We’re close to the half-way point of 2026, and the bulk of our Spring convention season is completed with the wrap of TCAF 2026. In this edition of the newsletter, I’m going to be giving you a TCAF show wrap up and then move on to ongoing plans, talk about recent production errors & mistakes, and figuring out where we go from here. The effects of the beginning of the year and its myriad complications are, sadly, bearing fruit. Read to the end to see what I’m doing about it, and to get a little reward. But first…!
What I’m Reading
Most of the comics I’ve been reading recently have flirted with or downright gorged on maximalism of one flavor or another, so it has been a pleasure to read in a more minimalist vein this June. My most recent read (and a highly recommended release from New Directions) is Helle Helle’s they, a book that explores the relationship between a mother and daughter and the impending death of the mother from an unnamed illness. The book is focused on the interplay between the mother and her daughter, their relationship and the way they engage with one another. It is a meditation on the impending fracture of the idea of “they” since the “they” the title refers to is the mother-daughter pair. The two characters try to never speak of or think about the mother’s illness, and so the story is both told in the text and then inferred in the decay around the margins. Set in a 1980s Denmark, the prose is quiet and reflective, and it’s been a lovely companion for weeknights on the patio waiting for the sun to set.
Having spent a weekend in Canada must have triggered some sort of subconscious desire to spend a little more time there, and I have been doing so with Karen Solie’s Wellwater, her sixth collection of poetry. It’s a collection that’s well suited to the things I’ve been thinking about in life; the interconnectedness of crises and the imperative of hope during a time when everything seems to keep spiraling out of control. There are poems in this collection that are breathtaking, with intricate scene-making, depth, and nuance of image. The collection is also restless, unwilling to moor itself in a specific place or emotional state. I don’t think this one will be every reader’s cup of tea, but as a person growing up in rural America, I felt a deep connection to Solie’s ruminations on rural life in Canada.
TCAF 2026
Usually at this point in the year, we have our newest releases in hand and ready to show off; for those of you who are new or who didn’t read my last Fieldmouse update, 2026 has been an abnormal year in a lot of ways (more to come on that shortly) and so we were able to debut one title at TCAF - Emily Zullo’s The Most High Girl in the World, which sold really well at the how for both us and for her.
We were on the ice rink again, and someone please remind me next year to bring a rubber mat to stand on, because after 8+ hour days of standing on concrete, my hips were VERY angry. That said, I had a much better time this year because I did a lot more prep ahead of time and because we shipped our books into the show instead of carrying them across the border, and the nice folks at The Beguiling and Gutter Pop took care of the international transit.
We’ve never had a show that had such disparate days as this TCAF. Most of the time, our experience has been that Saturday has a larger volume of sales, and Sunday is a little slower. For whatever reason, this year’s TCAF was reversed AND in a big way; I was pretty unhappy with how things went on Saturday, but Sunday more than made up for it.
Outside of sales and debuts, TCAF is an excellent opportunity to see your authors, chat with other publishers, and network. Saturday evening was a wonderful time with online friend JJ Steeves. I spent time with Cole Degenstein and got to meet future Fieldmice Georgia Oldham and Bells White. I talked with a TON of cartoonists and folks who are looking for a home for their next book, gave some fair (and perhaps sometimes overly earnest) feedback to folks, and handed out a bunch of business cards. I got my eyes on a few French-Canadian books that I’d love to see in English, and met representatives from LEED Publishing and HEROS Inc., Japanese publishers who have authors in the MINT Project. I got my start in comics in manga, so the potential to publish manga in English has always been something that has been on my publishing bucket list, so to speak.
Delays and Misprints
As I said at the top of the piece, 2026 has been a hellscape personally, and some of the problems I was dealing with in January and February have come home to roost in the delays we’re seeing with our Spring 2026 books. Luckily, I think things are continuing to improve with the health crises my father has experienced this winter, and I’m hopeful that we’ll continue to move in the right direction.
Some of these issues are just the practicalities of international printing & shipping; our printer in China had to delay shipping our books because they used the wrong spiral binding for our run of BENNIZONE’s Stagnation Seed. Our books from Latvia, TINGUU’s The Cannibals, have just gotten released from an extended agricultural customs hold. IT’s no joke to say that this book has had almost every possible delay from completed printing to being in our hands. We’re hoping to have all of our books by the beginning of July, although our books coming from China might get to White Squirrel in the next week or so.
One of our books in the Spring season, though, had to go right back to print before it was even publicly available: it’s Jared Sarnie’s The Machine is Broken. Our initial print run has a myriad of issues, partly my fault and partly the fault of the printer. When I designed the book, I tried to optimize the page layouts to ensure that readers could see all of Jared’s beautiful design work and formal tricks, but there were points where I let text bubbles and other materials get a little too close to the trim edge. One overzealous trimming job later and portions of text throughout the book are missing in action. There were also issues with the bleed missing in the French flaps, page issues, and even some color issues; ultimately we decided that the book we had in hand was not sellable, and sent it back to print after a complete redesign. We’re still waiting to hear when the new edition of the book will be done, but we’re hopeful it will be within the next 4-6 weeks.
As the Publisher of Fieldmouse, the fact that we needed to go back to print is on my shoulders. The buck stops here, so to speak, and my hands are all over the book’s design, proofing, and printing. I think these issues would have been caught had I been better and/or more demanding during the proofing stage, but I was so deep in the dark valley of anxiety and caregiving stress with my father’s health crises that I really wasn’t making reasonable decisions or doing effective work. It’s obvious in hindsight — but that’s why hindsight is always 20/20. Frankly, it showed in the (no longer) final product.
Because of the issues with this print run, we’re moving forward with a different printer, and that means we’ll need to bolster our bank account to make up for the loss of the initial print run. We’ll be running a warehouse sale in July, so keep your eyes peeled for that if you’ve been wanting an older Fieldmouse book but haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
The one silver lining to this is that Jared got to have a “book destruction party” where the miscut and misprinted books were destroyed as a fun little fundraiser / preorder campaign. Turn those lemons to lemonade whenever you can.
Moving Forward
These sorts of incidents are an opportunity to reflect and learn, if you use them right. I’m still processing everything that went wrong, the ways in which I made errors that I can correct for future projects, and I’ve already started implementing changes. Part of being a better publisher for Fieldmouse is to figure out the level to which I am going to be able to work on projects in this new paradigm and to make sure I put myself in a place where I’m not making unforced errors. Giving myself some grace and accepting it from others is a quality first step as well. I think I’ve found the sweet spot again, but it’s on me (and my partners at Fieldmouse) to make sure that we’re solid and not overcommitted.
In the short run, my experience with this season of books means that I will be more deliberate about our Fall 2026 season, and I will only be bringing new books to print when we’re ready to do so. In the long run, the answer is more nebulous, but I think for me it means relying on my partners, being more open with my struggles, and being more willing to ask for help. It may not be the whole answer — but it’s a good start.
Since you’ve made it this far, a little promo item - if you haven’t already backed our Spring Season, we would really love your support. Use the code “newsletter” on the Physical Edition bundle in our Spring preorder campaign and get an extra 10% off the already discounted price.
Our Spring Season of books will be hitting the warehouse in the next few weeks, so this is your last chance to back our preorder campaign and get the books at a discount. Your purchases support our authors, SOLRAD, and our future print projects.
Thanks for stopping by sequential.li, a newsletter by Fieldmouse Press’ publisher Alex Hoffman. If you enjoyed today’s post, and you aren’t subscribed, please do so! Subscribing is free and helps make sure you get every update from the newsletter. If you are subscribed — thank you! If you’d like to be generous, send this to someone who might find it interesting.