Head Count

Well, it’s the end of another year and it’s time to start looking at how things went. Well, at least as far as writing and art goes. Adding up the numbers it wasn’t the most profitable year for me but that I made any money writing and doing art is pretty amazing. If you take away the cost of the events I did and the promotional material I did ok, but the costs are part of the deal. So, as it stands, this has to have been my most profiable year as a writer and artist, which is pretty boss. It’s never easy to want to keep doing this sort of stuff, putting what you do out there to be judged, but it’s rewarding. Every time you meet someone who likes or wants to own your work is always a gentle reminder that you are doing something right. Good, bad, all of that is purely personal taste but the value of rightness is something you can judge and can contol, and that’s pretty cool.

I did a lot of events this year -

Motorcity Nightmares.

Flint Comix Con

Motorcity Comic Con

Art of the 625

Baar Bazaar

Book Bizarre

The Re-Birth of Flint Cool

The People’s Arts Festival

Service Street Fair

Books and Authors

The Skelebration of Scares

The Punk Rock Rummage Sale

As well as some other set ups that I was able to take part in. All of the events, the good, the bad, the ugly, were valuable and fun in their way. I met amazing people, got my work out there, and kept getting the art and books in front of the people. It is pretty stressful doing events but as long as you can have fun and not let the investment you don’t always make back bring you down then you leave with a smile on your face. Fun is the key.

This year saw the release of the long in the works The Meep Sheep and I could scarcely be happier. With the help of my gal Amanda and my friend Marcus the book really became something I could never have imagined. It was a dream come true to get that thing out and if in its way it was a love letter to the people that inspired the stories and was my way to show a different side of what I write. As successful as the book was to me I still have big plans for it and for that world and 2011 will bring new chapters to the unfolding story of the world of the Meep Sheep. As it stands though, the feedback was very good, and each time I take a moment to think about it I smile because the book is done, is out, and is in people’s hands.

My other books saw new life as well because with three books out it allows me to sell them as a package at events and gives people options on what work they want to try. The biggest beneficiary of this has surely been Back From Nothing, which really had a new life. That book is a good way to show where I started and where I am and it’s been greato get that book in people’s hands.

As for my art I sold more art this year than ever before, and that has been amazing. I still consider myself a very ‘young’ artist and am still very nervous to show what I am doing but it is always great when you find people that appreciate what you do. I had a couple peole who were very, very nasty in regards to their impressions of my art but overall it has been meet with very good feeback. And now that I have an Etsy account it will make it easy for anyone in the U.S. to find and buy my art. HOORAY!

Finally, it has been pretty great to be able to work with local artists and authors to bring more events to the Flint area. I have been trying to find ways to advocate and support the arts in Flint and will continue to do that and the only way it can happen is with the help of the people around me.

So there you have it. It’s been a pretty fruitful artistic year for me. I can’t wait to see how 2011 and the new books will turn out.

Ohhh…did I say new books? Hm…wait and see.

c

A Reminder From the Back

So I had the distinct honor today of meeting with a friend to talk about writing, and while we were talking it hit me that, darn do I sound dour about writing. And I don’t MEAN to, I mean, if I didn’t love writing then I wouldn’t do it, but I think it’s more that I have been doing this long enough to have a realistic view on things. But while it’s all well and good to be a realist, you have to temper that with the dream, or the reason you got into whatever it is you do. I hate to think that I’d ever talk anyone out of following their dream. To the contrary I want to always be supportive and as helpful as I can be because I can’t imagine how damaging it would have been when I was just getting serious about writing and someone told me all their horrible stories of their set backs and failures. So, with that in mind, I wanted to say something.

Whatever you love, whatever you do – do it. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you can’t do or be whatever you want. There will always be limitations on our dreams, and we will have to temper our dreams with reality, but that doesn’t mean we cannot find a path to the dream in the end. It’s a longer life than we think sometimes and we have a lot of time to explore and discover, and the best thing you can discover and explore is yourself and your own passions. If you are passionate, you will find a way to do what you love. You may not get rich, you not get famous, but you will be doing what you love. There is one thing that you have to remember and that is that you have to honor the core of your dream, and not the window dressing. Say, you wanna work with people or serve the public. Now you’d LIKE to be president, but if that doesn’t work it doesn’t mean that you cannot still serve the public in another capacity. We get caught up on the window dressing – the fame and fortune many times – and forget the dream itself , the core of it. But as long as we keep that passion kindled, and so long as we don’t give up on our dream, nothing can ever stop us. It’s not a straight path to the things we want in life, but if you manage to stay on your path, it’s a wonder the places you see, people you meet, and things you do.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and create something!

c

What we Love

I can’t really tell you the day I decided I wanted to be a writer, or had to be a writer, or needed to be a writer, or whatever it is that compels us to do something. I can’t tell you because I don’t think there was a day, one day, where that dawned on me. I was always weird, always creative, always telling stories and the writing sprang from that. I can tell you that the first story I remember wanting to write, or starting to write, was about a killer doll. I remember telling my mom about it when I was fifteen. The first story I liked that I wrote, really liked, was called The Tragic Life of Death and is in my book Back From Nothing. That was written for a high school class. There was no one day though where I decided this is what I wanted to do, or would do.

The same goes for photography and painting and drawing – there was no day.

I loved drawing as a kid. Loved it more than I loved anything else. In high school I had a Commercial Art class and the teacher, who felt I didn’t belong there (and maybe he was right) told me one day I was no artist, when doing my final evaluation at the end of my seni0r year and I pretty much gave up art after that for a very long time. It was an ugly enough thing that it made me hate the thing I had loved for so many years. Who can say what he meant by what he said but, for me, a kid with a lot going on in his head, it was the exact thing I didn’t need to hear and it was enough to turn me off of drawing, seriously drawing, for a very long time. That changed, over time, as more and more I wanted to do art for what I wrote but, really, the fire that had burned so brightly had waned considerably.

Painting was something I had wanted to try my hand at for years though but had never had the guts or gumption to do it. I got involved in a local arts group here in Flint and with a small bookstore and, as the bookstore got involved in the monthly art walks in Flint, and the group started putting art shows, suddenly I wanted to do and be involved in art shows. Some friends and I started doing these small indie art shows in town (a vast story unto itself) and my appreciation of art really grew, as did my need to get back to doing it. A dear friend who paints got me an acrylic paint set for beginners one Christmas and that was two years and change ago. It was scary, at first, and still sorta is, but I love, it, dearly. I am no great painter, as I have said, but I love it. I love that I can tell different stories than I can with words. I am finally back into drawing as well. Not a lot, not like I was as a kid, when I would draw everything, but I am falling back in love with it.

Photography was another thing I had always liked and had wanted to get more serious with but never did. When I got my second digital camera, a step up from my original, I started seeing the world in different ways. In stories. In images. So I started taking photographs. They are not the most technically saavy things but they are passionate and true. Even more than with painting I felt embarrassed to take pics. I know so many ph0tographers, many of them snobs when it comes to their art, that I felt unworthy. It has taken a lot to get past that and even today I am still low key about my photgraphy. I am working on that though and now, with my first ‘serious’ digital camera, I feel right. IT feels right. Like the camera was always waiting to be there.

There are so many things that we come to love in our lives, passions that we find and so often we leave them behind as we get older and life gets fuller. One of the saddest things in the world is that my mother and sister turned their backs on their artistic talent. My mom channels hers into other directions, so it is still there, but muted, and that saddens me. I don’t always have time to write fiction – let alone to find the gumption to send it out to editors and publishers, eesh – but I cannot imagine stopping writing completely. I used to toy with the idea; play with the idea of breaking up with writing as if it was a lover grown stale, but I never really did. I never could.

You can turn your back on your passions but they are always there, an itch  you refuse to scratch. To me, if ‘growing up’ means turning your back on your loves, then why do we bother at all?

Very few things in life will make us truly, utterly happy. Few things will put us in touch with ourselves and who we are. And it is very rare to be able to give the world the gift of pure, simple passion. Maybe it is time to make time for the things we can’t find time for.

Maybe it is time to give back to ourselves for a change.

c