Right now, Monte Schulz is at Warwicks, a bookstore in La Jolla, CA. Monte’s new book, The Last Rose of Summer is out, and I have my copy, although I’m 3,000 miles from La Jolla, so I won’t be able to get Monte’s autograph on it. I’ll be reading it as soon as I am through a couple of non-fiction books. I prefer to read novels without having any other books in progress. Monte owns the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, which this year is being held June 18-23 in, you guessed it, Santa Barbara.
On the Peanuts side of the Schulz family, which is run by Monte’s brother Craig, there is a new DVD coming out, and a graphic novel, the first Peanuts publication from the Kaboom! arm of BOOM! Studios.
You may recall that Charles Schulz never had an assistant helping him with the comic strip, but that did not hold for the Peanuts comic books from DELL (before there was a computer company by the same name), and later Gold Key. Jim Sasseville, then Dale Hale, worked with Schulz on those comics. D.F. Rogers has a great idea, that Nat Gertler should put together the complete collection of Peanuts comic books. High quality color scans from the original comics would be great.
I haven’t checked eBay lately, but I assume there are still sketches being offered that sellers claim are by Charles M. Schulz, but are obvious fakes. Here’s a sketch that looks like it might be genuine. The owner asked a newspaper columnist for an estimate of what it’s worth, and assuming it was done by Schulz I think he’s wrong about the personalized autograph holding down the value of the piece.
Thanks for the note about my signings and the SBWC. It’s going to be busy. I’ll be at the Cartoon Art Museum in SF on June 2nd, 7-9pm. Also, how can I sign your copy of “Rose”? My next book is “The Big Town” and is really the best of them all. I promise this. Best and most interesting thing I ever wrote.