Knowing Best

   If you hadn’t noticed I am pretty much a nerd. Now, I am not going to get into a silly argument about HOW nerdy I am or how OLD SCHOOL I am because really, who cares? What does it matter? What matters is I am nerdy. Beyond that it’s just trying to impress you and, again, who cares? Personally I lean more towards a movie nerd, and specifically a horror movie nerd BUT I love all manner of nerdery.

And what is nerdery, to me?

Nerdery is the deep seated passion for any old particular thing to which you border on obsession. You can be a sports nerd, craft nerd, comic nerd, whatever. To me it’s the passion, the obsessive passion to know that thing in and out that makes you a nerd. Keeping the word ‘pure’  by saying that it is only if you like comics or games or toys or science that makes you a nerd is silly. Being a nerd isn’t shameful, though it isn’t that cool to people outside of others interested in the same things. Come on though, you will never convince me that the person that knows sports stats and plays fantasy sports that they are not nerds. They are, they just act as if what they love is somehow more legit. It isn’t. It’s still nerdy.

The thing nerds want and need more than anything is to feel that their passion is not abused or taken advantage of – you hate to invest yourself into a thing only to have it changed to such a degree that it takes your interest out of it. That’s where a lot of drama comes up in the nerd realm – finding the line of how far something can be pulled from what you fell in love with before you walk away altogether.

I had a strange moment recently when I was watching IRON MAN 3 where as a nerd I felt that Marvel had gone too far. They had left the path and to such a degree that they left me behind. Now, the movie is a huge hit and beloved by millions, and that’s swell. I have no issue with that. And I am not the type that will cry SELL OUT when something gets popularized. I didn’t grow up on Iron Man comics so maybe I am not a great example here but I do dig the character and have read enough stories about the fella that I feel attached to him. The thing with IM3 was that it felt like Marvel felt so self conscious about fan blowback about the second film (some of that legit, to be fair) that they felt they needed to really up things for the third film. That’s fine. In doing so though they seem to have hired a director that didn’t want to tell an Iron Man story but wanted to tell a Robert Downey Jr. story and a Tony Stark story. Well, that’s fun, I guess, but when you start to play fast and loose with established tropes like the roles major villains for that character play it starts to bother me. It felt as if Mr. Black, the director, didn’t so much want to tell a story about the Mandarin but felt he had to. Just as Sam Raimi didn’t want to tell a Venom story in SPIDER MAN 3 but was compelled to so he did a lazy job of it. Same thing here. The main thing that the first two films had been building towards was barely touched upon to me, and thus created what felt like a waste of a story arc that had been established clearly from the outset of the first film. It was a wasted opportunity and a waste of two films.

I get the passion to want to tell your own story. To give things your own spin but you need to do so by taking into consideration the history of the characters you are working with and the fans that are invested in the work. And some of the failing comes from DC and Marvel themselves, who keep waffling on what they want their comic characters and stories to be and reflect. They want them to be fun fare for the fans but then they want to appeal to a new generation of readers. I can get that. But it seems silly to pander to people by changing the sexuality, the race, and the intent of established characters. ‘Hey, look, you’ll like this guy, he’s just like you now, he’s – fill in the blank’. Instead of creating new characters that can be NEW, that can start with a new slate and can be whatever color, creed, religion, sexuality, and gender you want the notion is to fake it by taking established characters and making them something they weren’t – which panders to the new folks and alienates the established fans. Just because you don’t like a villain don’t force them to be something you want them to be if they have an established past. Yes, evolve the character, add to their mythology, and make them reflect a modern world but to pull their teeth and change what and who they are and what they represent is like spitting in the faces of the fans.

DC and Marvel have no guts. They claim they want to make these GRAND and SWEEPING changes to their comics but never do. Not for good. No character is dead forever, no choice is ever long lasting, and nothing really changes. I love both companies and a lot of the work that has been done but they never make bold moves. Let some of the old characters go. Don’t kill them for a couple months for ratings but let them go. Let them retire. Let them die. You want to evolve? You want to grow? Don’t force change on established characters but create new characters that better reflect a changing world. A gay Batman doesn’t make you a noble company making brave decisions but a pandering company out to make headlines and with no respect for the established fanbase.

What Iron Man 3 represented to me, as fun as it was at times, was how fast and loose Marvel is willing to play with their long established tropes. I have read over and how Mandarin was a racist character that needed to disappear or change. See, the thing there is that if you are paid to write a film in a series you find ways to make the established themes, characters, and story work. Maybe you make changes, make you evolve them but you don’t throw those things out because it is difficult to make the things work. You think harder to make them work.

I love comics and have loved the current comic movies. There is some great stuff out there. The thing is that the films can be their own universe as long as they stay true to themselves. IM3 can be its own thing but it has to play by its own established rules and it didn’t. And there’s the problem with modern superhero comics in general – the rules are fast and loose and serve only to continue the money machine. There are some good stories still but the only surprises come when there needs to be a bump in revenue, not as a natural progression of the story, the character, and the brand. Maybe if the major comic companies put the same care into their comic franchises as they try to put into their movie franchises. Me, I’d set out a long term arc and retire characters and stories and work to create new brands to reflect ideas that are more modern.

Or don’t.

Whatever.

Just don’t spit in the faces of your fans, and your characters and then cross your arms and fall back on the old line of – fans just don’t want anything new. We do. We WANT to be surprised, but we want to be surprised within the worlds that YOU already established. By writing and rewriting and ret-coning stories it just alienates the fans and creates the deadzones that have plagued comics time and again in the past.

BOOM!

- c

www.meepsheep.com

Because Giving Up Is What We Do

Living in Flint, Michigan isn’t easy.

Ha.

Yeah, I know, run through your Open Mic Thursday stand-up routine for me about how crummy the city I love is and I’ll move on when you’re done.

And…

OK.

The thing about this area is that yeah, there’s a lot of things that are going on here that are bad, not ‘not good’ but bad. I am not going to belabor that point because the local and national media has a pretty good grasp on things here, at least the crime and all the bad things going on. It’s a drag. The thing is though that in pointing out all the bad things here the good is overlooked. Hope and all that stuff doesn’t make for engaging news, I get it, and I am not going to act as if the story of someone murdered or robbed is less important than the story of a festival or a new business. The math doesn’t work out, nor should it.

Tragedy, bummer though it is, is universal. Joy isn’t. I wish that wasn’t the case but it is. We all feel pain, we all know tragedy. Not everyone knows joy. And in a city that has a lot of struggle to overcome it doesn’t really seem reasonable to expect everyone to jump for joy at the small successes and the little victories.

Yet…

It’s so easy, so very easy to burn the world down.

All it takes is a match and something flammable.

It’s building things, things like hope that create a foundation for people and for the future, that are hard to do. Hard to make.

There is no glory or honor or true joy to be found in tearing things down yet we are a city that thrives on negativity. And again, some negativity is natural and reasonable but there’s a point where you start hurting yourself for attention and a point past that where you hurt yourself because it’s the only thing you know and that’s where we are. We just don’t know HOW to be hopeful anymore. So many have been waiting so long for the clouds to part that you begin to wonder if there was ever a sun at all. Ah, but the thing is that sometimes you have to make your own light. And you know what else fire is good for – creating light.

The same passion people put into their negativity can be put into doing things. And sure, an art show, a craft show, a concert, a bicycle tour, a car show, none of those things alone makes the city a better place but together they start to change perceptions. They start to change minds. Every little act, builds to bigger acts. Every small event opens the door for more events and bigger events. Events and ‘happenings’ lead to more people coming into Flint, spending money in the city and spending time here. The more good and fun things going on the better chance that all the young people that go to school here will spend time here doing more than just GOING TO SCHOOL. And the more people coming here, being here, spending time and money here the more attractive it is for businesses to come here to take advantage of all those people.

Simplistic reasoning?

Sure it is, but it’s HOPEFUL reasoning and there is reason TO it.

I’d rather be hopeful about Flint than to spout nonsense like it should be bulldozed and burned and ignored. It is just so easy though to give up because then you can’t get hurt, you can’t get disappointed, and you look like a genius when things go or stay bad.

Only, you shouldn’t root for the fall of a city and its people.

You shouldn’t root for destruction.

It’s petty. And small. And mindless. And childish. And it’s so black hearted that it makes you wonder what it is that gives those people any joy at all, because if watching people flounder and watching a city die is your kick then you’ve got way more trouble than Flint.

We’re at a point in Flint where we can burn the city down or light it up and I choose to light it up. I choose to believe that the small things, the small events, the small businesses, and the little bits of kindness and civility we offer one another can make a different and can change the tide. There are a million reasons why things got bad in Flint – jobs left, poverty grew, education fell, people moved away, drugs and violence grew, and apathy and frustration skyrocketed. Those are just SOME of the reasons things got bad but you know how they can get better – Hope. And yeah, it takes more than wishing on a four leaf clover to change the fate of a struggling city but it’s like kicking an addiction – if you don’t take that first step, no matter how small, you can never learn to kick.  You can never learn to run.

And who knows what will happen in the end? I know where I stand though and isn’t with a can of gasoline in one hand and a match in the other. No, I stand here blowing on the embers of the spark that makes Flint so special, hoping that eventually those of us who believe and work to make this a city to be proud of will be here to see the Phoenix rise from the smoldering ashes. 

Life’s Full Of Disappointments And I Am Full OF Bees

It’s a horrible feeling to look yourself in the mirror and admit that you can’t do everything. To admit to yourself that sometimes plans, as well intentioned as they may be, are sometimes just plans. Goals are just goals. And sometimes we can’t always do what we had wanted.

It’s a rotten thing to admit to.

It’s a rotten thing to see.

BUT…it’s better to admit to it and to see it than to blind yourself into running into a wall.

Because the thing is this – it’s a lot easier to pick yourself up and dust yourself off if you are willing to accept that you do have limitations, in life and as person, rather than naively ram yourself into walls trying to knock them all down if they try to stand in your way. It’s a good ideal to have, that notion that you won’t give up and won’t let up no matter what but the fact of the matter is that life isn’t about blunt force, it’s about forward movement, and sure, that movement doesn’t always seem to be going at the pace you want but if it’s even inching forward it’s still progress.

Life is about progress.

Even in our setbacks.

But, about my setback – I had decided a few months ago that it’s time to pull the tents down, for the clowns to clean the greasepaint off, and for the circus to close up shop. I am a writer, and always will be but for now, for a very long now, it’s time to stop putting books out. Not because I ran out of material or things to say but because it feels as if I am nearing self-parody. I have seven books out and two last ones on the way and there’s a point where you have to look yourself in the mirror and say – enough is enough. I have put out collections, two fairy tale books, and a novel. With these last two projects my slate is pretty clear. There’s a long lost book I had written ages ago and lost and was going to re-write but it isn’t pressing or necessary. These other books were. I proved to myself that I could do it – I could write, edit, put together, do the art, and release and support my own books (with aid from CreateSpace’s services). I was able to also do it with a LOT of help from friends. I was able to prove to myself that I could do it and I have loved it. I love the process of writing, of editing, of putting the thing together, of doing the art, and of supporting it. I love it and hate it both. Hate it because it isn’t the most fun, and it is stressful to walk the line of ‘artist’ that just wants to create and ‘business person’ that feels the need to sell. But there’s a point where you have to say – enough is enough.

I am at that point.

Which is not to say I won’t support the books I have but that it’s time to focus on other projects in my life. I don’t want to reach a point where it feels as if I am making a fool of myself. And I am being harsh, but I am harsh because I need to be to understand where I am. I don’t want to be someone who publishes out of vanity. And I feel like, with the limited interest in my work that I see, it’s time to re-assess things. Not because I don’t think the works are invalid but because I need to find better ways to get the books out to people. I need to support books I have put out and the two nearing completion, and I need to work on other projects.

None of this is awesome, but it’s necessary.

It’s far more fun, for me, to go through the process of creating a book than it is to support books that are already done.

As for the two books for this year, the ‘last two’. They’re done. I wrote them in two months. One is a book of zombie stories that comprise a novel. I started it in 2000 and slowly added to it and finally realized it was time to finish it. I had sat on it because I didn’t want to be the person that put a zombie book out after the ‘fad’ wore off. Well, that was several years ago and the ‘fad’ is still going so I figured I needed to finish it and get it out. I am currently in the edit of that book. The other book is the third and last of the Meep Sheep books and is a darker story about the passing of the torch from the Queen to her daughters. I wrote that in February and have let it sit a bit before I go back to edit it. I have a lot of work to do on it, to flesh it out, but I like what it is. I was really worried because I knew what I wanted out of it but wasn’t sure how to get there. In getting there the book changed, the story changed, and the ending change…and it’s a better book because of all of those things if you ask me.

The hope and plan for the year had been to get these two books written, edited, and released in Spring in time for two conventions I wanted to do in my area. Alas, the real work is a cruel mistress and I couldn’t afford to do the two shows so I decided to slow myself down and to stop driving myself so hard. I really want to get these books done, out of sheer AHHHHH excitement but also out of the need to move forward to other projects. Art, for one. So this is a setback. A big one. A heartrending one because it means that I have to figure what to do but in the long run it’s necessary and it’s good. I want to make sure these books are ready to go.

And life’s all about setbacks and disappointments and it’s figuring out how to deal with them that begins to define you. You keep moving forward, inch at a time, or you smash your head into things and try to force the world to conform to you instead of learning to move within the world as it is and to slip between the cracks. It is a VERY fuzzy future for me on the artistic front, the writing front, but it’s exciting because whatever happens is going to be a huge surprise.

C

www.meepsheep.com

Catching You Up

As I sit here and edit the first of two books I will have out this Spring I ponder that there are scads of people that are not really sure who I am or what I do.

KNAVES!

Now is a perfect time to catch up before the zombie novel and the last of the Meep Sheep books hit the scene. And daggumit you can catch up or only a dollar an e-book. Or you can chip away with the physical copies, none of which are terribly taxing on that old pocketbook of yours.

Don’t you want to be in on what all them hep cats at the soad-shop have been talking about? Don’t you want in on the ground floor before I sell out and write my magic-vampire-teen version of 50 Shades of Stuff? Sure ya do. Everyone wants to be first, and if not first then best, and if not best then loudest.

Now’s your chance.

So get on it, chump, I mean, pal of mine.

Links to the RIGHT or you can hit up www.meepsheep.com.

KAPOW! Get some of that awesome right in the KISSER!

(proper blogs will re-appear once I get these darn books edited)

The End Of The Third Age

  Just after midnight last night I finished work on the third Meep Sheep book. It took a little longer than the month I had planned on but I hadn’t anticipated the walls I would hit at the end. I can say that I wrote a novella now. One single story that is 83 single spaced pages. Something I never intended to do or thought I could do. As I had gotten to the end I realized I needed to make some big decisions on things that I hadn’t thought about when the fancy notion of a last book popped into my head.

Oops.

  Well, it’s done. And…it’s not what I thought it’d be. Not that this is a bad thing at all but when I first was sketching the book out in my mind it definitely was different. Even ended in a different place geographically in that world but the logic of the story forced me to change how I was putting it together and writing it.

  And am I happy?

Yes. Though I am much too close to really have a feel for how well the book works. I need to give it a month and go back and edit it and look at it then. Then I will know. But I like a lot of moments in the book and am happy how it comes together. 

And I am sad because this is the end of a journey. These three books were different than anything I wrote and even as the series got darker it was still a fantasy series with characters I am very fond of but I am glad it’s done. I wanted to get the projects off of my plate that had been started but never finished and I have done that. There’s editing to be done but in the end I got done what I need to do. 

The book/s are done. 

Wow. 

I have been talking about this book for a while now and it’s crazy to believe it’s over. But it is. As is a piece of who I was for the past several years. There’s still edits to do, still promotion to do, but really, the course of the ship began to change last night and where it leads, well, even I don’t know that. 

http://www.meepsheep.com

 

Tone

   The notion of tone has been weighing heavily on my mind of late as I work to finish the last book in the Meep Sheep series. A touchstone for those books, for me, has been that they were not dumbed down but were accessible to most ages. I strove to write and release something that wasn’t like the rest of my work but was something that hearkened to a time where stories could be dark and a little dangerous but were not offensive. 

That was my hope. 

   Now, was that why I started writing the first story? Not at all. I started because I had an idea and I had what I hoped was a fun story to tell. To me, that’s the perfect way to start with writing. I know I want the story to be what it needs to be and then worry about the rest later. I mean, I definitely worry over things and context and all that overall I try to let the story do its thing. 

That hasn’t been as easy this time around. 

   With this last book in the series I am tying up loose ends and sending things off into the setting sun. It’s a much darker, much more ‘mature’ book in that it’s about the fact that you can’t always wish away your troubles and that some things need to be faced and dealt. It’s a book about finding your place, about letting go of your past. And its a book about finding the magic in a place where it never seemed to exist before – like yourself. 

I am too close to the book to know how I feel about it completely but the tone is definitely a concern. This is a book about a change, a cataclysmic change and a war. As such It needs to be dark, and the reader needs to feel that darkness. If there’s no danger for the characters then there’s no depth to the story. I just need to make sure I am walking the line and not turning what had been fantasy tales into horror stories. I think I am on that edge. It’s dark, darker than the other two books, but it’s not cruel, and that’s a big part of it to me. I am not trying to make the reader upset or trying to punish characters. I am just trying to serve the story. 

My hope is that my choices work for the best. 

I will round out a lot of the hard edges in the edit. I just want to make sure I don’t alienate people who have been with me for two books. That’s an investment of time and interest and the last thing I want is to betray their trust. 

Heavy is the head fat with stories. 

Sheesh. 

I really need to finish this thing. 

- c

www.meepsheep.com

What Is “Bad"?

   There is particular sort of hubris that comes from anyone bold enough to decide they are qualified to tell people the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ but it grows ever more vast when it becomes more than just a sort of sign-post opinion and is presented as a firm entitlement to tell people their tastes are lacking.

Oh, criticism.

As someone who has reviewed movie for ages I have walked the line for a long time when it came to telling people about the movies I was watching. I have always tried to make it know that the movies I am reviewing are playing to my tastes and that I am reviewing it from that standpoint. I mean, people like different things and for different reasons and that’s what makes us all interesting. Even horror nerds can never agree on what it is we all like, but, again, those differences build the bedrock for what molds interesting discussions and impassioned arguments.

Everything has validity.

It’s not fair to look at the work of one person or a hundred and to dismiss it out of hand, even if the work is clearly awful. As a reviewer you just see some things that blow your mind that they were made. For me, it’s the level of passion that salvages a work though. Some things are not good, are bad, but at least they were made with passion but then there are things that are made to cash in on a trend and that just drives you crazy. But just because I think that the work is silly and derivative doesn’t mean everyone will. There is a customer, a consumer, an appreciator of everything.

But what is there a ‘bad’?

There is a bad but bad is subjective. As is good. The same person that loves Mozart may hate Whistler. The person that loves GWAR may love ballet. And at the core of things, at the center, who the heck said that anything is inherently ‘good’? There is a classism and snobbishness to the idea of dubbing things good and bad with the notion that things that were enjoyed initially by the wealthy are inherently good. The love of classical music does not make one any more cultured than a love of gangster rap makes one a deviant. The idea that there is a base of goodness from which to draw from, to use as the measuring sick is a farce and people need to understand that.

Because…there’s nothing, nothing that is by its nature universally good. Nor universally bad.

  I get very frustrated when people have the gall to go on a crusade to save others from ‘bad art’, as if a degree in art history and an appreciation of obscure artists makes one cultured and enlightened. Any time someone wants to tell me what is ‘bad’ and what is ‘good’ I immediately smell pretension and self service and want to get far far away because there’s always a pitch and the pitch is always their opinion on what is ‘good’.

Oh dear.

The wrongheadedness of such enlightenment is mind numbing. It’s like calling someone fat and telling them to put down the pie instead of helping them see how delicious the food that is better for them is. At its base, any time you tell someone what their opinion should be is presumptuous. If someone chooses to like this or that or whatever it’s their choice to make and it isn’t really our business to tell them otherwise.

Unless…

There is always wiggle room.

I think what bothers me more than anything about the idea of ‘bad’ art is that people are taking a chance to truly enlighten and are using as a way to grandstand. You go in to broaden your horizon and get a lecture on art styles that do little to piqué your interest. Art is such a subjective thing that it’s a little silly to think there’s a one size fits all sort of taste meter.

So where do we start?

Why don’t we go about things with a new focus with less shaming on someone’s taste and more horizon growing of that taste. Not because what we like is better but because what we like is different and may be something THEY also like. I look at it this way – there are a lot of people who love the artwork of Thomas Kincaid. Mr. Kincaid’s work reached a level of pop fame and crossover appeal that made the general public fall in love and the art major cringe. So here’s the thing, instead of shaming someone for liking his art and mass-marketed art why not show how that art is similar to another artist, or other artists, and help to expand that person’s artistic palate. THAT needs to be the thrust of this conversation, not to shame or to speak ill of ANY sort of art. The hope of anyone that is well versed in something should be to help teach people some of the things they have learned. Education baby, not degree flaunting.

I think people forget that as a nation, as a people we are not the most educated in the arts. People would rather spend money too see a movie more than they to read a book. They’d rather buy a poster of a celebrity than they would a print of classic art. We need to not shame people for their tastes and their interests and work to help broaden those tastes. There’s room for the profane and the divine. There is room to like modern pop music and to love roots music. People don’t need to be shamed, to be lectured to about how bad what they like, or what they love is. Instead we should see if there’s room to teach them about what we love to see if they’ll love it also. We need to treat one another more like friends because a friend influences without judging, inspires without forcing, and accepts that sometimes our tastes are not always going to be compatible.

Bad Art?

I suppose but that’s a little subjective, isn’t it, despite what degree gives you the self determination that your understanding and grasp of art is so rounded as to tell people their own appreciation is lacking. Perhaps we should focus less on how ‘bad’ things are and instead focus on how inspiring art in general is because every art, every artist goes through phases, and grows in skill, talent, and vision and to dismiss art, and its artists out of hand is unfair to the artist and those that may hold their art dear.

Hey, what do I know, I’m just someone who makes art. I sure as hell ain’t no artist.

Self Serving Lane

   I have posted about this before but I think it bears repeating. 

If it’s your passion – you find a way to make it happen. 

BUT…

Sometimes YOU need to make it happen. 

With the advent of donation websites artists are suddenly becoming fancy panhandlers, shaking their paint brushes and camera bags for money for projects they want to work on. Now, we all should know that artists don’t make a lot of money. Like every ‘art’, unless you are part of a small percentage of people who find that niche and really become a ‘name’ you just don’t make a lot of money doing Art. And that’s fine. Art is a passion. If it’s a job then you better put out plainly marketable and salable stuff. But if you do Art because it makes you happy and you like it, well, you have to go in understanding that you may not make a living at it. 

Why?

Because there’s a weird line that we’ve crossed. 

People need to understand that ANYONE can create art. Truly, ANYONE. But it takes time, and practice, and patience, and work. So because people feel like ‘I can do THAT’ they don’t take art seriously and don’t feel it’s worth what people want to make for it. 

There’s also the issue that artists need to appreciate the market and not get mad when they don’t always get paid what THEY think the art is worth. Sadly, it’s the buyer that has the power. Unless you have a very salable piece or a name you can sell you are at the mercy of the buyer and the buyer doesn’t always want to pay what art is ‘worth’. I have sold paintings and books that I felt were ‘worth’ more than they sold for but then I stepped back and realized – Hey, someone wanted that, they HAVE it, neat. And that worked for me. But I am not a ‘professional’ artist. At all. But that doesn’t mean I don’t take it seriously. 

The thing of late is that marketing for art has become too easy. Too easy because we don’t work to market anymore. We do some shows, meet some other artists and be-friend them, and then we just sell to one another. And that’s cool but, well, I wanna sell to strangers. I want people with no investment in ME to want my work. I don’t want to guilt friends into doing it. 

And it does hurt when you don’t get the support you wish you did from friends – I always wish more friends cared about my books and art than do but, if they care about me that is all that matters, isn’t it? But there’s a bad, bad habit artists get into when they pitch over and over and over to friends because you focus more on them and less on the new customers and clients. 

We stop working at being artists and work at being panhandlers. 

We set up donation sites for our projects, and funding sites and beg people to support us and our art because it’s our passion, and that’s awesome but, well, it’s OUR passion, not theirs. This is a project for you but for them maybe the project is putting up drywall, or helping sell Girl Scout cookies, or saving the eco-system. And you have to ask yourself – what am I doing for them?

Because that’s the thing – you are asking a favor with no collateral on the line. Sure, you will give them a memento of you project but it’s YOUR project. YOUR business. Not theirs. All too often these days we artists are happy to turn to a funding site to raise money for thing we want to do. We don’t generally NEED to do them because if we did we’d find another way to do it. I mean, so I want to paint with orange. Well, I can go buy orange paint. I don’t have the money. Well then, I guess I mix up some yellow and red and see what I come up with. That’s Art. 

And that is why not everyone can do it. 

Everyone can take a picture, write a story, sing a song, but not everyone can do it well, or find ways to do it that are unique, or find a way to do it when it looks impossible. 

That’s the work of Art. 

We can’t do every project we want to do. There isn’t enough time, aren’t enough resources, and there isn’t enough US to go around. We have to make the hard choices. And to me, one of those choices is when to go to others to fund what you want to do. 

I don’t know that I could do it. Being a writer it’s a little easier to say that, but I do also paint, and do take photos. I am sure I could find stuff for people to fund and support. For me though, I can’t do that because this is MY work, MY business, and MY benefit if it works out. I need to find a way to make it work. We’re artists, we’re supposed to make it up as we go along and find ways to make the impossible happen. 

We can’t keep relying on friends to buy our work and support us and make our dreams come true. That’s our job, and maybe it’s time we started putting the work back into that part of things once more. 

…c…

Crap, I Did It Again…

  For a guy that never intended or wanted to write a novel I don’t really listen to myself very well. I just finished writing the last story for another long in the works book. 

The zombie novel began a lot of years ago as a short story called The Delicate Sound of Rain. I wrote it and really became attached to the story and the idea of that world. I started to tinker with the idea of a book about zombies but, well, I never wanted to write a novel. Never. Never-ever. So I thought, well, I can cheat it, I can write a novel of short stories. Ha-HA! Genius! I slowly began writing stories for this world and started mapping it out in my mind. I had a protagonist that I immediately connected to and was excited to work on it. 

Then I hit a wall. 

The zombie boom began about then and I realized that there was no way I was going to finish this thing before the boom was over and this was still a time when self publishing was the worst thing in the literary world to ever do. I loved the concept just the same but I needed to let it go. At least for a while. I figured some day, when the boom is long over and I am ready I can get back to work on the book and see what I see. I put together the stories I had as a chapbook and sold those with some other chapbooks to serve as a stopgap between my first book, BACK FROM NOTHING, and any future book. 

I was an optimist, even if I didn’t want to admit it. 

The chapbook was fun but had horribly small print and while it intrigued people it never really wowed them. For some reason I’d tell people at comic shows that I wrote books and they’d be surprised to not see pictures in the books. Weird. 

So 2012 comes and I realize that it’s time to start putting some projects to bed. I had let a couple long standing projects sit and wait for a time when the world cried out for these works and well, that day never came. But they deserved to be finished and released. 

The big one was the novel, A SHADOW OVER EVER, which I had begun work on in 1994. I had written, edited, changed, edited, changed, and worked on and submitted it to publishers for years. Now that I could get things published on my own it was the right time to do it so I set about the task of getting the thing edited then fixing those edits and working to get it put together and out. It was a huge project and a huge book. And I love it. 

I am not sure how well anyone else loves it but I love it. It represents a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of friends that have come and gone in my life during those many years. 

With the novel done it was time to move my gaze to two other projects, one being the zombie novel. That book had sat around for years and years as I waited for the bubble to burst and it never did. Which isn’t to say people are not darn sick of the undead but, well, I don’t care. 

So I got back to work on crafting a world of the living dead. 

The ideas have changed, the world has changed, my main character has changed some, but at its heart I love what it is. I won’t say it’s groundbreaking or any nonsense like that but it’s different. It’s very different. And I like it. 

I have a LOT of work to do. There’s still editing to work on and layout and story order and all that fun but man does it feel good to be done. To have it done. 

The journey, so far as that story, is complete.

Will people like it? Like what it says and where it goes?

Not sure. 

But I like it. 

I like it a lot. 

And that’s a heck of a start. 

…c…

http://www.meepsheep.com

ZING!

So I am stuck working the front desk at work which means I can’t really do my own job and am thus stuck manning phones and directing traffic. Well, I figured I might be able to get some writing in for the new book and started, well, got as far as a title for the story, and left it at that.

When I came back from lunch a co-worker was laughing to herself about SOMETHING but wouldn’t say what. So I just checked the story and saw that I HAD written some of it…only it was HER who had written.

And thus…here’s is today’s Wicked Burn.

Fire Breathers

They breathe fire….Makes one wonder, if they breathe fire, how can they eat and drink? Drink especially. Because if you think about it, if you breathe in and out fire, all the liquid you are trying to drink will just evaporate. You will have to be hooked up to an IV in a hospital because you would be dehydrated all the time. What kind of a life would that leave you with? Not a very productive one, unless you have the IV hooked up at home and you had an “at home” job you could do and never leave your house. Which brings to mind another very important point. If you breathe fire, how in the world will your house survive? It would go up in flames for sure. There must be some sort of fire proof contraption you can create to “capture” your fire while at home or in other situations where breathing fire would not be beneficial to the outsiders….

Oh and just think, you could only buy fire resistant clothing. Better hope your at home job is a gainful one, the extra money you spend on the special clothes, wow! If you are a fire breather, and you are getting dressed in the morning, you better hold your breath as to not take the chance your clothes may catch on fire. Don’t look down at yourself throughout the day either for fear of flame shooting right through your pants… OUCH! Opps,. Here you are!

THIS is my response - 

So there was a hippo once, see, and it breathed fire. It ate a lot of spicy foods. And because it breathed fire it never got smooches.

And hippos LOVE smooches.

Smooches and waffles.

Well, one day a pretty lady hippo came up to the hippo and was all…wanna smooch?

The hippo was all upset and sad because he couldn’t or he’d burn her face all up.

She blinked at him all shy like and smiled…and as she smiled snow came out of her mouth.

He shook his head.

What did he just see?

She smiled wider and the snow came out in clumps.

How in the…

“So, wanna smooch?”

He smiled and as he did flames came out and he nodded his head enthusiastically.

And thus, happiness was born.

HA!

Nice trick, lady!