Drunken Owls and Other Delights

So for the first time in a number of years, I've chosen not to do a year-end mixtape or best-of list. I went into this a bit over at Walk in Silence, but the tl;dr is that it had nothing to do with the music and all to do with my own lack of connection with the new releases. Don't get me wrong, there were a LOT of really great albums and singles that dropped...but I'd just been too distracted to let any of it stick with me for any length of time. I'm a bit bothered by that to tell the truth, because that's not my normal state of musical obsession. The distraction was that in itself: I was too obsessed with the acquisition and not enough with the enjoyment, and I want that to change.

The interesting thing is that I came to that realization when I was making the mixtape soundtrack for Queen Ophelia's War. My aim for that mix was to recreate the moods I'd find myself in when I'd listen to bands like Cocteau Twins back in the day; something that would take me on an aural journey and spark my imagination and creativity. And in the process, I'd realized that I'd been so focused on picking up new things that I'd lost that drive to find music like that. Quite some time ago, actually. 

So that's one resolution for the new year: to appreciate what interests, inspires and influences me for more than a few dopamine-fueled moments. I want to go back to that, not just because it's pleasurable but because it's what drives me as a creative person. 

Speaking of dopamine-fueled moments, tonight is when I'm finally putting my Twitter into cold storage. Short of deleting it all and someone possibly yoinking my handle, I'm just putting it on complete lockdown and posting maybe once in a while to remind others where I can be found. I'll skip on describing how much interest I've lost in it over the last couple of years and just say that I have no real use for the site anymore. Most of my writer and IRL friends can be found elsewhere these days, anyway. One less thing to distract me, really.

So. Any other resolutions?

I'd like to walk to/from work more often. I stopped only because we'd had a long stretch of crappy weather followed by the exhaustion of Christmas Retail. And maybe head to the gym again? It's been far too long. I'm in pretty good shape these days considering how much walking I do at work (I can log 3-4 miles just in one eight hour shift some days), but there's always room for improvement. I still want to be more flexible, however. I know I'm getting older and my joints are getting a bit creaky, but that's no reason not to try to work on keeping in shape, yeah?

I'd like to continue working on having a healthier emotional outlook. I've been doing pretty good lately but I do still slide into bouts of complaining about stupid things (work, annoying people, Republicans, etc.) and when I'm sick of my own complaining, that's a good sign that others are probably sick of it as well. Not that I'm aiming to be insufferably chipper or being the peacemaker all the time, far from it. Just working on knowing the difference between when it's warranted and when to Let It Go and Move On.

I'd like to work on rekindling my love for other creative outlets, namely music and art. I've been focusing so much on my writing for so long that the other two have fallen by the wayside. I have art supplies gathering dust here in Spare Oom. I have guitars here that are dusty and out of tune. I have a keyboard here that's currently used as a storage shelf. I was thinking it's time to relearn how to play piano -- I know the basics thanks to lessons when I was a kid, but I'd like to be able to walk up to a keyboard (or a piano in the park when they have them) and play something impressive instead of just a passing line or two. Will I find the time? Well, I have to make time for it, won't I? Otherwise they'll never get started!

There's more I'd like to do, but I'll get into them at a later date here.

In the meantime, wishing all of you a hopeful, creative and peaceful 2024!

Ah yes. I was distracted yesterday (a pleasant walk in GGP's botanical garden, a drive to the garden center, laundry and so on) and completely forgot to post something here.

Also slightly nervous and distracted due to the fact that I'm running a scan on my external hard drive that contains my entire mp3 library in hopes that I can figure out why it decides to randomly go into sleep mode even when I'm in the middle of using it. I'm not *too* nervous, as I have it all (I hope!!) backed up on another external, but I'd rather not lose it just the same, thankyouverymuch. It's taking forever to finish because there's a LOT of mp3s to scan for issues and/or corruption. I had it running overnight and it's *just* nearing the finish of the initial scan as we speak. [Edit: it's now doing a slightly different deep scan of empty sectors and I'm not entirely sure how long *that* will take...] In the meantime it's made the entire drive inaccessible so it can do its thing. Hopefully there aren't any major issues... *fret fret*

Meanwhile, last week I began a slightly different approach with my writing (I go into it a bit more here at Welcome to Bridgetown) and it seems to be working, so I'm going to continue with this process and see how it plays out. I'm doing the work in smaller manageable chunks and narrowing the focus of the work in front of me in the hopes that I can process it all a lot easier. It seems to have cleared the view a bit, which is good.

Oh -- I should probably add that I've been having far too much fun sketching out a storyboard for Diwa & Kaffi!!  They're rough thumbnails for the most part, but they're helping me get better at my art, which was the main goal in the first place! One of these days I'll post them up on the WTBT blog.

What else...we got a new Christmas tree? That was my doing, really. Our old one is fine but kind of looking a bit threadbare. The new one is a four-footer (the old one is a much shorter one made for a tabletop) so I'll have to plan out where to put it. The plus side is that I can hang a lot more stuff on it! Yay! Maybe I should revive my old habit of putting on a Christmas album while decorating....


Hope everyone has a good week!

I've been thinking a lot about returning to my blogging. On the one hand I went on hiatus because I felt I was just repeating myself over and over with the writing blog and phoning it in on the music blog. On the other hand -- and I've said this before -- the Day Job changes had put considerable stress on me in those last few months before I quit.

I miss sharing the music that I've been listening to. I miss sharing my writing processes. And I also miss the schedule, believe it or not. Scheduling gives my brain a bit of stability and direction. And that in turn inspires me to work more on my fiction.

Hell, I'm even thinking of scheduling my Daily Words again. I'm ready for it.

I just need to stop Making Plans to Do It and JUST FREAKIN' DO IT ALREADY.

Hell, I've already returned to journaling and poetry. Not with any schedule, mind you, but I'm actively pursuing those again.

**

I've also started leaning heavily on my music again. I've been inspired to record my noodling, and not just on my phone for demo references...I'm learning more about what I can do with the foot pedal my sister gave me last Christmas (it's a Zoom G1 Four and it has all sorts of neat sounds and effects!), and I'd like to start recording things onto my PC. (Do I even know what I'm doing? Hell no. But that's part of the fun of it all!) 

Part of this stems from the fact that I haven't been able to write music for a long time, at least not in the way I used to write it. I toyed with giving it up or treating it as a hobby, but I don't think I'm ready to do that just yet. I still create melodies in my head that I haven't quite figured out to play, and they're not going to do anything if they remain there on endless loop. This forces me to hear sounds in a different way and build it up exponentially. That in turn will teach me how to layer a song, giving it depth. It's the same as my writing, really -- the only way I can learn is if I keep immersing myself.

**

So what about my artwork?

Well. That REALLY fell by the wayside over the last year or so, and I'm annoyed and saddened by that. Same reasons as above: creative frustration, little time, too many personal things going on. But you know, it's been months and things are better now, so I'm adding that to my creative schedule as well. Any aim on that in particular? Well, not at the moment, but I think I'm going to approach it a bit differently this time. No projects, no specific aim, no goal. Just taking pencil (or pen) (or stylus, if I decide to finally upgrade to a new Wacom) and doing a bit every day just to do it. See where it goes. I just want to do it all again.

**

So yeah. I miss the level of creativity I used to have just a few years ago. It's high time for me to return to it.

I still have the whiteboard up. Let's get this thing filled up again.
 

On the one hand, I'm happy that I have a desk job instead of retail or warehouse at this time of year. I still remember the Q4 insanity all too well...stock quadrupling and the deadlines to get it all out shortening, the exhaustion of extended days and weird schedules, the stress of shitty commutes...the inevitability that I'd end up damaging my back and/or catching the flu...I don't miss those parts of it at all. All I have now is a front seat to witness all these clients attempting to finish up their quarter-end business transactions at the last possible microsecond. And a frustrating but not entirely hellish commute.

Lately I've been feeling a lot like I'm at a crossroads. Not exactly a portentous one, just one that's kind of fallen into my lap. My schedule has changed considerably -- not exactly detrimentally, as I'd originally thought it would -- and I've just completed a major writing project and have not exactly started a new one to any serious extent. But instead of wasting my time throwing a fit or falling into despair or whatever else would end up wasting my time, I've decided to turn them into positives: I can work with this. I suddenly find myself with time on my hands and nothing long-term that desperately warrants my attention. 

Which means: I've been thinking lately about focusing more on my art and music again. I've got about two dozen guitar riffs that I've recorded on my phone that I think I might be able elaborate on, and I've been meaning to properly teach myself how to record music on my PC for years. And on the art front, I'm finding I really miss creating book covers and playing around with photography. I've been focusing so much on my writing for the last couple of decades and kept putting these two avenues aside for 'when I have the time'...and damn it, I HAVE THE TIME NOW. So why the hell not, right?

Even the job search is temporarily on hold. I mean, it's Q4 and I'm getting inundated with 'We need warehouse workers STAT!' spam (I'd rather not go that route ever again, tyvm) and not many new opportunities, so I'm thinking of putting that all on hold at least until the start of the year. Maybe keep one or two searches active, but that'll be it. That'll also give me a fresh outlook on it all as well, which is yet another thing I've been meaning to do.

Change is a-comin', and I'm down with that.

I really need to do something about my Twitter feed.  It feels like lately it's been seeing the worst of me, and vice versa.  This means two things: 
I should probably do a rigorous cleaning of my follows, expand my mute list, and be a little more positive on there myself.  Which led me to the idea I had earlier this morning: to try to go a month tweeting nothing but positive things.  I don't mean just posting pithy inspirational tweets or retweeting cat pictures -- although there's nowt wrong with the latter, of course!  But I'd like to be more actively positive, this way I'll get myself out of that reactionary rut I've found myself in.

I don't want to ragequit social media, for multiple reasons: I'd be losing touch with my friends, and I'd be losing a viable avenue for publicity of my books.  Plus, it would feel like the jocks and the popular kids won and I'll be the nerd crawling back in his hole and feeling sorry for myself.  I did that route as a teenager, I'm too old for that shit now.

ANYWAY.  I'm curious to see if I can pull off this positivity thing.  We shall see!

In other news, I've also been thinking about bulking up my whiteboard schedule again.  It's fine now, but I think I need to push my boundaries once more.  Assign myself little exercises to expand my knowledge and expertise.  Drawing in a different style.  Recording the little riffs I've come up with and writing songs around them.  Get out of the 'safe' guitar chords and learn new, more complex ones.  Post here more often!  I know this is something I usually think about at the end of the year as my form of New Year's resolutions, but why not start now?

I'm curious to see where this will lead.  Last time this happened, I came up with a few new novel ideas, one of which I'm close to finishing! :)

Just a thought that popped into my head recently. I've been doing some serious thinking about my writing career, not to mention my drawing and my music. I've always wanted to do all three ever since I was a kid, though it seems I was always distracted from professionally doing so for one reason or another. [I'm not placing blame in this post; I'm just as to blame here.] Now that I'm in my early 40s and I'm in a much saner and more stable place to do such things, I've been seriously thinking of how to make these things professional, especially now in this digital age where publishing, producing and selling have been made easier.

On the one hand, I've been thinking (again) how to release the Mendaihu Universe stories. Like I said a few weeks back, it's a tough sell to the kids in Manhattan. From those that have read ADoS, I've had many positive comments, even when the prose is a bit lumpy and in need of revision, so it's not exactly as if I feel I've wasted my time with this universe. [Okay, that's not exactly true...I, like any other writer, have the fear that I'll release it to the sound of crickets. I am also well aware that I can't release it to a void, and need to upsell myself when and where necessary.] I'm perfectly willing to release these as Indies. In fact, I'm kind of thinking of it like the way DIY punk sold in the 80s: word of mouth, friends of friends, a shameless plug somewhere, and the drive to nudge it at the right audience. I'm not expecting to be rolling in the cash going this route. This is the same for the artwork, and especially the music: I know I have the drive and (sort of) have the ability to pull it off. Again, I don't expect to be rolling in the dough.*

On the other hand, I would not mind being thought of a professional writer. I mean yeah, to some extent I am one, as I've been featured on a few music blogs, and I'm about to have a short piece published in a book about my hometown, printed by a tiny local publisher. And I try to keep a decent schedule on my two WP blogs, talking seriously about music and writing, two of my biggest loves. And I do consider myself more of a careerist than a hobbyist, considering I'm working on some writing project on any given day.

Maybe I'm thinking too seriously about this. I do have a habit of overplanning such things, and Making Best Laid Plans that disintegrate as soon as I announce them. But let's be serious for a moment, bypassing what it means to be professional. I think the question I'm trying to ask here is, am I willing to sink a certain amount of money into my three favorite things I love to do in order to maybe, just maybe, make a living off it sometime down the line? I'd like to think that yes, it's worth it.

Which is why I'm not just focusing on the writing end of things, but at least the music part of it as well. I'm your typical lo-fi musician right now, but I'm totally fine with futzing around with whatever recording software and the few guitars I have and making a decent racket out of it all. In fact, I kind of dig the science and the math behind it--what sounds can do, how to build a song, how the disparate parts become the whole, and so on--so I'm totally on board with the producing end of it.

I'm thinking the question I posited in the subject line is faulty to begin with, because I'm already thinking of it as "you're not a pro until you've hit the big time", which is not only unrealistic, it's a very narrow way of looking at it. I see more and more positive press about indie publishing, and I've bought at least a dozen or so albums via Kickstarter or Bandcamp this year alone, so it's not as if the Unattainable Pinnacle of Success as we knew it in the past really exists anymore.

So yeah. I still think of these things as career points, even if I'm still tripping up along the way.


* - TBH, though, have you seen some of the stuff they put on at the local Museums of Modern Art? I'm convinced I could draw one of my epic maps on a giant sheet of newsprint and get it to sell at the local MoMA when it reopens here. :p

Still a bit behind on writing here, but it's moving forward, so that's a good thing. I admit to being lazy this weekend, partly due to a lack of sufficient sleep (I keep waking up every 2 hours or so for some reason, even if I take melatonin). I also seem to be having a lot of weird dreams lately with OCD themes to them, in which I get frustrated because things aren't 'just right' or other people are not quite doing things to spec. I figured it might be work-influenced, due to the fact that I do tend to be a bit OCD with that job because I kind of HAVE to, but that rarely influences my dreams. I'm thinking that it might actually be due to my recent attempts to kick my thought processes to a faster speed again--that is, making a determined effort to ramp up the creative output, which is in effect causing my brain to not want to slow down at night. I have also been reading a lot on my Nook just before bed, so perhaps doing a bit of analog reading from my TBR pile might calm it down some.

Anyhoo, aside from missing a few days recently, I've been doing pretty good staying with my writing/art/music schedule. This month is pretty much a practice run for what's coming up next year, so it's something to get used to. I'm making a few adjustments here and there, thinking of ways I can utilize time and creativity to my best advantage...when to sneak in morning words during the work day, prompts for mini-projects and exercises, reading more for inspiration and learning, things like that.

Of course, December is also the time for my usual end-of-year posts, in which I wax nostalgic about what went on over the year, what I might have learned...and of course my music posts as well. I'll be posting the music posts over at the Walk in Silence blog as usual, but will link them here and elsewhere as needed. I should probably post the end-of-year writing posts over at Welcome to B-Town as well, shouldn't I? Those two blogs are in need of some love and updating again. Either way...expect an uptick of year-end review posts from me within the next few weeks!

Okay! Time to get back to my usual Sunday afternoon of listening to A Prairie Home Companion, sorting through my emails, and sneaking in some writing stuff at the end of the day!

What is it with me and Best Laid Plans, anyway? I think it's partly due to distraction, and also due to finally giving myself some mental time off for a while. Well, that's not entirely true. I've been doing some serious longhand journaling and sorting some personal things out in the process. This is what happens when I choose to diarize something (is that a word?) and not share it with the world on one of my blogs...the voice changes from being "on" to being true to myself, unedited and uncensored. It's weirdly refreshing and eye-opening. It's been a relaxing couple of weeks, not having my creative brain in constant overdrive.

Still...I'm not exactly behind any schedule, because I currently don't have a schedule, other than working on my Walk in Silence outline. It's coming along...shockingly long at around 35 pages in the current iteration, though I'd say roughly 1/3 or so is filed with lists of songs and albums I'll possibly be referencing. The framework is coming along nicely, as I can better see how I'm going to tackle the actual writing--it'll definitely be in the form of a memoir, but there's going to be a lot of geeking out about music, radio, and collecting. I will admit that in the back of my mind, I already have an idea of a few publishers I'd like to send this to, but I'm not going to focus to seriously on that until I'm closer to the end of the writing part of it. I know of a few agents who might be interested too (I floated this book idea by them a few years ago at the SF Writer's Conference, and they all thought it was a cool idea), so I may go in that direction as well.

Nonetheless...after a few weeks of finishing off the Great Revision, it truly feels weird not to be focusing on anything trilogy-related. I've got a few possible story ideas in the back of my head that take place in that universe, but I'm not going to focus on them just yet. I did, however, write a few of them down on scraps of paper and add them to my Glass Jar of Ideas that I have on my desk. This is another idea I'd had, to create a "job jar" where I would write down various snippets of ideas, fold them up and toss them in the jar for further use. The jar is woefully scant at the moment, as I haven't given myself time to freeform anything new, but I'm hoping to change that in June.

So what is on tap for June '14, anyway? Well! Glad you asked.

--The End of the Mental Vacation. Sad to see it go, but it's time for me to get back on the creative highway and get going.
--Blog Entries. I'm over a month behind on them and, as said, haven't given myself time to work on any. I'll most likely be writing them during the week in between the WiS work (or during slow moments during the day, if there are any), and posting them on the weekend.
--Poetry. I'm ready to start longhand poetry again, for varying reasons that I may or may not go into at a later time. Not sure if these will ever be posted, but the main idea is, like the journaling, to do it on my own time, for myself.
--Art. Geez, I haven't been able to do this in a while, either! Hopefully I can plug in the Wacom and get some doodling done again. It's been WAY too long.

So yes...June promises to be the start of another wave of creativity. Here's to hoping it works out! :)

I'm not going to post a picture of the whiteboard this time out, because for the most part it remains the same:

Mon-Fri: Revision of Bridgetown Trilogy
Wed: Photo post
Sat: Art, Music
Sun: Walk in Silence, Music

The whiteboard will most likely change as necessary, depending on what major project I'll be working on and anything new that comes up.

What's important here is the goals:

Revision of the Bridgetown Trilogy, and Related Projects.
I'm a few chapters short of finishing the first revision run-through of The Persistence of Memories, and will be picking up The Process of Belief soon after. As time permits (and if, by chance, I get a bite from Angry Robot or an agent or someone), I will also be tidying up A Division of Souls. This trilogy remains my main project for the time being.

I will also be updating the Welcome to Bridgetown blog with new related posts as well. I have a bunch of fun ideas for that one.

I have also previously commented on wanting to write further stories in this universe. I have a few vague ideas and a few stronger ones, and plan on working on a few of those as well as time permits.

That said...the related goal here is to get the Mendaihu Universe stories out into the wild this year.

Can't Find My Way Home.
I've decided that this one may end up being my next project unrelated to the above. I recently read through the outline I'd worked on a few years previous, and a lot of it still stands up well. The few chapters I worked on in the past a little less so, but it's nothing a little revision can't help. It's also a story that's not nearly as intensive in worldbuilding as the above, so there's not as much prewriting work to do.

Another idea I'd had for this novel was to post it online in installments. It's supposed to be read that way anyway--its episodic nature was inspired by the various anime series I've watched over the years, with a finite set of chapters (twenty-four), many of them with self-contained minor storylines with the overall plot showing up tangentially. I'm seeing this novel more as an experiment more than as a publishable novel (although I'd be happy with that as the end result), so I'm totally fine with self-publishing this online. As soon as I've come up with a bit of a backlog and a set schedule, I will of course let everyone know of its debut.

The YA Novels (Angela Death and The Children of Dun Corran).
These two may be a little further out on the schedule, maybe third or fourth quarter, but I'd like to at least work on outlines. I recently read through the outtakes and notes on these as well, and found them strong, if lacking in extension at this time. If anything, I believe I'd started these too early--I wasn't ready to write them just yet. I'd like to think I'm at the point where I may be able to try them out now.

Journaling, Poetry, Music, Photography and Art.
After much deliberation, I've reevaluated these five things in my life--many of them pastimes that I've taken part in for decades now, but never expanded on professionally. I've come to the conclusion that these will most likely remain personal endeavors, things for me to work on in spare moments, avenues to let off steam or play around without trying to make them professional. Over the last few years I found that the onus of trying to create everything to publication was actually inhibiting me rather than giving me a personal creative outlet, and that was exactly why I'd had such a dry spell. For 2014, I plan on using these five as a personal and emotional outlet rather than a professional one, as that is precisely what they were back in the day, and should probably remain. Most if not all of what comes out of this will most likely remain offline.

That said, if I do in fact create something I feel is worth sharing, I will of course post it. And I will of course show up from time to time on LJ and elsewhere when time and mood allows!

Walk in Silence, the book and the blog.
As said previously, this one fell by the wayside due to other more important deadlines. I am hoping to pick this up again on the weekends. This project has changed quite a number of times over the last few years, going from a book to a blog and back again, and I'm still not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it, but for now I'm going to focus primarily on the blog. The reason for this is that much of what I'm going to be posting will most likely end up in the book anyway, if it comes to fruition. I do not have a set deadline for this book at this time, given my other self-imposed deadlines, so this one will most likely meander here and there until next year.

Other.
So yes...I have given myself a shit-ton of homework for the year, all due by December 31. And most of this will be worked on in tandem with everything else in my life. I'll be squeezing these things in between the cracks of my day; a slow day at work, at the gym, on vacation, what have you. Like I said in my previous post, I was able to handle my schedule last year, so I think I should be able to ramp it up a bit this year. I'm not sure if I've given any room for anything else to work on, but I know that I'll be working on all this on a day-to-day basis, and if time frees up for me to do something new, I will by all means embrace it.


Here's to an insanely busy 2014. Despite the workload, I'm looking forward to it.

Eep! Been awhile since I last updated here. Let's do a recap:

--Been a crazy busy year for me, personally and otherwise. I have wanted to work on side projects, but many of them have stalled for no other reason than I've been focusing mostly on the Trilogy revision during the week and the Blogging the Beatles posts on the weekends. I haven't really been able to work on anything during downtime at work (such as the 750 Words or uploading pictures/poetry), simply because there hasn't been any downtime lately. Things are finally quieting down, however, so perhaps it's time for me to jump back in.

--Speaking of pictures...I've been having a hell of a time trying to upload pictures to not just Tumblr but my WordPress blog, but I'm beginning to think it's an IE quirk. The uploads work just fine on some days, but stall others. I was able to upload just fine on Chrome, so perhaps I should utilize that browser for visuals from now on. For the record, I'm not an IE hater...it has its issues, but 98% of the time it works just fine for me, so I see no reason to abandon it. The only issue that remains is figuring out how to tweak the pictures I've taken with my phone--about half the pictures I take are showing up as upside-down or sideways when I try to upload them to Tumblr or elsewhere, and it's a pain in the butt to tweak them. Lastly...I may have been looking at low-end cameras that are a step up from my current one. I'm not actively looking to buy one at the moment, but I am window shopping. I do get some neat shots from my current camera, but I'd really like to take some more professional-looking pictures as well.

--With other side-projects, I'm hoping to get into the music thing again right soon. I finally broke down and bought the newest version of the NCH software at Fry's [the famous computer/appliance store down in Palo Alto where all the original Silicon Valley computer nerds have always gone to--it's a lovely ride and takes you past the Stanford campus too]. I plan on installing the software in the next day or so and working on that project on the weekends. As mentioned much earlier, the current iteration of my solo music work is going under the name of Drunken Owl...I just need to start working on the songs in my head now!

--As you might have noticed, I'm in the home stretch on the Blogging the Beatles posts. I've got two albums and a small handful of singles left to go before I'm done with the series. So what will I do from there? Well, since I had such a fun time working on it, I'm thinking I'd like to go over a few albums and discographies of other bands in a similar fashion. I did a few previously (like the Love and Rockets 5 Albums review), and would like to cover the some other classic alternative albums. I think the next non-Beatles post may be about the reissues of We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It!!'s two albums that came out earlier this year--they're an interesting duo of albums worth checking out.

--The Great Trilogy Revision Project is moving ever forward. I'm a little over halfway through Book II, which means I'm right about at the halfway point for the trilogy itself. That's saying something, considering I started this major revision late last year. I'll go into detail on that in another post later on, but for now I'll just say that I'm quite happy with the outcome. I'm also looking forward to finishing it up so I can truly start working on a new main project--something I haven't done in a few years, come to think of it! Not sure what it'll be, but I have a few contenders. As for the trilogy...I have sent out a few queries to agents and may send to a few publishing houses as well, and have yet to hear anything back as of yet, but I'm fine with that. I'm also keeping the avenue of self-publishing open as well (and yes, I've done my homework in that direction)--more on that in a later post too.

--Art! Geez, I've been so busy on the weekends that I've let that one slide again. I need to jump back onto the schedule of working on that as well. Plug in the ol' Wacom and work on the drawing. I would like to try a bit of blue-penciling when I have the chance, but that might be a little further down the road, maybe in the new year. For now it's working out the drawing kinks and relearning how to draw.


So yeah...it's been a busy year, but it's also been quite the creative and productive one, and I'm happy about that. We're on the last quarter of the year, often the most productive time for me, as well as the time of year when all the great new music releases come out (coincidence? I think not!). It's the home stretch, and I'm not going to let it slide.