Ask Roseville High (book)
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Publication date | December 24, 2012 |
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| Pages | 120 |
| ISBN | 978-0-9836022-2-4 |
Ask Roseville High is a full-color softcover collecting the best of Bittersweet Candy Bowl’s Tumblr Q&A “askblog” of the same name. Its first edition is dated December 24, 2012. It is the odd one out on the bookshelf, since instead of chapters it holds reader questions followed by replies from the cast, painted in watercolor and sorted into eight themed sections. The book was funded by the 2012 Kickstarter campaign alongside Starting Over, as a companion to that volume.
Back cover blurb
Cute cats! Gut-wrenching drama! All’s revealed in Ask Roseville High: a watercolor exposé straight from the digital pages of Bittersweet Candy Bowl’s Q&A “askblog.”
Contents
The book commits to the Tumblr bit from the front cover onward. A red notification badge with a white “1” sits right over the word “Ask” in the title. Two cats drawn in plain black ink flank the title against a pale light-blue background painted in watercolor. Inside, the colophon credits art and writing to Veronica Vera, with editing and design by Oliver Bareham. It also sneaks in a disclaimer joke: “Similarities to any slate-blue ask-blog-hosting websites are purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction.” The eBook edition adds a notice page with two little cartoons, asking readers to share the file with friends but please not with the whole internet.
From there it goes straight into the questions. There is no separate contents page, although the eBook’s PDF outline includes a Contents entry that points to the School divider. The Q&A posts are grouped by theme (School, Family, Friends, Dating, Crushes, Rivals, Memories and Personal), and each section opens on a full-bleed slate-blue divider page. Each Q&A page reproduces a Tumblr-style ask box, usernames and anonymous senders included, above the character’s painted reply. Mike, Lucy, Paulo, David, Abbey and even Yashy all take a turn answering. The colophon carries a 2011–2012 copyright date. By February 2012, the blog had over a hundred Q&A posts,[1] and the campaign later promised the book would pair its best posts with 60 all-new answers.[2]
Unlike the numbered volumes, there is no back matter to speak of. No about-the-characters pages, no find-a-word, no next-volume teaser — the final answers run right up to the back cover, where six of the cast crowd around a computer monitor, seen from behind the screen.
Table of contents
| Chapter | Title |
|---|---|
| Contents | |
| School | |
| Family | |
| Friends | |
| Dating | |
| Crushes | |
| Rivals | |
| Memories | |
| Personal |
Kickstarter campaign
Ask Roseville High was funded by “Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Starting Over”, the 2012 campaign that also produced Volume Two and billed this book as “the special companion book”.[2] The pitch was short and sweet: “High school, heartbreak, and cats. In two new full-color books!” The campaign ran from August 23 to September 21, 2012, with a goal of $14,000. By the close, 355 backers had pledged $35,495.23 through Kickstarter. Once PayPal pledges were included, the combined total was well past $37,000.[2]
The authors recruited real cats for the promo video in what they called “cat auditions”.[2][3] Every backer received a Kickstarter-exclusive Jessica keychain charm. Backers also pushed the campaign past both stretch goals, so the authors added character prints of the main four to every book order and produced a fresh batch of BCB candy.[2][4]
As for the book itself, only 16 backers took the tier for a standalone copy, while the tier bundling both books was the campaign’s most popular with 95 takers. Two backers also chose the tier that came with their choice of an original answer from the blog, painted in watercolor.[2]
Availability
Preorders opened on the BCB store in November 2012, while the books were still at the printers.[5] Printer delays pushed delivery back to March,[6] and on March 22, 2013, the authors announced that physical copies were in stock alongside eBook editions in PDF, CBZ and Kindle formats.[2][7] They hoped the sales would help “finance our big move to the USA”.[7]
In 2014 the book joined the “Color Bundle” alongside Starting Over, Volume Three and Upstage.[8] Physical copies were still in stock at the time of the 2017 Volume Five Kickstarter, which offered the book in its reward bundles even as Volume One buyers had to settle for an eBook.[9] As of April 2026, the store is closed for the foreseeable future while Veronica and Oliver pack up for a move to Australia.[10]
The askblog itself has since gone quiet, though Veronica calls it “one of those things I wish I could do again”, and she still answers the occasional ask with a drawing.[11]
References
- ↑ “BCB newspost: “Tumblr stuff and site comments!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2012-02-22.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 “Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Starting Over”. Kickstarter. 2012-08-23.
- ↑ “BCB newspost: “Your cat could be famous!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2012-07-30.
- ↑ “BCB newspost: “Kickstarter stretchgoal: CANDY!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2012-09-17.
- ↑ “BCB newspost: “Pre-orders now available for our two new books!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2012-11-26.
- ↑ “BCB newspost: “Book update & bathtime for Lucy””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2013-02-06.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 “BCB newspost: “New books now in stock and on sale!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2013-03-22.
- ↑ “BCB newspost: “Now on sale: Volume Three, Upstage and our new book bags””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2014-02-17.
- ↑ “Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Volume Five”. Kickstarter. 2017-02-06.
- ↑ Veronica (2026-04-29). “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr.
- ↑ Veronica (2026-03-28). “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr.