.

With new pages added, a few pages that were cut entirely, and the addition of a 12-page prelude that we’d planned to post online between seasons one and two — but which our ever-brilliant agent, Bernadette Baker-Baughman, felt would be a nice addition to the book package — the total page count hit 160.

Of those 160, Kyle had to revise, redraw, or draw from scratch about 110 pages. We were being ridiculously optimistic when we told Candlewick he’d have that done by December 2011.

When that deadline passed with Kyle still plugging away, we aimed for February 2011. Candlewick initially planned to publish the book in spring 2013.

It’s important to note that Candlewick only publishes in fall and spring. So, if we missed a window of time, it wouldn’t set us back just a few weeks, but possibly months. When February blew past and Kyle was still working feverishly on the pages (while also holding down a full-time day job), the publication date had to be postponed to fall 2013.

The immortal words of Darth Vader echoed fearfully in our heads: “I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.”

This was around the time friends and family members started wondering if there would ever be a book. I reassured them the best I could, but even Kyle was starting to wonder if we’d really make it…

Click to read part three, the conclusion!

That question has tantalized me for most of my life. I used to daydream about it — vivid fantasies that have mostly turned out to be wildly unrealistic (no free cases of expensive champagne — YET). I worked for a bookseller for many years, so I was familiar with the promotional aspect of the book industry. I also wrote a blog about book news, so I was aware of the long gap between the announcement of a book sale and the actual arrival of the finished book in stores.

My family, however, was not aware of all that. In the more than two years since Kyle and I signed our book contracts to publish Smash with Candlewick Press, I was often met with concerned looks and questions along the lines of, “Is the book still happening?”

I thought it might be useful — dare I suggest even interesting? — to write about our experience while it’s happening, in case others are curious or deluded or just daydreaming.

We signed our book contract in August 2010. A lot of people expected to see the book hit stores in fall 2010. I would chuckle and tell them publishing doesn’t move that quickly.

“Well,” the response went, “the comic is already done… right?” Not exactly.

What happened was this: nothing. At least, for a while. Kyle and I had an introductory conference call with our editor at Candlewick, Mary Lee Donovan, and we all hung up with big, eager smiles. Getting a book published was initially my dream more than Kyle’s, but we had become equally excited about it — and amazed this was really happening. Still, we didn’t actually have a conversation about editorial content for several months, presumably while Mary Lee attended to other books much closer to publication.

In the meantime, I was encouraged by reactions from friends who were intimately familiar with the children’s book scene, whose faces all lit up when I mentioned Candlewick Press. (I won’t lie: I was also encouraged by the advance, which helped me write my first novel.)

Mary Lee had notes for us, as any good editor would. We’d published the first season of our comic online, with only ourselves and our small-but-dedicated readership for editorial input. Sometimes we bumped up against deadlines and had to take shortcuts, or rush certain elements. I’d plotted the last four episodes (at that time, we published ten-page “episodes” every two weeks or so) when Kyle informed me he was worn out, and how quickly could I wrap this story up? I condensed four episodes into two, and had to crunch or throw away a lot of plot elements and ideas.

For the book, I was eager to put some of those pieces back, expand on scenes I felt we’d rushed or that hadn’t worked out the way I’d hoped, and add some new stuff that made sense to me on reflection. Kyle’s artwork had improved over the years we’d published the webcomic, so he was eager to redraw certain panels, even whole pages.

Basically, Season One was a rough draft. After talking with Mary Lee, who shared her own feedback and ideas for changes, we started looking over the “finished” comic with an eye toward what could be made better. After much discussion and consideration, we decided to add 30 brand-new pages and revise so much of the rest that Kyle ended up redrawing more than 50 percent of the “finished” comic.

So much for fall 2011 — we had a lot of work to do!

Click here to read part two.