The Demonweasel Speaks

This week has had a lot of quiet melancholy to it. I don’t know why I’m glum about getting older, but I am. A little bit. Not a whole, crippling bunch, but enough to kind of make me do the deep sighs every now and again when I think no one is looking.

It probably has a lot to do with eating a lot of crap (and erratically, to boot), not writing and not exercising as much as I should. These are all really easy things to fix, and nothing cripplingly horrible, but it still manages to give me grief. At least it’s stuff I can easily fix. I’ve been kind of mentally holding my breath and waiting to hear back about the revisions to SHADOW OF THE PAST, and I’ve read that most of the stuff should be read through the week of the 14th. So next week, at some point, I should hear something. It’s also funny because after I’d gotten permission to re-submit the manuscript, the agency made a blog post about resubmissions and how they were really not cool and if you get rejected that’s it, don’t try to resubmit. I read this feeling like a total ass, until I got to the end and it said “Unless we say you can resubmit with changes, then it’s fine.” I took a deep breath. I don’t know if that means I have better chances or not, but I’m just glad to get the nod to resubmit. Hell, I’m just glad I went back in and made it a better book. Even if I don’t get the tap, I’m going to query with a little more confidence now.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m still gonna query like a nervous spazz, but that’s just how I do everything.

I think I’ve mentally stalled myself until I hear about this re-sub. That’s kind of dumb, and I kind of need to move on.

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Speaking of getting old, I think my beard is calling my bluff. When I was younger I thought to myself that I’d grow a beard until I started to get white hairs in it, and then I’d shave it off. Well, the white hairs have come (and in greater numbers), but the shaving will not.

Well played, oldness. Well played.

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I’ve been listening to a lot of MF Doom lately. I put the whole DANGERDOOM album on the store MP3 player, and both Zane and Max made me CDs with other Doom albums on it. It’s pretty cool of them, even though I clearly can get them myself. It’s the thought that counts, and those two are dope. You have to love a man who bases his man rap persona on Dr. Doom, and samples to old Fantastic Four cartoon and the Herculoids. The motherfucking Herculoids!

God damn do I love the Herculoids.

If I could write one property in my time here on Earth, it’s the Herculoids. A serious, PULP FICTION-esque Herculoids. Like rebooting STAR TREK, but with more rock apes and laser-eyed dragons.

“AND YOU WILL KNOW HIS NAME IS GLEEP, WHEN HE LAYS HIS VENGEANCE UPON YOU!”

Yeah, that’s where it’s at.

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I joined a fantasy football league. Not just any, but with the StandardAttrition.org people, including awesome comic writers David Lapham and Jason Aaron. Virtual elbow rubbing with people that I respect and admire in the industry I want to work in make me feel all special.

I will probably feel less special when I come in last place and horrible embarrass myself.

Good times!

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I started this post when I was 32. Now I’m 33. And so double-30 begins…

When all is said and done, I’m in the best place I’ve ever been in my life. It’s the best birthday present I could ask for.

Been a wild summer.

Creatively it’s been immensely successful, finishing up what should be the final major draft of SHADOW OF THE PAST and getting the first issue of GIFTED penciled, but also getting what’s being published in WICKED TALES extended from the ten-page preview to the full 22-page 1st issue. The final pages were drawn in a burst of creativity and deadline drama by Lee, and they turned out really well. This burst at the end (with him drawing 9 pages in 10 days, after only doing about 3 pages in 10 months) really helped solidify our commitment and our confidence in this. With the rest of the issues already written, we have a chance to keep moving forward on this momentum and then get a real shot at submitting it other places as well. The WICKED TALES deal is nice, but we need to have a place where issue 2 can go an live as well. Who knows, maybe it’ll be time to look into on-line publishing.

With SHADOW OF THE PAST “done” I can work on submitting it, and it is in fact sitting with an assistant whose very kind rejection helped push me to really make it work, or at least work as well as it can right now. I have more confidence in sending it out now, but I hope that the edits were enough to push it into being accepted for representation. If not, I can still send it our other places as well.

I haven’t touched THE CORNER in a while, but I can refocus on that, as well as my other comic project that I have an artist working on, INFERNAL VELOCITY. It’s nice having multiple levels of stuff that can be worked on. Hopefully, there will be a dam break and I can start getting all of this stuff out there in waves. I know a lot of that is wishful thinking, but that’s really the only thing that works (when you couple it with hard work, of course).

Much of my work can be attributed to me coming home from the store, eating, napping for an hour or so, and then staying up until 3-4am writing, lettering or researching. It’s become habit to work on stuff, not a chore like I used to see it as, and I’m very thankful for that change in mindset. I used to work a couple of hours a week on stuff and feel like I was really hot shit, but after several long weeks of late nights and really putting it to the grindstone I feel like I’ve finally gotten a work ethic that makes success possible.

Or at the very least I can look at myself in the mirror and say I tried my hardest.

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We’re getting ready for a two-year anniversary party at the store, and when I look at the folks we’re inviting, I’m reminded of all the people that have moved away this summer. Gavin, Lee & Maddi, Jason & Emily, Andrew. It’s weird to have finally gotten to a place where I actually have real friends out here, and now a lot of them are moving. Of course, Travis is moving into town, so that takes some of the bummer out, but still…after almost a decade of pretty solitary living and work only friendships, it’s nice to have a circle of people that I can be friendly with an hang out.

Even better is celebrating two years of being married, and the longest relationship I’ve ever had. Lot’s of wild rides, but Kenzie and I are so very happy that it makes life really worth living. Wanting to provide for her and be ready for when we start a family is what pushes me to work those late nights and work so hard.

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Of course, with the good there is always bad. I’m worried a lot about my folks, the house they live in and my dad’s health. I haven’t seen them in two years, and the house in at least three and it really bums me out. I wish I was in a better position to help them, either financially or geographically, but that’s just not the case. That makes me want to work hard too. I worry about money, and I worry about Kenzie’s job amidst all this health-care reform (knock on wood!). It can’t be all great all the time, I know, but when you’ve been trying to climb out of the broke pit for so long, it gets to be a little depressing.

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I hate to say it, but I miss TV badly. We discovered TOP GEAR this summer, and that’s great, but we’ve already eaten up four seasons and it can be a bit much after a while. TRUE BLOOD and the HBO shows are great, but there hasn’t been anything worthwhile on for forever. Movies have been pretty much shit as well, with the exception of STAR TREK and HP. DISTRICT 9 was good, and I have high hopes for INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. Kenz and I are seeing it tomorrow after an anniversary dinner. Celebrating with violence and swearing; a perfect fit for our marriage. ;)

Oh god, work. Who knew being your own boss would be so taxing. People with sense, I’d imagine.

After a full computer upgrade, including a new subscriptions service and inventory tracking system, we took a break to work a booth at a local comic con on my day off. 6am to 8pm. Rock on, day off. But it’s all mostly done now, and all over but the tech support shouting (like, I know I’m supposed to pull 12 Green Lanterns, but who are they for? Computer: I dunno.).

All this pesky work nonsense means that I haven’t been as creative as I’d like to be. The “Shadows of the Past” revisions have been slower than iced over molassess, and to add to that I got a new artist for another comic book project I’m working on. “Untitled Supernatural Cross-Country Road Race Story.” That has been keeping me up nights, watching all the Fast & Furious movies and Cannonball and Gone in 60 Seconds (the original, not that Angelina Jolie shit) to fuel my inner, unfulfilled gearhead. Get it, fuel? Go screw, I’m tired.

Twitter makes blogging hard. I’m like, this is way more than 140 characters. Is that okay? Did I just type Google into Google? I think moving to a shorter system of blogs and away from long blogs would be really helpfull and make me feel less like I have to report on every minuscule of the event of the past however long I’ve neglected this.

But I will say I was interviewed for comicrelated.com about the “Gifted” preview that’s being published this fall. It was kind of surprising, being interviewed at the booth I was working with little to no prep time. Hopefully, I’m coherent. Did I mention I got up at 6am? That’s. Not. Normal. The idea of getting published is still kind of foreign to me, like a weird dream or wish that I may jinx if I think about it. I know it’s not a BREAKTHROUGHHUGEDEAL, but it’s something. Someone said “Yes, you’re good enough,” and that’s nice. Here’s hoping the anthology is a big deal and we all meet again in Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money.

So that’s the gist of it, and why I haven’t written much lately. Kind of wild yet boring, busy but boring. In short, very much like me.