So we all sat down after one of Grace’s amazing dinners, poured out generous glasses of wine and spread out copies of the pages with the innocent intent of ordering them into a smooth-flowing, cohesive graphic novel. We attempted the impossible by trying to break the stories down into categories so that we could spread out story “types” equally throughout the book:

Were the characters boy/girl? How do you define that in cases of trans sexuality and gender confusion?

Gay/straight? By whose definition? Not all “loss-of-virginity-acts” align with the person’s sexual orientation.

Were the stories Funny/happy/sad/tragic? Some hit several emotions at once.

Book layout is something I am new at, and Grace and Kevin did this very well on their own with the publication of volume 1 back in 2008. I had no idea how complicated this process was, and Grace’s journalism and paper layout experience were invaluable. After some general ground-rules, it mostly came down to “artistic-gut-feelings” and after a couple of hours we’d assembled a good, solid collection of stories that we’re extremely proud of. Here are a couple of things we noticed along the way:

This volume is comprised of 138 pages of comics, slightly more than Volume 1, which has 131.

We’re showing slightly more nudity (this is a book about sex, after all).

A majority of stories coming from women (guys? Come on, we know you’re doing it).

Ideally, this table would have been about 20 feet longer…

We demonstrate our jedi-reflexes.

We take this very, very seriously.

It was an exciting evening and very satisfying to see all our hard work finally gel just a little bit. In just about a month and a half it should all be bound, beautiful and available!!

Miranda’s story is sweet, simple, and nice—the way you wish your first experience was.  Clifton discovered he was gay while looking at Mexican girly mags in a treehouse with his best friend.  Patty was playing around with her girlfriend in the garage, on the hood of Dad’s mustang, when Mom walked in and offered to take her to a shrink. Jim hired a prostitute so he wouldn’t be inexperienced on his wedding night.  Marc was raped by his high school wrestling coach.

Boze and Kato tell the truth: from romance to rape, this is how it is.  Each story is told in the person’s own words and professionally illustrated.  It’s an amazing collection.  If you have teenagers, and you care about their health and happiness, this is the book you want to accidentally leave on the coffeetable.