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TDIDW “cover” WIP:

Don’t flex your flaming fingers yet, m’dears. It’s a work in progress.
I realize if I’m ever published, I won’t have much of a say in cover art, so this is me indulging myself in having total control over it while I can.

Cheers!

I started writing the first incarnation of Banshee (now To Dream In Deep Water) in NaNoWriMo ‘09. Back then the book was a stand-alone novel. After that, it grew in my head into the overly-ambitious concoction of ideas Hellfire Heroes is. Needless to say, I am very excited for it.

I died out in NaNo ‘09 with just barely over 25K words, and a horribly timed bout of insomnia, which drained me of the energies I needed to actually finish the damn thing. It was sad, but I’d like to think (read: lie to myself) that it wasn’t entirely my fault my first NaNo failed.

On to the point. I haven’t actually written much of anything since I died out of NaNoWriMo last year. Yeah, it’s that bad. The why is a combination of two things: 1) world-builder’s/outliner’s disease. 2) going back and forth between main projects. You might have noticed most of my previous posts about projects jump between talking about work on Summeryear, The Odehren Fables, various graphic novels, and the Hellfire Heroes series. I wasn’t juggling all those at once, I just couldn’t (wouldn’t) make up my mind.

There is, thankfully a cure.
I’ve given myself the chance to think about it, and it comes down to this. I want Hellfire Heroes to be my break-in to the business. It’s what I want to write for my career (as well as I can judge that at this age, at least). It’s dark young adult; horror prodding at the line of fantasy with a very long shoe; sarcastic and somewhat sadistic humour; and chock full of excuses to pull out my criminal psychology text books and pretend I’m working on research while I’m really just having a giddy old time.

So…that means I need to actually finish the thing.
Here goes.

Cheers!

Here it is, kiddies! Designed by Tim Ziegel and myself.

Panda bread.

Recipe:  http://perfectpandas.com/2008/01/08/panda-bread/

Wasn’t done perfectly, but it’s still possibly the most awesome thing I’ve ever baked.

I was catching up with an old friend of mine a little while ago when he asked what my new (as of then, relatively.  as of now, not so much) job was like.  I said it was great, and I meant it.  The people are nice, the work’s even sort of fun (I work in a bakery) and it keeps me busy but allows me to rest my creative side at the same time.

To my disappointment, after explaining how much I liked the job, my friend sighed to himself and told me I should be an art teacher.  I was a bit taken aback, and appreciated the thought until I heard his reasoning.  The phrase ‘waste your talents’ came up more than once, and I know he meant it in the best way…But still.

It bothered me a little once I thought about it again later.  Truth is I had already thought of teaching as a career path, and I’m still considering it.

Put simply, I think I’d go insane if my day job (because that’s what it is to me.  ’Writer’ is the career title I’d rather have on my sleeve) was in the least bit creative.  I think it was in Ignore Everybody (Hugh MacLeod) that a point was raised about a man who went after the dream job that started as a hobby and ended up just as depressed as he was working the meaningless cubicle work.  The hobby died away.

When and/or if I become a professional writer, painting will be my hobby.  Right now they both are, which is why I’m so freakin’ busy.  This was the mistake I saw in considering to be a graphic novelist — sure, it’s a story and it’s made all pretty; that should suit both my talents fine, right?  But it’s a whole other skill set I just don’t have.  It’ll never be a career; nor, I think, would I truly want it to be.  Side projects done for the simple joy of it.

So hell.  I might yet consider the teaching thing for if ever the bills get tight, but for now I’d rather keep my passions in the realm of hobbydom.  As hobbies, my writing and art is mine and mine alone.  They’re like toddlers to me.  I’m not nearly ready to let go of them yet.

My main project for 2010 is a graphic novel by the name of Pastel Sun. This has been a long time in the making, and I’m glad I finally grew the balls to start working on it. I’m going to give you a very brief introduction to the story here, as well as some considerably longer notes on its inspiration.

I have always been fascinated by the deaf. Sign language, too. On the one hand, I love music so much that it scares me a little to even think about what it would be like to be deaf. But at the same time I have such an enormous respect for people who live without it because I’m sure they’ve heard that exact sentiment a thousand times – how do you live without music? I’ve only met one deaf person in my life so far, and I tried my best to hold back on my questions. Something about the fact that I literally could never understand the way they see the world intrigues me to no end.

At some point I wondered if there had ever been any (well known) stories about a deaf main character. I couldn’t think of any, but that might’ve just been a lack of luck. (If you do know of any, please email me! Books, movies, short stories, comics, anything!)

So, being a wannabe writer, I figured I’d write one. Not long after the story started brewing I realized it would carry so much more depth as a more visual medium than writing, and I stubbed my toe over that dusty old comic book idea. I had never really been a fan of comic books (I have issues with most superheroes…) but the idea behind the medium was one I had every respect for. This was about six or seven months ago.

I spent some time trying to doodle out an acceptable comic book style of art, and eventually gave up. Lineart goes against everything I find fun about painting. Eventually I was clocked on the head by some unseen force of reason and it dawned on me that I didn’t have to come up with a whole new style of art for this to work. I could do it in my own painting style. It’ll just be, y’know, difficult.

And so the complete vision of Pastel Sun promptly popped into my head; a story about a deaf priestess in a fantasy culture that worships beauty and believes demons literally travel and breed by word of mouth.

I’m still outlining, so that’s all I’ll say for now. If all goes well, finishing this story will be the proudest moment of my life.

Cheers.

“Suntamer”

http://amorebravekitten.deviantart.com/art/Suntamer-148106440

No, not that many. Feels like it, though.

Next year is going to be very, very busy. I’m always very busy, but this is a step up. Here’s what’s on the roster:

- Summeryear graphic novel (EDIT: Won’t have time, sticking to just one graphic novel at once)
- Starting The Art Academy on deviantART (http://theartacademy.deviantart.com/) with two of my best friends (Kieke-boe and TakaiWolf). If all goes well (we’re doing votes for the teaching positions to be fair) I’ll be posting weekly classes in at least one of our courses along with some administrative stuff as co-founder.
- Music project with another friend. Not much to say about it yet, in its early stages. We’re planning an album, only a vague idea of the sound and no idea if we’d continue it beyond the one project. We’ll see.
- Banshee (possibly, depending on if I decide the graphic novel is a much better medium for me. If so, I’ll put Banshee aside to redo as a comic like I’m doing now with Summeryear) (EDIT: replace ‘Summeryear’ with ‘Pastel Sun’ and it’s still only half true. Not possible this year, but someday.)
- Ashen (Another graphic novel idea. This one won’t be considered as a novel, the themes are too visual) (EDIT: Changed the name to Pastel Sun, this is the main project for the year…and the year after)
- Hoping to update here more frequently as well with short stories and thoughty gobbets.

I have less free time this year than I did during 2009 now with the new day job. Stepping away from the starving artist cliche, but that means slightly less time to work on what I’m passionate about. I plan on getting better at time management.

Speaking of time management, I’ll just note that the graphic novels mentioned will probably stretch into 2011 and I wouldn’t be all that surprised at finishing sometime in 2012. With my digital painting style instead of traditional comic art these are going to be enormously time consuming projects.

I think that’s it for the major schemes.

Cheers for now, and happy holidays.

I’m young.  I’m still learning about myself and my creative impulses.  So, I’m going to try something.

I’ve always loved the idea of comics and graphic novels, although I never read any at all until recently.  It’s a brilliant mesh between written storytelling and visual art.  I want to be a writer and I want to be an artist.  I figure I’ll try doing both at once and see how it goes.

I expect this to be an enormous project — much bigger than the novel, maybe.  But hell, I can’t learn without trying, so here goes.  First order of business is writing out the script.  I’ll update again once I’ve finished that.

The plan is doing the whole graphic novel in my own digital painted style. Nothing cartoony if I can help it. A daunting project, but if I can pull it off I might find a life calling.

Cheers. (EDIT: Doing this with a new story called Pastel Sun instead)

I’ve spent the last few nights trying to fall asleep and the last few days trying to stay awake. This isn’t anything new for me, insomnia is something I’ve dealt with most of my life. Every three or four months there’s a week where I just can’t seem to sleep. It’s never bothered me as much as it has this particular week.

If you have ever experienced insomnia — not for a single night or even two, but real, seemingly unending insomnia — then you’ll know what my life has been for this past week. Focus is out the window, creativity is dead in the water. My only thoughts are Oh God, please let me sleep tonight. Naps are a ticket straight to an even longer problem, I’m stuck in a half-wakefulness until it resolves itself.

Insomnia is a waiting game for me, it’s putting my life on hold and I can’t do a damn thing about it. Believe me, I’ve tried.

I honestly can’t say if I can finish NaNoWriMo at this point. I would be doing the last half in the final week, and it’s not out of line to say that’s simply too much.

It’s possible, sure. There’s a faint glimmer of hope for the possibility of my winning this but I would have to put other projects aside. Plus of course, that’s all assuming that I’ll be able to sleep tonight or the next night.

Alongside NaNo I’ve been working on a contest entry for deviantART. The theme is “Dreams”, and I’ve only got a few hours in on the painting so far. It’s due December eighth.

I don’t have time to do both. If I finish NaNoWriMo and reach 50K in time I’ll probably be too creatively exhausted to paint all hours of the day the week before the contest closes like I would need to to finish this in time.

I’m going to be running a week long sprint either way — that’s assuming I can run at all.