THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY

Thank you, Facebook.

2012-01-07T14:31:00.000-08:00

Who knew? Facebook got us back together after more than 30 years.

Drove 8 hours round trip yesterday to meet with a German Professor I hadn't seen since 1978.

Dagmar and Mohsin in the Streamliner diner.

She has hardly changed, and she has netted herself a handsome, funny Egyptian husband, named Mohsin. See if I'm wrong. That fedora is from Chicago, where else?

We had a hugely fun time in the town of Bainbridge, on Bainbridge Island, in the Puget Sound.

Me and Dagmar on the Bainbridge Village waterfront pathway park.

Okay, so following our noses to a wonderful local café, blathering our heads off about ghosts and shouldn't teachers receive an Oscar as performance artists, just for starters, and walking along the waterfront trail, finding the magical Madrona grove, and finally going back and having even MORE strong coffee may not sound like an exciting day of surfing or landing badly in wingsuits, but we enjoyed it.

Thankfully, people aren't carving initials on trees so much any more, but simply writing notes. Ours are very tiny, so you probably can't see them, but we know where they are.

Dagmar can still drop one eyelid without moving another muscle in her face. It's still just as funny.

We really don't need much to sleep dry.

In the Bainbridge shoreline walking park we found a hut made of broken branches and big-leaf maple leaves. After a day's rain, the inside of this little shelter was completely dry.

Thank you, Facebook. Even if we never meet up again, I'll remember this day forever.

Writer's Block With A Crossbow

2012-01-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

There's the friend whose brother cleaned out the burial fund, and used their father's body to run the HOV lane to a cheap cremation.

And my college professor who worked with a woman who came over with her husband with the von Braun gang, and years later settled in Illinois. There, the couple had problems with a deer eating the roses. They applied for a permit to shoot the deer. The state gave them one. They were allowed to shoot the deer.

As long as they did it with a crossbow.

And people are still complaining about Writer's Block because they can't think of any ideas.....

(Somebody in the State of Illinois was/is pretty cool.)

The cure for too much holiday party

2011-12-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

Sooner or later on a holiday, you have to get out of the house.

Everybody, including the cats, is turkey up to HERE.

Merry Stinzmas!

2011-12-25T11:27:00.000-08:00

Stinz putting out hay for the birds and the poor half-horses.

Process or DRAW.

2011-12-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

So.... do I spend all my time trying to process my books, or do I use it to make new art and pages?

I'm not getting any younger, so it may be up to others to get a lot of the additional book-processing done. I can stick smaller page counts up on Indyplanet or collections up on Amazon, but taking time to re-process into Kindle - considering my hundreds of books - is just going to eat up all my remaining years. Flogging at publishers before starting a project just eats up hours.

A quicky sketch from many years ago. Yes, you can pay me to do anything from a scribble to an epic.

I'm not trying to be all whiny or gloomy, but there's a reality here. Art takes time. Writing takes time. It's that or process. Process disappears. You can work your butt off on the ebooks and pdfs and paper versions, but all somebody has to do is fail their site or decide to change it, and years of work can disappear overnight.

So I'm sorry if all the stuff isn't going to be available everywhere all at once. You'll get the new stuff on the easiest sites, or the most long-running sites. I'm not going to run my head off any more to try to keep it all covered. When somebody else figures out how to pay themselves by harnessing my author engine, you'll get the full coverage. It can't be THAT hard, can it?

I'll try to keep updates going on the Bookstore (see it in the links, this page). I'll very much appreciate any reports to me of problems or broken links.

In the meantime, I'll keep inking, scanning, coloring. And taking time for commissions, because those are REAL.

I'm going to be SO rich when I'm dead. Those people in my will to take care of my cats are going to be so happy.

Beans and Eggs for Solstice 2011

2011-12-22T09:20:00.000-08:00

Just wrapped spices, tobacco, stick of anise in a page from an art catalog, and added that bundle and the last egg we had - the last egg of the old year from our hens - and gifted it to the roaring fire in Betsy the Stove. If that doesn't tell the sun it's welcome, I dunno what will. Boiling beans for the new year. Now keep me well enough after all this crud for the yearly chips-n-chicken (or fish) and Mac-N-Jack dinner at the Clallam Bay Inn.

Fearless and the Solstice Tree (Any pressies for kitties?).

Holiday Card 2011

2011-12-15T13:53:00.000-08:00

Hi! Click this image, download it, print it out on 8.5" x 11" paper of your choice, fold it up -- ta da! For those of you would like a paper card. Let's face it, paper and posting is an 18th-century technology; we might as well get ahead of the curve. Have a Happy Merry and remember -- after Solstice, the sun starts coming back! (The gold roses are from our yard).

She Told Me To - Another Interview with Donna Barr

2011-12-15T12:12:00.000-08:00

Sarah Coultier sent me some nice interview questions, and I'm posting it here as she suggested.

Hi, Sarah -- I'm typing this with the 'flu, so you might want to proof it.

My answers are marked with "D" (Hers are marked "S").

Donna Barr

S: Hey - I'm a student at Pacific Northwest College of Art and I'm supposed to interview three artists in the field that I want to go into. I actually have some things that I really want to know about how all five of you work, so - I know you're quite busy, but if any of you have time for a few questions, could you please answer mine? Even one would be awesome. If you want to post the answers to your blogs, I follow most of you in one form or another. And several of you have already covered some of these, so don't feel obliged to answer what you've already talked about.

D: Thanks for contacting me. I'll do my best.

S: Work ethic: from things you've mentioned on the internet, I know that all of you have continued to draw and update through depression, migraines, other jobs, and dealing with family. How do you manage it?Does the story have such a strong hold on you? Do you have an unusually strong sense of duty? A particular routine, or a system for getting things done that I'm not seeing?

D: The short answer: we're women.

KIDDING.

The other short answer: YES, to all of the above. I know I'm imprisoned by my Muses, and I'm German (the "duty" thang). The rule is: when not doing anything else, draw and write! Or even better, try to get the other stuff done when not drawing or writing.

My other trick: DRAW AHEAD. Do masses of stuff, and post a month's worth. So you CAN be sick or wrapped up in emergencies if you need to. Bless the internet for chugging along while we're doing other stuff. It's the way I've set up everything: WWWID (Will work when I'm dead).

S: Publicizing: what works for you guys? Who do you talk to? Where? Online or physical? Ads? Twitter? As far as I can tell, success is a combination of luck and just really being interested in your material - but some people do seem to make a success of advertising... and of course an audience needs to know you exist. How much is too much, for you? What's your experience with getting someone else to advertise for you? When did you decide there was enough demand to try to get your stories printed - or, for those who started before the grand era of webcomics and gauging an audience by online fan response, at what point did you decide to print, and where did you try to distribute it? Where do you wish you'd tried to distribute it, now?

D: EVERYTHING. Facebook, Lulu, Twitter, Createspace, Project Wonderful, CCNow and Blogger. You got those, you just do your hour of marketing and contacts every day. It's the online comiccon! You, too, can look at PayPal once in a while (and then regularly) and go, "Oh! Where did that extra hundred dollars come from?"

You print when you have enough pages: Ka-Blam.com (or other comics site) for comics page numbers. Lulu and Amazon for collections. Lulu and Ka-Blam for wholesale to your customers (fan and store). Amazon for cheapest discount to you for shows. Lulu for automatic ebooks.

The paper days? It was Diamond and nothing else. You can still do that, or flog it at book publishers. That world is still in the 18th century, when it started, all the rules still hold. What worked for Dickens will work for you -- but these days it will be pixels, not paper.

And we don't write cuz we're trying to get an audience. We write because demons have us by the back of the neck and are pushing our faces into the paper/screen.

S: Publicizing 2: Did trying to put yourself and your work out there make you feel like a flimsy facade with something ill and rotten behind it at first? If so, how on earth did you get over it, and do you think it has anything to do with how women are socialized to b self-effacing, or more to do with being an introvert, or an artist, or scolded for boasting as a kid...

D: Eh? Does not compute.

My stuff is good, damnit. I write what I can't find out there. Then again, I had a great blessing: I was daddy's little princess, but mom told me I was "enough to gag a maggot on a gut wagon." This taught me that NOBODY'S JUDGEMENT MATTERED BUT MY OWN. Get over yourself. And throw your relatives out of your studio. And your in-laws.

Oh, and I hit myself in the head with an ax when I was seven and immediately became obsessive, fixated and self-absorbed. Artist material! :P

(Fun with creaties; ask them when THEY had their head-trauma!)

S: Collaborators: Who's your favorite editor/collaborator/friend to take somewhere and babble at? What do they do that's special?

D: These days it's my fans on my websites. We have lots of fun giggling like girls over the antics of my characters (I'm not in control of any of this; I'm just management).

S: Collaborators 2: Do you have lots of artist and comic friends? Do you find you work best with engineers and scientists, or writers, or editors, or some other group of interests and traits instead? Do you emember how you collected most of them?"

D: My Facebook page is loaded with artists and writers and other creaties from all over the world. Editors and agents, too. I remember NOTHING about anything; the ax scrambled my memory, too; I have a hard time telling reality from dreams from imagination from tv commercials.

I love engineers; one of them is my BESTEST patron. They are so funny, tongue-in-cheek and self-aware (and they know art is worth money). The Desert Peach is an engineer. It's why my favorite Error Status is "418 I'm a Teapot."

(GOOGLE IT).

Scientists think my 1st rule of writing is hilarious: "If it's funny, it's right."

The other 2 are: "If it's physically possible for its time and place, it happened." And "If it didn't happen, it should have."

Or the short form: "Some idiot has already tried this."

(My rules of writing also apply to historical research).

S: Thank you very much if you have time to answer any of these. Any time would be fine, and you can pick any one question to answer if you want. I think I was supposed to ask how you got where you are in your careers, but this is the stuff I'm actually interested in. I apologize for how awkward this is. If and when you're ever in Portland, I'd love to meet you and say hi, and I'm just as awkward in person.

D: Awkward? NO! So nice and polite and well-thought-out! You should extend your teacher(s) my compliments.

Donna Barr

(and include this: http://www.donnabarr.com )

Sarah Cloutier

http://scloutier.tumblr.com/
http://melukilan.deviantart.com/

The Clallam Bay Totem Returns

2011-12-09T19:56:00.000-08:00

Embedded link - and more information HERE soon.

"How To Draw A Mini"

2011-12-04T09:22:00.000-08:00

This Clallam Bay Comicon now has a minion and a musician. Here's what the local folks have been asking for to get ready for the con:

2012 Clallam Bay Comicon

2011-11-29T15:34:00.000-08:00

When: Friday, July 13 to Sunday, July 15, 2012
Time: until 4:00 pm Friday, and around 11:am to 4:00 pm Saturday and Sunday
Where: My yard in Clallam Bay - 610 Frontier Street
During this: http://www.clallambaysekiufundays.com/ or until I get tired of it.

AUTHORS of any age who bring their own drawn or prose books, miniis, sketches, art (comics or writing) or any form of cartoons for sale or display get in FREE.

DEALERS who are selling any books or art but those they have created and own the copyright on pay $5.00, irregardless of age.

Admission for public: free.

DEFINITION OF DRAWN BOOKS ("comics" or "graphic novels"): ANY FORM IN WHICH ART AND WRITING BALANCE ONE ANOTHER. Go nuts. This is your chance to draw and write about life in Neah Bay (for example). Yes, you can use your nutty family as characters.

Provided: Big gazebo in my front yard on the grass.

NOT provided: Tables, food, water or a restroom (there's one downtown in the county park). If you just want to bring a fancy rug and pretend you're at a Souk, that's fine. I are a author, not a volunteer. I'm not advertising this, except here (and maybe on the post office wall), so if you want an audience, Facebook this.

Conditions: This is by a windy beach, so bring weights and a hoodie. If you want to swim, you'd better bring a wetsuit. There's an undertow. Local surfing, so you might want to bring your board (warning; waves onto a reef among logs. This is only for crazy people, and we don't have a lifeguard, so play Surfer Dude at your own risk. We shall just point and laugh). Bring binoculars to watch our eagle families, seals, harlequin ducks - sometimes an elephant seal pup (do not approach wildlife, thank you).

Housing: http://www.sekiu.com/ BOOK EARLY. The towns fill up in the summer.

Spoiler alert: The Mean Stuff: I'm just sayin'.

Babysitting (including letting kids look at books you haven't looked at and then bitching about it): $80.00 an hour. You will be billed.

Trash: TAKE IT WITH YOU. Or don't get invited back. There will be a list.

Table monitoring: This is your job. Either cover the space, or take your stuff with you, or get somebody else to watch it. Not me.

Brains... BRAINS.....!!!

2011-09-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

More fun about brains between me and Sy Montgomery:

"Continuing to read "Birdology."

Re studies of brain damage and music; my own childhood accident (hit myself in the head with an axe - don't ask) gave me the ability to see whatever I wanted as though it were really there. I used to play with real dragons. Probably why I wanted a TRex.

Over the years I've lost this ability. Brain growing up and re-configuring? Healing? No idea.

For the last 30 years I've asked artists and writers if they've suffered head trauma. The only one I'm not sure about said, "I don't remember." The rest described what had happened.

Supposedly, some South American tribal peoples hit promising kids in the head, to further their path to becoming a Shaman. I once wrote a short story about someone talking to a kid, describing what life was like back before everyone was hit in the head as a normal procedure for furthering brain development ("Cracked.").

I've described what happens as "Living on the glass prairie" -- we can suddenly see everything in our heads, all the time. Many of us suffer from insomnia, and have to take valerian or soymilk just to calm our brains down so we can sleep. The mention of one thing leads off to all the scenes and files in the head. We have real Junkbox Brains.

When someone says something like, "Mommy can see angels now!" I always want to ask when Mommy got her head accident.

That's just some personal experience - I don't know if it will be of interest to anyone doing brain development studies. The one thing I know about science or the arts or any other field of endeavor, we all live in our own file in society, like files in a healthy head. Passing on odd bits of information helps hook up worlds.

(I have a strange ability to be able to translate between worlds; I once stood in the San Diego University booth at San Diego Comicon and translated between the world of drawn books and academia. Maybe all research needs one Junkbox Brain on staff? Not really joking.)."

Sy:

"Holy God, Donna. This is very, very cool. Lately I have been researching ocotpuses, and this has heightened my interest in exploring different kinds of consciousness. (Octopuses, though neither social nor long lived, are extremely intelligent. Their intelligence evolved completely separately from ours. And about half of their neurons are not in their brains but in their ARMS, which if severed can go wandering about catching food items, which they then try to pass back toward the mouth, which of course is no longer nearby.)
I love the title of your story "Cracked." Where can I read it?
How long ago did you lose the ability to see your thoughts as if they were really there? I only once had this experience while waking and it was after taking ayahuasca with a shaman in the Amazon. In my vision, which hit long after the first two and I had gone back to bed, the star ship Enterprise (the old version) appeared under my mosquito net and slowly cruised through it.
Cheers"

Me:

"First of all, my apologies for sending a pdf file, but it's the easiest and most direct way of seeing the story, "Cracked Baby" (I forgot it was a pun).

Got a bit of a jump when re-reading it; the Tsunami/earthquake drill siren went off this morning. I'm getting so many of these jumps lately - read a word, hear it on the radio, or see the situation or image in reality (or is it just September, and the black fluttery things and noises about? :)

Octopusses (Greek plural) are the embodiment of "THING" in "The Adams Family?" Authors really do have some kind of weird insight.

Does this mean that "blob of neurons" or whatever it is in the Stegosaur's hips could be extra file attachments? How does this relate to phantom limbs? Do our brains function more like those crab parasites that take over the whole body? ("Parasite Rex").

Is our mental capacity, that seems to make humans act like a disease instead of a mammal, the result of symbiosis with a parasite? Like the toxoplasmosis that makes rats love cats? (And don't we catch it too? There's internet film of a dog and a deer happily licking a cat - it's SPREADING! Ha).

And with parasites controlling actions, did Star Trek and the XFiles have it right (and aren't those little crawly things ladybug larvae?).

(A friend works on Star Trek - and yes, the Ferengi tooth sharpener IS a nose-hair plucker with the top off. And are most of the sets are based on these convention hotels?)

Well, you've just flipped the switch this morning."

Bird Brains

2011-09-19T17:50:00.000-07:00

I've been knocking emails back and forth with Sy Montgomery, She's kindly allowing me to release the conversation. I hope you have as much fun with this as we are!

Here we go, with me contacting her:

"Love your bird experiences. They got me to thinking about bird brains - or rather, dinosaur brains.

Dinosaurs got locked into a small brain because their jaw structures surrounded the brain with hard bone, right? So, they had to go for a different quality of "thinking."

We've always said we could get along with far fewer brain cells - which dinosaurs do. But they do it in a way that's so different from us:

To put it in art terms, we have bitmap, they have vector. They don't think - they LEARN. Now. First time. Pattern upload finished, complete, and stored for future use.

When one of my 3 hens, Red, was out in the cage (many predators) making like a rooster at 7:00 am again (and coming up to it in volume), my husband Dan muttered, "The poor neighbors."

I leaned out the door, saw she was just singing to hear her head rattle and yelled, "SHUT UP!"

She gave me that Chicken Look - and has stopped yelling herself. First time. Done.

They build a file NOW, and keep it. Or, to try to put a little scientific rigor into this email, they SEEM to. Now my questions:

1. Can they change the file?

2. Or do they wipe and rebuild within seconds?

Thank you for letting me ask, if only to hear my own head rattle."

Sy Montgomery:

"Dear Donna,

What an interesting email! I've discussed this briefly with Irene Pepperberg and my paleontologist friend Gary Galbreath. They can't answer you questions either! But are thinking about it. If either get back to me with further thoughts I'll pass them on to you.

What you describe sounds exactly like what my falconry instructor says about her hawks. They don't seem to think (as in to ponder or consider), but they learn incredibly fast and never forget.

I would expect--just from my own experience with my own, non-avian brain!-- that while it would be easy to add to a file, it might be very difficult to wipe it clean or replace it. I have a lot of trouble with this. Birds are credited with being greatly instinctual (as if instinct is stupidity instead of wisdom). Their kind of instant learning is similar to how we learn phobias, for instance--which are extremely difficult to unlearn.

I love it that Red figured out what you wanted right away. If only children learned so quickly."

And me again, after she gave me kind permission to post this on the blog, and asked for the address:

"Yeah, that's a blog -- it's how I pay about $15.00 bucks a year for a website. You know us artists....

And THANK you. I was thinking I was being a bit presumptuous, but knowing my gang, they'll enjoy seeing this develop.

Oh -- another note: In "Birdology," a comparison was made between birds as PCs and mammals as Macs.

As a author and artist who uses both, may I differ and propose the reverse? A Mac is hard-wired to use, with very fast, ready functions - a PC lets us get our sticky little fingers into the pathways.

It's like the difference between the ships of the two villains in "Despicable Me" -- Gru is PC, Vector is Mac. One is clunky and obvious, with big blobs of sloppy parts to play with, like us. One is incredibly sleek, hard and fast, and gets around the lack of "thought" by being open to instant learning and wiping, as with a Mac program and dinosaurs.

This is probably just more of my head rattling, but this has me wondering.

(I love saying "dinosaurs" instead of birds. I wanted my own pet TRex when I was little -- mostly without thinking about the logistics of feeding the thing. Or being swallowed by it ("No! It will love only me!"). Now I have THREE - chickens)."

The Whole Film Crew Speaks Up

2011-09-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

SR Bissette says what I've never had time to say in his blog posting, Looking for Magic Carpets.

I commented: "To all you writers: us drawn book authors are like the whole film crew. You’re just the guy with the script. And find THAT in the credits, if you can."

Baby-sitting Contract

2011-09-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

"Don't use your children like that -- it's shameful." It's a paraphrase of a quote from "Dead Like Me," when a woman attempts to use her kid being in the car to cut into line at the post office.

I'm Child Free. Does that mean I hate kids? No, it means being a parent is something I would never do to a child. I'm obsessive, judgmental, hot-tempered and can be downright mean. So nobody who should be raising a kid (and I could COUNT when I was seven, and saw the future population numbers. I later realized that being a parent doesn't guarantee permanent effect -- atheists usually come from religious households, after all).

However, I'm a GREAT aunt. I'll take your kid horseback riding and to cookout parties and down to the swimming hole. Of course, I'll also let your kid get into the Triple-sec-soaked marshmallows and take turns body-surfing the rapids until somebody's bleeding. Just sayin.'

However, I never volunteered to baby-sit your kid.

The next person who dares to get between me and adult events, books, movies or whatever, because their 14-year-old daughter happened to walk into the bondage panels at Nowescon (for example), and causes me any loss of time and enjoyment for the sake of their kid - he or she is getting a bill for my art rates, and those start at $80.00 an hour.

And if s/he has the gall to squawk, "Are you a parent?" then it will be $120 an hour, as a nuisance fee, under Arrogant Cluelessness.

This is a legal contract.

If you claim you've never read it after getting the bill, ignorance is no excuse. So do your job and explain to your kid that, while THOSE people are doing it -- it's for grownups, and the kid doesn't get to do it until s/he is an adult, too.

Signed this day -- September 7, 2011 -- by Donna Barr

Me and Padawan Learner in the Chehalis River. So there.

Painting Projects Done for 2011

2011-08-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, finally got the painting projects done. Back room done in a goldenrod I picked up at a garage sale. I was surprised when Dan didn't want it mixed with a white base to lighten it.

When we got done it resembled a Chinese restaurant. I had some gold paint, so decided to fix those big, empty closet doors. Dan liked it so much, he had me do more on the blank walls with the north window. Now it looks like a grove in here. I was going to do small birds or doves, but we thought with the gold paint it was fancy enough.

It's just fast and freehand, but it is rather like reading in a grove before we turn out the lights.

The Seattle Waterfront Sculpture Park

2011-08-18T13:59:00.000-07:00


Park full of straining municipal art; limited, mechanical, sterile. Then, over the railing, unplanned: did anybody drown?

Seedless city -- native plantings; berries for the un-humaned future?

Waterfront park, lounging apes too lazy to pick up the garbage. Cleaned between me and a Texan who is on her shoreless city's environmental council: it's OURs, now.

Giant ship sculptures, rusting through a wedding.

Child hands, in dust on rust.

Adult hands -- fearless wanderer leaving the group?

The last photo is actually of my hand-prints. No, you're not supposed to touch the art, and on most pieces, nobody did. But everyone was so driven to imprint hands and feet on these particular sculptures, it triggered a recording to "Please not touch the art." I began to wonder if, at least for this one sculpture, the inability to resist rebellion, despite the electronic warning, was part of a live-action participation piece.

Pulling a Huffington

2011-08-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm not even going into the why or should for what The Huffington Post just did. when it sold its site As usual, comics has been there first.

I'm just going to list examples.

There is ONE professional paper up here -- so far: The Forks Forum. No, not in its quality -- it's just a restaurant-and-post-office handout, and the editorials are a huge giggle (I'm blaming the publisher) -- but the editor pays my bills and covers gas money for jobs, and even asks for my bill if I forget (I got 6 hats up here, like everybody else). And he doesn't even think of asking for rights. Here's a clue, people; your rights belong to you are the default position. Any editor who simpers, "I'll let you keep your rights" is going to be Paying You With Sunshine sooner or later.

I no longer work for The Peninsula Daily News. Partly because they don't do their research, have recently published gossip in place of a story, wouldn't listen to me when I warned them a story was very sloppy and Out Of The Mouth Of Neighbors, and promptly used it as an excuse not to pay me for the effort. They never paid for THIS, either. Even though I kept telling the editor there was nothing in it, she insisted. Not a $#!! penny came out of this. Another time, she let our four-hundred pound forest ranger rant at me in public as an excuse not to pay. She's left me to switchback down hills on foot through the woods, instead of contacting the pertinent parties and getting the !#$!! road gate opened. I wouldn't be so pissed off, except covering this area and it's piddly stories is like being pelted to death by popcorn. Those people owe me money, now, and the next time they call me, the rates are $200 per photo AND per article. They can just pay their staff to come out here to get it.

We have a couple Huffington-level amateur papers, one run by a woman who takes ads and uses volunteer writers, and doesn't pay them. Her kid paid me $50.00 for my first article in the paper he now runs, but that was the last article he paid for, once he found out what publishing bills look like. You can imagine what those articles look like. Her photographer once scabbed me out of a photo sales to KOMO TV. Partly he's just iggerant -- partly they're just cheap. But when he pigeon-puffs up to me and crows, "I scooped you!" that's the last straw. You screwed me, asshole. Where the sun don't shine. Oh, and you're teaching your kid your values. How cute.

I don't do that to the sports photographer up here; sports is HIS rice bowl. He and I agree on what to cover at an event. My Forum editor lets me come along on rides for other people, because he knows I'll cooperate with rides and finding things, too.

I only did one story for this book -- and I do good Yaoi. The woman wanted full copyright -- for $150.00 a page. Think of all the nice stories she'd have had from me if she wasn't trying to pull a Huffington in the future.

I don't get hired a lot -- because I won't work for free, I won't give up my copyright if it's mine, and I won't waste my time. I've never written for Huffington, either, thank you very much. The Forum editor's wife said he once told her about me, "It's nice to work with a professional." Back atcha, guy. Back atcha.

Huffington went over the edge of the argument WHEN SHE SOLD THE SITE. She got money, everybody should get money. As usual, capitalism only works when it uses cheap or free labor and/or resources. If she's doing a demo of how capitalism works, I think our side knows how that goes already. Will she be doing demos with cheap cull'd house servants and well-hung native poolboys someplace in the Caribbean soon? To use another comics reference: " 'nuf said."

You want to see how it's done, Huffy? Here ya go. And don't even try to say you're a more professional or important editor than I am; I know that butt -- and its sunshine -- when I sniff it.

Kindle's Okay, but...

2011-07-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

In response to a message from Amazon:

"Thanks for the Kindle message.

I automatically get an inexpensive download pdf at http://www.lulu.com/desertpeach

People can search and read it on the format I uploaded on Nook or IPad or any other device that will open a pdf.

Costs me nothing to upload. No extra machinery or reader. And I do drawn books ("comics"). Kindle not so good with images.

Kindle's nice for prose, but it's expensive for customers, difficult to format, and people have to buy a specific device.

It's okay as the 8-track tape, but there are other trails, now, and people are taking them.

Donna Barr
Author first, publisher second"

Who Can We Screw Now?

2011-07-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

There's a reason I refuse to publish my friends. Becoming a publisher meant I Went To The Dark Side: publishing other people is Going Asshole.

Now Marvel and the Kirby family are at each other's throats. If they discover any evidence Jack (I use that as a comics-industry title of respect) was forced to sign a Yellow-Dog Contract -- had no choice or chance to negotiate -- then the family may have something. If not, he was working for hire, and let's hope he put money in a good fund for the grandkids.

I had a chance to make good money once, but the publisher wanted full copyright -- for a mere $150.00 a page. When are publishers going to get it through their heads that copyright is expensive? I would have gladly signed a work-for-hire contract if there'd been copyright-level money in it. As it is, I have the art and I plan to share it any old way I want. Let's face it -- if they can't afford to pay you full price, they can't afford to sue you either.

My editor at the Peninsula Daily News (and I have to cut the poor woman some slack; the publisher is in the same office, right where he can see her, and they have a culture of blame-to-not-pay in that place) is pulling on the next guy what she pulled on me. After a recent blame game they couldn't resist so they didn't have to pay me, I decided they'd get work from me -- for anything -- if they caught up on their bills.

Now they've found another photographer, and guess what? They owe him $300.00. I wonder how long they'll take to run through him. My editor at The Forks Forum pays promptly when I bill the company -- and once (I swear to gods!) reminded me to bill him three days into a new billing period! No, honest to gods!

This guy just started photographing for them, and they owe him triple digits? WTF? Years ago I had to virtually beg for $20.00 for a photo and $35.00 for an article. I'm not blaming the photographer -- he's just doing his job -- but what are they paying him? And why? If this is because he has the danglies, they may not know how much trouble they're in. If it's because he's a very hard and eager worker -- and he seems to be, then more power to him. If not, they better think about their payment structure.

The Forum pays me even less, but they're the "country weekly" that's made fun of in The Devil Bat, an old movie with Bella Legosi and a couple smart-alecky newspaper workers who must have been written by Ben Hecht. And you know the shape small newspapers are, with every podunk business up here demanding stories along with the ads. I think they've finally all heard my joke: "Ads are like male prostitutes. You get the inches you paid for." (Why am I repeating any of this? Kipling took these people apart in The Man Who Must Be King).

Our county commissioner -- in front of a sheriff's deputy -- sneered about how hard I worked and how little I got paid. With me standing there (at least he did that much). The fire department's buddy sent in a rant about me -- and the PDN PUBLISHED IT. So if anybody's crying about lost coverage up here, you can blame those people. I won't work for people who won't pay me, won't back me up, and make fun of me. The commissioner, at least, has realized he better be nice to me. I'm all they got up here to save the papers gasoline on anything but Bleed Lead stories, and I CAN SPELL AND USE GRAMMAR. Only one other person up here can do that, and she's smart enough to devote her time to the library.

It doesn't help that there are a couple of amateur papers up here that are taking ads -- and using volunteer stories. Not a person up here can get it through their heads that, if they want to be part of the arts and tourism industry, they have to be paid for what they do. Especially when there's ad money involved. Then again, they think renovating a building makes you a "hero." Yeah, THAT culture.

They all run around saying "we" about the Mariners (you know... that fan culture that thinks they're on the field and don't mind guv'ment money getting used to build stadiums while the roads fall apart?). Do they ever notice the only people who ever really get paid in sports are all those media people, including the artists, writers and photographers? It's like 1910 out here for industry, and the 1950's for the attitude toward unions and workers' rights.

Maybe if the Photosynthesis Festival comes back again, they can begin to understand artists get paid. Our local gallery owner -- lovely lady -- was freaked over the prices those people charge. Welcome to REAL prices and rights for creatives. The Makah seem to realize this. Maybe all the trouble I've described is just more Stupid White People tricks. Then again, the First Nations people invented copyright -- it just took palefaces a couple centuries to try to sort it out, mostly because we don't seem to have the Respect gene.

A local deputy who really enjoyed working the festival was telling people, "Under all those pretty clothes, they're real capitalists!" His tone sounded as though he thought they were being hypocritical. I THINK I got through his head that "no socialism = no capitalism." No roads, no clean environment, no health care, no jobs people really want to do and not used as a stranglehold, and how can anybody buy anything? I love that moment when the eyes begin to boggle and you can see the ideas leaking in. I think it was when I said, "I'm a good capitalist -- and a good socialist."

They ARE learning. Now maybe the Kirby family can help the rest of us learn. Remember, cheap at the beginning, expensive at the end. Prostitute yourself, and you end up in the hospital -- or the morgue. Same for artists.

Questions from my German Prof

2011-07-21T17:14:00.000-07:00

I'm still friends with my favorite Professor from college. We've been chatting, and she said I could share:

She's DL; I'm DB, unless it's a blank paragraph, then I think it's her. This is a couple message after the conversation got started.

Part 1:

DL: I realized that the Desert Peach must receive a brief discussion in my current book project in the representation of the Nazi.

DB: I'm not really interested in the NSDAP. Party members only show in my books to be made fun of or compared to the idiots we have today (my readers in Germany started asking me if we were crazy or stupid after 9/11). My READERS knew what was coming, but what was the use of warning anybody else? And here we are, in the very mess everybody else ignored. The Desert Peach is actually about surviving in a lethal situation, especially when you don't fit in, and helping other people who might otherwise die survive.

DB: A new story starts tomorrow, at http://www.desert-peach.com "Beautiful" -- Rommel served in Transylvania in WWI, which makes for a chance to write fun weirdness and spooky stories.

DL: The main topic is German lit, but I di make reference to some films and illustrated books e.g. Memelmann's illustrated memoir of his mother and Mouse, which I don't like because of the projection of human stereotypes unto animals, making mice the Nazis.j

DB: Yes, besides, Germans are not cats. They're horses. :) In "Maus" the mice are the Jews (a portrayal they often use themselves). I kinda agree -- when the horses stampede, the mice get run over. Again with the :)

(The British are dogs. The Japanese are cats. I think Americans are razorback hogs.)

Part 2:

(After some remarks about the subversive quality of my work)

DB: I dunno if my stuff is that "subversive." As I've told readers repeatedly, I base my stories on real things. "Germans" (does that include the black North African "honorary Aryans" of the Afrika Korps? Or the Jewish soldiers (fathered by Jews = officially German) allowed to visit their relatives (Jewish mothers = officially Jews) in concentration camps until the panic of the Wannsee conference?) ended up in camps (Dachau was originally a "re-education" camp, with all its brutal connotations), kept up fashion and commercial links across and around borders, overloaded a postal box that was supposed to catch spies just to talk to their relatives and friends among the Allies, drafted confused Tibetans, and the first German soldier to die in WWII died defending Chinese refugees crowded into a German diplomatic building in China. WWII in Germany wasn't so much history as a box of dice.

So I don't even know how any views of Germans can be subversive, when they were all over the map anyway; no people is easily put into a single box, this one included. In fact, common the media representation may be the more subversive of the reality, especially the odd American view that "Nazi" meant a form of fashion and they seemed to have no childhoods and to come from the moon. Or they were robots. Or something.

Oh, God, I've written about this for years. Don't get me started; I can bore for England.

Part 3:

Well, Germans. Germans are fiction, the home-spun myths of origin, Nibelungen, racial science, etc. is the stuff of the fantastic. The entire Nazi get up, banners, skull rings, uniforms, (Hugo Boss fashioned the SS uniforms by the way),the gleaming cars and boots, what theatrical staffage, all of which became the stuff of fiction and fantasy. Recently there has been an increasing literary interest in North Africa, i.e. Vertlib's Am Morgen des 12. Tages. Good book. historical characters mix with invented ones (not in the fantastic mode, though).

D: For a lot of Americans, Germans are our relatives. You want to see a book will make a German-American (I got those in my ancestry) howl, get "German Humor -- On The Fritz." It's about German Americans, not native Germans, but still.... It even shows you how to NOT make a peanut-butter sandwich, according to a German American ("See if I care.").

D: There's something going on I've called (tongue-in-cheek) "KrautGrrls." Girls mad about the uniforms and blonds, who slowly begin to be led into the actual history. They're very self-aware about their likes and why. I was one of those as a child, but it made me study the real history. A German girl, one of my loyal readers, went to North Africa just to see, and married a Moroccan. And thanked me for it. So we authors have to be careful what we write.... :P

Just a few thoughts
Spiegelmann: unkind to cats, he unfortunately represented Germans as cats.

D: Well, he was only reporting his dad's experiences. I'm sorry, girl, but I've dealt with Germans AND horses, and YOU PEOPLE ARE HORSES. Same sense of humor, posture and hiearchy. Gods help you if a horse or a German finds out what bugs you and starts to tease you about it.

The creation of the exceptional unit led by Manfred R., great idea, undermines the notion of Nazi order and organization.

D: It's what happened after Poland; bits and pieces thrown together to make patchwork units. I didn't make it up, or the gold-rush (for the Indians) atmosphere of the regime. If you get into the later part of the series, you'll find that what Pfirsich's up to is trying to rescue people, but, as he said, "THEY've got guns, WE've got paper, how is this fair?" He gets awfully exasperated sometimes.

Part 4 (I think):

Things were rather chaotic in remote areas.

D: "Catch 22" is more real than most people know.

Also excellent the notions of the corpse management by oddballs and misfits--"Germans" who did not quite fit the mold were usually not just done away with but relegated to low profile thankless jobs.

D: Yes, it's NOT QUITE a punishment battalion, but if it were ever really examined, it could become one. They're lucky the Nazis are running around with their heads up their asses.

And the gay and transsexual theme--it permeates NS history: Roehm, Goering in drag, and the homophobia that made it necessary to hide this "deviation from the norm."

D: Goering did that to piss off Hitler. Junker vs. middle class. It must have been like the Bush whitehouse in there... "Queer" as a slur was the excuse for the Night of the Long Knives. The German army was a good place to hide, be you gay or the wrong blood or religion. "Hogan's Heroes" got it weirdly right when the doctor sarcastically told Klink, "You can breathe and stand up for 5 seconds -- you've passed the physical for the German army." (What the Germans did in that show was based on 150 years of German military humor. But who am I telling this? My old lit teacher! I'm preaching to the chorus).

At any rate, it's the images that make the characters and the plot subversive. There is humor in the clothes and gestures (Red Baron), and in the creatures (face horse) that are on a level playing field with the Nazi characters. Most of all, the language and the use of German on different levels, vocabulary, accent mixed with English.

D: Oh, me and my "Barrdeutsch." It's almost its own language.... spoken by one person. That's partially your fault, you know...

the annotation for unfamiliar terms as in a Sachbuch, the prim and proper Peach in sexy modified outfits reminiscent of the sexy outfit of young NS adjutants.

D: Actually, the role Pfirsich is playing at the time is "fop" -- a very masculine role in the German and English armies. In American, that would be "fairy." In the military of the time in Europe, waving a handkerchief was the performance of an 18th-century gentleman's personality. It worked as a disguise. I had more and more fun screwing around with what things were supposed to be and what they really were (whatever real means). But I'm lucky -- I have clever readers who GET it.

The characters blend some expected accessories of the Germanic type embraced by the NS, but otherwise deviate from the established stereotypes (see movies like Jud Suess), notably in terms of sexuality: according to racial "science" and propaganda, the Nordic type was chaste critter, a late bloomer, and pure in every way. The Peach has such features but the feminization take him beyond the norm. Immediately oppositional authors created anti-NS types that were grimy, generally unappetizing, and corrupt (e.g. Brecht, Fr. Wolf, Bruno Apitz). You feature examples of those types.

D: Those aren't types. Those are people I've seen (I've known too many weirdoes). Most soldiers are grimy and unappetizing all the time. Most people have to be corrupt in a dying empire (do tell!) to survive.

Your work is subversive in that it evokes and erodes expectations, stereotypes, and applies humor and the grotesque in an unlikely environment. Undoubtedly it is a very uncomfortable text for neo-Nazis as well as for the sanctimonious.

D: I'm very proud that the American Nazi Party (at least according to the child of one of the members) declared me an "Antichrist." I wish I could prove that. I think I converted one of them with the Peach (not in sexuality, but tolerance). I know I've helped homophobes examine their fears and turn around, helped homosexuals come out and accept themselves and even helped Jews stop blaming themselves. My Jewish readers say that they're constantly taught about the abuses without seeing how it built -- or even that all they were were an excuse for so many things, including economic grab -- and they end up doing what victims with no reasons do; they ask, "What did WE do wrong?" When they get to see the stupidity and greed of the structure they can lay it back where it belongs. It's not so much the horses were hunting down the mice as mice, but that the barn was burning the horses started to run, and the mice got trampled. The war made it impossible for anyone to examine the building process, and as usual when it's all guys, Ejaculation Thinking won out over Pregnancy Thinking (I don't think I gotta explain THAT!"

D: I'm really disgusted that we've used Nazism to ignore what the Germans went through, and take it as a warning. Or maybe that's just us being our usual stupid City On The Hill Selves ("God loves us so we get to kill everybody and everything and own and steal everything."). It's fun watching the First Nations begin to use the international laws that came into being after 1945 and were first applied to Germans to come after us. I'm enjoying it. Americans are finally beginning to realize that, compared to us and our history, youse guys were amateurs. We did it longer, worse, to more people and land, with more legal intent, and got away with it. And provided the studies of race (as an excuse for slavery and manifest destiny) that would poison the future. "Pioneer" is not so much a term we want to brag about any more. The Indians are coming out of hiding and using the laws. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

DL: Be that as it may, I am sitting in the sun room with a lightly snoring geriatric cat next to me who will need her milk to improve den Stoffwechsel.

DB: Well, you can't ask for better than that.

Only White Men Get Fish?

2011-07-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

A local deputy is evidently going around telling other people who fish that I "feed the fish to a cat." Is this gossip? Why it pissed me off:

Yup. Price. Who wouldn't eat anything else. Yeah, I'm doing a big sinful thing giving precious resources that belong only to these guys to a family member. A member of my family who was dying.

And if I want to use the few fish I can catch to feed the heads to my cats, the bodies to me, and the scraps to the chickens -- if fact, if I want to use them to fertilize corn -- that's my business.

But evidently only white males are supposed to get anything in this country.

And yeah, make smart remarks about a cat I had to fight for since February to try to keep alive. When I have a DSL account. And a blog.

The Crampons Keep Tearing Loose.

2011-07-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

Okay. Screw it. This stupid Writer's Plateau? First of all, I've spent the last three years processing books for Indyplanet (search The Desert Peach or Stinz or Bosom Enemies or Hader and the Colonel). So the plateau jump is not that old. It doesn't even have fossils in it, yet.

To best explain a "plateau" think Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry as the moment the ladder pulled out of the cliff. Think Family Plot is the nice base camp when he got up onto the plateau. When you're a young writer, there are few plateaus, or they're so small and close, you think they're just orgasm (there's a reason the thrill of writing often shows up down there). When you've been at this game awhile, nothing -- repeat nothing -- is good enough. Sometimes plateaus can take ten years. People who think of them as "blocks" -- with its connotations of entrapment and the inability to move -- have been known to commit suicide. There are too many examples among artists and writers.

I always have an end-of-project panic. I go into learned helplessness. Everything is a plateau, and they keep getting bigger. Sometimes I scramble up a smaller hill because it's easier. The recent death of my cat, with all its struggles, doesn't help.

Right now the only writer money I'm making is off the POD books (which is small, steady and growing and very much WWWID*) and checks from the country weekly I freelance for. My blessing is an editor who understands the insane distances and confusions up here, and who is in charge of his little paper, without a publisher in the same office breathing down his neck who does not seem to understand the difference between gossip and research -- and uses the blame game to not pay the freelancer. Oh, am I now talking about the county daily I don't ever want to hear from again (unless they PayPal what they owe me into my account and start paying me Canadian writer prices)?

Par'm the moment of bitchiness. I did hear from my Good Editor's wife that he remarked it was nice to work with a professional. Pobably because when I do screw up -- and that's often enough -- he asks me to rewrite the correction, and I'm happy to do it). I told her I like working with a professional who not only pays immediately upon being billed -- but reminds me to bill him if I forget.

This guy is a surfer dude, by the way. The supposedly flaky people. How come the supposedly professional people are such losers, and the artsy types are so laid back and goal-oriented? Oh. Well, that explains that.

ANYWAY (I should call my blog "anyway"), to continue what I started up there, I'm going to poke at this very bad prose novel until it rises from the dead. So to speak.

And continue to work on A Little Death, because my agent is a comics agent, and he is trying very hard to sell my collected work and is scaring the entire mainstream book industry half to death. Lord, lord, lord.

*Will Work When I'm Dead.

Envy and Rage

2011-07-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

Is one of the steps in grieving bitterness?

A perfectly nice man's perfectly nice dog ran up to us again. She's very old, white-faced, deaf, has had repeated strokes. She's happy, silly, and full of life.

I can't help but be bitter when I see these nice creatures, because all I can think is, "Why did sweet happy Price have to go through such a bad end? Why is this dog still alive after she's been through so much?"

There is, of course, no "Why." Shit happens. This only makes sense if there is no god. Because if there were, he's an undipt pinhead, nasty, brutal, with a short memory.

Dogs and humans seem to wander along for years after strokes, heart attacks and rheumatism. Horses and cats seem to be well all their lives -- and then collapse, quickly and often horribly. Dogs fade and give us a chance. Felines rip our hearts out. Dogs don't hurt any less, but they seem to bitch-slap us less. This is just me thinking with a keyboard, nothing more.

Price -- The Day After

2011-07-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

Here's my Facebook Page entry (with additions): "Thank you so much, everybody. We had a lovely funeral, walked the beach, waded around in the mouth of the Clallam river, then went to the Clallam Bay Inn for MacNJack and Fish and chips.This morning I bumped into an invisible kitty hock and accidentally put down the same number of bowls (which I left; I figured he'd get the spirit food).

Thank all of you so much for all your prayers and thoughts for him. I think funerals let us cry for ourselves, too (why dry-humored Britain went to pieces over Princess Di). I'm sharing the t-shirt quote. It gave me the first laugh today."

The T-shirt line: "All our kitties and our favorite t-shirts are waiting for us in heaven."

After a thorough washcloth bathing the night before, and being formed into a comfy posture and left to cool down and compose himself on a red towel in the back bathtub, Price was wrapped in a grey, silver-shot pashmina I'd found years ago scrunched down in a knot in a filthy muddy hole in a Seattle sidewalk and not only resurrected, but wore for years. His outside wrap was one of Dan's maternal grandmother's quilts, on the bed for years and beginning to fray (We use respected old fabrics as funeral wraps). They were both handled by us and the cats, so they would smell familiar. As we dug the grave, he got to lie in the middle room on the guest bed, which he'd always loved.

The grave was in sand, bedded with salmon-berry branches, then the mummy bundle -- head to the west -- topped with a wooden bowl with milk, margarine and a chunk of freshly-cooked salmon, wrapped in a red silk shirt I'd been saving for a funeral, covered with peach and plum twigs and some sword fern, then more salmon berry, then filled in carefully with goodbyes and hopes. On top went a crystal vase with a red wrapped beeswax candle, surrounded by four Rainforest incense sticks. The candle burned all day. The salmon-berry birds sang in the woods into evening.

We should all get such funerals.

Good traveling, Price.

Price in my Seattle Pashmina

Goodbye Price -- Running to Catch Up

2011-07-09T09:08:00.000-07:00

I won't go into all yesterday's details, but Price has gone beyond all pain.

We sat outside with him all yesterday in the sun. I asked a good client for time, and was told not to worry (Thank you!).

My editor emailed me at one point and said he needed details for a Fun Days story. I whipped downtown on my bike and while there, picked up a nice pink salmon from the Jack Mackerel Seafood Company. Put the body down in salt for smoking, micro-waved the head and tail. Price hadn't been eating, not really, for days, nor drinking water, so I didn't have much hope of him sampling the food. He was at the stage where they take a sniff and turn away in disgust. I ran a little warm water over it, in case he would take some liquid.

This time, his neck arched and he jetted his face into the salmon, gobbling chunks and slurping up the salmon water. We were surprised and a bit worried; "Is he just packing for the last journey?" Clouds came over the sun as the afternoon passed, and we all went inside, where I set him up on his nice plaid blanket.

He'd been doing so well, I took a break and went to the beach for a walk. There, the beautiful rainbow of a sundog pulled me into watching the sun set. I was probably gone fifteen minutes.

When I came back, I was shocked to hear Dan choke, "He's safe. He's gone where he can never hurt again."

Right at sunset, he gave a little meow, that Dan says sounded like, "Wait for me!" His legs -- all four of them -- ran a few steps as he lay there, and, as Dan said, "He just ran out of his body."

His heart stopped, and he was gone. Maybe he zipped down to the beach to say goodbye to me, in his brand-new spiffy young spirit body. But I can't see spirits, I can only hear them; in two weeks or so, Dan should see him run down the hallway and look at him before romping off. We've done this a lot.

Funeral today. Thank all of you for the kind thoughts and hopes. Thank our good vet and his staff for helping us so much. We remember.

Final video from yesterday: Price licking his favorite rock (loadable to IPad). This is so Price.

Price The Good Cat - He Wins.

2011-07-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

Don't want to bum anybody out, but many people have been rooting for Price. We did, however, know what was coming.

Price has really stopped eating, drinking or grooming himself. I'm not going to bother him with his wheelchair any more; that can be saved for the next problem in another cat. If he wants to go outside, he can limp along pretty well at this point; he has his little bootie on his limp foot.

Here he is, after a little Diazapan, freshly washcloth-bathed, on his comfy sofa. The gray blanket is one of two, at this point being used like a diaper. Sometimes he'll take an edge of the plaid blanket on his back. This is just before the drug kicked in. It's a very small dose; just enough to relax him and let him sleep in comfort.

There's a point where you stop bugging the old person and let them work on their last job. He's 16 years old, warm, safe, relaxed, pain free. As we say on Facebook: Price wins.

Price and his wheelchair.

2011-07-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

This is Price in his new wheelchair. Now it can be seen. He's figured out two ways to get out of it -- jump up on the couch, or roll it over. CATS.

Price's First REAL wheelchair.

2011-07-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

The only reason I'm not posting Price's first tryouts in his real wheelchair is because these folks asked me not to until we'd gotten it properly adjusted and working. We ordered the cart in the PM and got it in the AM the next day (admittedly, they're kind of around the corner from us, but it still came by a circuitous route and still made it).

Been monkeying with the adjustments, after watching the CD that came with the cart. Every piece of the cart adjusts. About 2:40 on Youtube you can see one of the carts in action.

Yesterday, when he was in the cart, along with all the griping and complaining, he headed for the door. "Let's see what this babe will do on grass!" I told him he had to practice a few days first, and get adjusted right. Instead, he spent the day behind the solar panels by the house, curled up in the grass, enjoying being outside with Dan, who was doing yard work or reading. Dan needed some sun, anyway.

Price never was much of a touchy-feely cat, and he wouldn't take being covered with a blanket. He now spends his days and nights on the couch, tucked in with a plaid blanket. In the evening, he wants to be snuggled up under my chin, purring and getting petted. So I have to lay on the couch petting Price rather than getting any art work down, and that's just how it is. Gonna have to just change my ancient schedule, I guess, retrain my brain to do art in the daylight. I'm glad we have sets of DVDs, like Treme, from the library.

Price ate very well yesterday, but not today. He seems to be eating and drinking every other day. We'll give the adjusted cart another try today, and film it for K9.

I'm quite worried about a hard lump in his belly, but the vet says it's probably scar tissue -- and he just didn't want to cut on him any more. Not after the massive surgery he's already had. How much suffering do we want to put an old person through?

In the meantime, he's resting and wanting outside occasionally. Yesterday he almost got away from me, three legs and all, as he slipped out the door past me and whipped down the stairs. There's life in the old cat yet.

Price's 1st wheelchair design -- and oops.

2011-06-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's the first attempt at building Price a wheelchair. I are sometimes all thumbs.

The original wheelchair design, with many markings and fiddlings. Thank you, Maggie, at the Forks Ace hardware.

Um... ta da? That doesn't look right.

Up and pushing around (complaining).

Oops. Back to the drawing board.

Well, after some more research and gathering of parts on the beach and at the Lion's Club rummage sale, I may be ready to have a go at it tomorrow. At least Price was willing to move it around when I tried it on him.

We've pretty well accept that, after the heavy gut operation (and gods knows what possible growths may be advancing), that he's finally fading from us. He's sixteen, and had a good life. We're going to keep trying to make his life happy.

We're lucky the weather has finally turned lovely, and we can sit out in the yard with him. He's a basically tough, happy cat, and we'll do what we can for him. He only wants fish now, and I'll either get it off the beach, in cans, or finagle a head and/or backbone from Ric the fish guy.

When I die, I want to come back as one of my cats.

Price Living With Bad Leg

2011-06-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

Price's bad leg is dragging and making it hard for him to lie down. So I put it up in an old-fashioned sling.

Because he's gotten used to lying around and feeling sorry for himself, we've been noodging him down the hallway to strengthen his good hind leg. There is much whining and complaining, but now he can actually get to the litter box and the water without the dragging leg slowing him down. We take the sling off at night, so he won't have a chance of catching it on things, or at least when he's without or supervision.

Then afterwards there is purring. Right now it's ling cod season, and I caught my first ling cod ever yesterday. I have to fish when I can because Price loves fresh fish, and the Old Cat gets what he wants.

Price is Good for Now

2011-06-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

Price and Leo on the couch.

Okay. Whew. Here's the latest:

Price is 16 years old. The lump in his belly is probably scar tissue from the operation (didn't find it before, because of the burn).

Only one of his legs is bad; the vet guesses an embolism, which isn't uncommon in cats his age. This help explains a bad situation about three years ago, when a cat lost use of both hind legs. Price is okay; he can walk. Nothing can be done about it, but he's happy and gets around.

He's eating, drinking, doing everything he's supposed to. The vet and we have decided no more cutting or desperate measures. From now on, it's goodies and time in front of the fire for the old man.

And thank those of you who had good thoughts for our old guy.

Price not doing well

2011-06-03T07:42:00.001-07:00

Uh oh. Price's hind legs are more wonky than ever, even though he's getting meds and massage.

Just found a hard lump in his belly. Hopefully it's scar tissue from the operation.

Taking him to the vet today. Hopes and prayers welcome.

Price and Leo - by request (and pizza)

2011-05-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

A friend wanted to see a picture of our Leo, who can muscle his way out of the door and nearly knock you over before you can get the door closed. He'd eat a postman for breakfast -- if he wasn't so nice, and if we had postmen.

Left: Price, Leo, Shadow, on our bed.

Woodstove pizza. Just a little partly-wholewheat crust, tomato paste with oregano, green peppers, garlic-basil olive oil, black pepper, and a scattering of Monterey Jack cheese. Pretty much your original peasant version, a little bit of ingredients stretched to seem like more. Which is where all the good stuff comes from, including onion soup and pancakes.

We Just Live Here

2011-05-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

Why the drying clothes are not directly in front of Betsy the Woodstove.

Actually, I need to get to her to stir the beans or have some tea, so I'm just kidding, Price! (But don't tell him.)

His wounds are almost gone; this is how a melting kitty in front of the stove looks. The big scar down his middle is from the operation. He don't care.

Light Them Fires!

2011-04-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

It's spring and sometimes we feel we don't need a morning fire.

Price has other ideas.

We just live here.

Price On The Run

2011-04-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

Since people have been asking how Price is feeling, a couple days ago he slipped out the door like a snake. The neighbor got to laugh at Barr TV as we ran like mad baboons trying to catch him, twice around the truck and then heading him off -- barely -- before he slipped under the house.

Yesterday, when Leo came back from a heavy tooth-cleaning, and was lying half-drugged in front of the stove, Price was the only one not to be afraid because he smelled like the Mad Scientist (kitteh word for "Vet."). Price stalked over to Leo, rubbed his head with his, and then licked his head.

Dan says Price has been to the Mad Scientist so much lately, his sense of smell has blanked the place out.

Prowlie and Jazz -- the Interview

2011-04-15T08:27:00.000-07:00

A Fan at DeviantArt is asking me questions and agreed to let me post the answers. Interviews are like programming: Garbage In Garbage Out. Ask good questions, get good answers. Ask stupid cliché questions, see what you get. Our friend here asks good ones. But you kinda have to know the series to understand some of the questions. Go to The Desert Peach.

Oh, and if you like her page, tell her so!

S: Couple of questions about the (DeviantArt DesertPeach) group. Are there any groups here on DA you'd like to affiliate with? Also, would it be ok to use some of your Peach art to make the group banner with?

D: You can do whatever you want. Remember, I released my stuff for anybody to draw, write or sell what they produce, as long as it's not my original stuff. Yes, I pulled a Roddenbarry. If you want to use my art for a banner, that's Fair Use.

D: Nobody can write or draw 'em like me. Why shouldn't I let them play with them and get paid for the effort? As long as they tell everybody where they got the stuff and link 'em to my sites (as a courtesy) I'm pretty happy.

S: And did Rosen mean his passion for Peach had died, or passion in general? Cause he sure was oogling them roller derby girls.

D: I have no idea what the rules for passion in the afterlife are. Rosen sounds like he's getting a break from his.

S: Started reading Afterdead. I gotta admit, you put Peach in some sexy outfits, and with the black remembering fingernails, it makes him look goth-yum! But why didn't Udo's turn black when he remembered Peach?

D: In the final pages, before I published them on paper, the fingernails were corrected for Udo.

(S. asked why, in the original book, Winzig put Udo on the train to Siberia, after Udo had saved Winzig earlier from being shot by the Americans.)

D: Udo got caught between Winzig's honesty and grief. NOT a good place to be. And Winzig didn't know his life had been saved. He was pretty wrapped up in the girl, at that point. He really is one of those people with severe tunnel vision.

S: (Re the episode where Winzig puts Udo on the Train:) What's honesty and grief gotta do with sending a dude that kept you from being shot by the Amis to Siberia? Winzig reminds me so much of my TF2 Medic Gustav.

D: People are all a little nuts at the end of a long war. And you know what they say about the Forest and the Trees.

S: And I'm STILL trying to figure out why Rosen went along with the whole Babette thing. If Peach became straight, he wouldn't want Rosen anymore... Though seeing Udo and Rosen fight over who got to hold the baby was hilarious.

D: Because Rosen is an oversexed fuckhead pilot.

S: Why'd you stop doing Peach? There's still so many things to be said and done! Or was it one of those things, you decided it was time to loan them out to the fans and see what they do with them?

D: I said a lot of them in Bread and Swans. And they continue in AFTERDEAD.

S: And I'm confused about the whole owning copy write thing Peach did on Georg. Does that technically mean Georg is owned by Peach? And why did he do that? To take care of him? And how can a dead own a living? My head hurts...yet I am intrigued.

D: That's from earlier AFTERDEAD -- and I gotta post all of it to Indyplanet or something, other than on Amazon, 'splains that. It's crazy and complicated. Don't worry about it. It just means he can annoy the hell out of Georg.

S: Oh yes, and my friend wants to know "Why Rosen is such an irresistable asshat?"

D: We've all had toxic candy in our life, haven't we?

S: I has more of them (questions).

D: Is we alls gon end up wis LolSpeak? :)

S: What are those half-human/half-horse things in Afterdead (like Hans)? I've been reading AFTERDEAD and I'm unclear as to what they are. Are they sentient like a human, or a pet or horse or what? How did they come to be?

D: Those are from "Bosom Enemies" -- another series I'll be running like The Desert Peach and Stinz.

D: They're sentient. I think their status is kind of like service horse. Like Swiss horses -- all Swiss draft horses have to spend 3 years in the army. They "belong" to the little horse-headed people.

I don't know how they came to be. In BE, they're made from humans. But BE isn't AFTERDEAD. I think of my characters as actors -- "Casting Call! Looking for any characters willing to be in this story."

S: Also, I remember the episode "Invites" where Hans seemed to have a crush on the roller derby pivot. Would that be acceptable if he were to act on it? Kinda wondering if they'd consider that bestiality, considering he has a horse dong.

D: In the Reich, nobody intrudes on anybody else's sex life. If it's Consenting Adults (the emphasis on "Consenting") it's nobody's business unless you want it to be. They don't control people through sex in that society. They have other little ways.

S: And face horses..where the heck did they come from? And don't they and the half-human/half-horses get annoyed having bits in their mouth? And what about the half-human/half-horse critter that walks on his hands? OUCH! I wouldn't want anyone riding on me. And is that the same Hans Pfirsich took care of at the end of the war-the orphan?

D: In the old Black Manuscripts stories, they're descended from rebels who were made into animals. They're used to bits, and being ridden on, like we're used to clothes and shoes. We're all domesticated, one way or the other.

I have a costumer friend who raises goats. She runs around her farm barefoot. Her poor feet are shod with a layer of hard, horny skin NOTHING can get through. Same thing with the hands of these horse things.

When I write other things, I don't think about MY life, I think about THEIR lives. What's weird to me is common to them.

Price -- Many thanks to our good neighbors

2011-04-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

I need to thank a neighbor for allowing me to talk her out of a couple of pounds of fresh local meat for Price.

The vet said he needed protein, and this was the most high-quality protein I could think of, and the closest to mice; a mouse is to the antelope family what the rock hyrax is to the elephant: the closest living relative. Closest to the natural diet without setting mousetraps (then again, I think the maple tree having 81% of the same DNA I have is very close and very cool).

We've been feeding Price a 1/2-mouse-load of ground flesh an hour, following it with enough of his dry food to bind up the fat in his digestive system so it doesn't give him runny bowels.

Price has laid on a layer of flesh, and his fur is soft and gleaming. He's still thin, but he's not scary desperate thin.

Price's recovery is very much due in large part to their priceless generosity.

Price Walking The Walk

2011-03-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

Here's Price after killing the cat-tree and bouncing over in front of the stove and telling Jim he'll be coming back and taking that place in front of the stove, oh, yeah.

"Just keep movin.' Ain't nothin' to see, here, 'cept Fearless, and that ain't none o' your business."

Price's Burn Healing Properly

2011-03-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

The burn is dry, and doesn't smell. It's beginning to granulate and sluff away. The vet was quite happy with this photograph of the healing burn. It's on his white belly, so it probably won't even change his hair color there. He goes in next week to get the final checkup on his stitches and removal.

His system now rejects extra fat, which means he doesn't need it any more. He needs protein. So it's lean meat next.

And I had to chase down his smart-alecky butt today to give him his meds.

Price's Exam and The Fatness

2011-03-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

Price went to the vet Monday. His burn is healing under the scab, which is acting as a bandage.

He was prescribed skin antibiotics, to start as the gut antibiotics are finishing. We have a little diazapam to encourage appetite and assist with sleep, if need be. And a little mild opiate, if needed for pain.

Forks Outfitters's butcher gave me a fist-full of beef fat for our boy. He ate four quarter-size mouthfuls on the way home. Fat to be converted to vitamin C to heal faster.

The vet said Price would be sloughing the scab. Today I found him beginning to clean the scab off, revealing bright-pink skin underneath. Yes, I know the scab is made of himself, but EWWWWW.

Bacon Meets Its Match - The Price Saga

2011-03-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

Price and the Sheep (Leo) in the sunshine by the stove.

Price had been in such pain, so miserable, so uncoaxable with his food. His burns looked like bacon.

Last night, he was standing by the kindling pile, face-marking. Dan later saw him sink his claws into the cat-tree and dig at it, straining his whole body backwards on his hind legs, in a way that looked painful, but that he obviously wasn't bothered by.

This morning, suddenly -- he got up and followed me around until I fed him. I made him get out of the way during the wood-loading -- so he cornered Jim (the new/low cat) and smacked him. Later, when Jim was complaining because now he is House Cat and doesn't get let outside to beat up the neighbors any more, he stopped and hissed at Price. Price sat down and gave him, his "Yes? Do you need another one?" look.

Maybe... I don't want to jinx anything, but thank all of you for the Love-Voodoo for Price.

Price Up And At 'Em

2011-03-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

Price gobbling up canned catfood and chicken fat. Oh, how thin!

Now we've eaten, time for Nips!

The boy gets fed every hour on the hour, with anything high calorie, although he wants the canned food with all the added vitamins, minerals, and Taurine. Fish, chicken, milk, mayonnaise, whatever he'll eat - doesn't matter. He doesn't get any of the shellfish, in this case mussels, because healthy humans handle those better than sick kitties.

Twice a day, Dan puts on heavy leather gloves, and I wash his belly down with a solution of nettles, dill and catnip, then apply antibiotic ointment. He gets antibiotics for his gut resection three times a day.

We should all hope we get treated like this when we're sick.

Looking up Chinese herbs for helping with the other tiny tumors that were found in the ultrasound. Price had a low-level facial tumor removed about 3 years ago. He was found in a parking lot in 1998, as a half-grown boy. And we're living in Clallam Bay -- an industrial forestry area. We might as well be living with pulp mills.

Tough Titty Said The Kitty

2011-03-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

Price with his halogen lamp, Steve.

ARGGHH!

Why the Robert Newton imitation? Because Mr. Price (General Sterling Price) was just doing fine with his bowel resection surgery.

Why the horrible-looking belly discoloration? That he whined so miserably about when I tried to look at it? ("Oh no! His gut has burst! He's rotting!")

He fell asleep on the low setting on the heating pad.

Yep, they really can burn us like we've always been warned. So after another 60-mile round trip, and a mindset that had me considering Cutting and Dan throwing up waiting for the news, we found out he's just fine, just needing some ointment and aloe or honey or dill washes to clean him up.

Hope this really jump-starts his immune system, like the Southerners claim of a springtime sunburn does in the winter bugs. Yeah, that's what it's good for. All three of our little lamps warm up nicely at low wattage, so he's buddying up to them, now.

And thanks to all of you for the power wishes and care; couldn't have done it without you.

Worse Ways To Go

2011-03-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

Price on the 13th of March, 2011. Looking pretty thin.

Price ate and ate this week, but couldn't seem to gain weight. He's healing from an operation that opened up his whole belly.

Today, he stopped wanting to eat. But he has his own couch in the guest/comics room, with layers of afghans and a black woolen shawl, a heating pad, a selection of food, antibiotics and Dramamine.

We should all have it so good when we're approaching the end.

I'm not saying he is -- we're not giving up -- but we're done dragging him around on the highways on cold rainy days to get to doctors. He's home.

If the Ring of Fire is unzipping anyway, it's as good a time for us as any. We wouldn't even have time to run out the back door and up the hill.

The Desert Peach on Kindle

2011-03-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

Readers praise the few copies of The Desert Peach up on Kindle.

Those were processed and posted by my agent, Dave Baxter. It's interesting one reader simply downloaded the book to read on his computer.

Price not gaining weight

2011-03-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

So I googled. Price has a weird thyroid level. I'm keeping this to email to our vet on Monday:

http://www.catforum.com/forum/38-health-nutrition/132974-cat-eats-eats-doesnt-gain-weight-thyroid.html

Took a look at his meds -- he got a small amount of thyroxine.

He's stopped eating today; only took a lick of mayonnaise. He's so thin, so very thin. His wound is healing well, but he's so thin.

We've lost a cat a year since we moved here 7 years ago. Poor Price. Poor Price.

PrismComics Mirrors A Fine Line Press

2011-03-11T09:23:00.000-08:00

PrismComics is my show rep. For my books - and the funnest booth at any show - they'll be at these shows (copy and keep!). For sure I'll always be at Emerald City Comicon, Norwescon, or Stumptown (and Wondercon if it wanders through the Northwest -- it's a Movable Feast).

WonderCon (San Francisco, CA) — 4/1/2011-4/3/2011

Stumptown Comics Fest (Portland, OR) — 4/16/2011-4/17/2011

Norwescon (SeaTac, WA) — 4/21/2011-4/24/2011

Toronto Comic Arts Festival (Toronto, ON) — 5/7/2011-5/8/2011

Gaylaxicon (Atlanta, GA) — 5/13/2011-5/15/2011

Fanaticon (Asheville, NC) — 5/21/2011

San Diego Comic-Con International (San Diego, CA) — 7/21/2011-7/24/2011

Price Comes Home

2011-03-08T19:40:00.000-08:00

Price in the bathtub, drinking soapy water from the bidet bowl. Maybe he needs the soap to knock back the tumors.

Price purring on his cat bed. He came home today. The vet could only get him to eat tuna -- until he saw his own canned catfood.

Now he's lying in front of the woodstove, sucking up the heat. He's still passing blood, but that's to be expected -- he had a lot of blood vessels cut. The gut that was removed should have been the size of a man's little finger, but was two inches across, it was so crammed with the feces he couldn't pass. The vet said he'd never operated on any animal so ill.

We hope we get to have the old guy a bit longer!

Emerald City Comicon and Price and Prism

2011-03-07T21:54:00.000-08:00

First of all, our cat Price is in hospital and stable, so that was a load off my mind. He's eating and drinking, hopefully he'll start healing soon.

(Left) Me wearing my Ka-Blam shirt and showing the print-on-demand reprints of Bosom Enemies. I ended up settling all the very nice proof copies on Prism Comics, to go to Chicago with them. A few of those are a bit odd -- as in: One Of A Kind.

Prism will be my show reps from now on -- and if I'm at a show I'll be in their booth. They're looking for women comics authors because their customers are demanding books from women. And, as Zan Christensen of Prism says, "The booth looks a little strange with just men."

Met my oldest younger brother and Irish Twin, Don Colbert, for the first time in 30 years at the convention, and an old friend, Chris Clark. (Me, Chris, Bud).

Cartoonist's Northwest's Scot Allan as the scary horror host clown, and my Stinz painting, available for sale.

Scot always had this insane English laugh, and when he's in this outfit, he's downright creepy.

The show was great -- I would have needed to be cloned to stop and talk as much as I wanted to with everybody, especially all the new and old friends and colleagues.

Price Not So Cut Up

2011-03-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

Price before surgery, with Fearless, with her scary devil eyes ("Don't touch my Price!"

At this point, still worried if he needed surgery. Ya think?

It was a bowel blockage. As Dr. Burt said, "Like a rubber band around his bowel."

Poor guy was in surgery or recovery all day. Then was wrapped up in a blanket for the long drive back home.

Waiting for Price to come down from the sedative after surgery.

Then the water main broke. Oh, and Dan slipped on the ice on the porch this mornings; we're lucky he's only bruised.

I hope I can make it to Emerald City this weekend.

Good news: Price has recovered to the point he staggered back to the bedroom and got up into his comfort zone on the bed.

Everything But The Job

2011-02-19T09:01:00.000-08:00

Sigh.

We've got a postal situation up here -- our post office has gone postal.

It's sticking mail in the wrong post office boxes. Since that's all we can get up here -- and I don't know why, unless the postmaster is just lazy -- that means envelopes with bills, checks and even medication are disappearing.

Stupidity? Vindictiveness? Theft of checks and drugs? That's always a possibility.

One of the people who used to work at our post office during the last time this happened, said, "The postmaster is doing everything but her job."

Which I can believe. Half the time it seems she's running some charity or on the phone with her relatives. We need volunteers up here, and kids have to be dealt with, but first of all she's the postmaster, and she needs to focus on that job during working hours. We can all screw up on the job, but repeated mis-delivery of important mail in a small town where many people can't get it any other way is inexcusable, and damaging. People tell me the way they cure the problem is to move their post office box to Sekiu -- but what about those with no cars? We do have them up here, among them the sick and elderly who live downtown. When they need their mail, do they walk two miles along a twisting highway with intermittent shoulders, between cliffs and salt water, or do they wait until they can beg a ride? Do they take the early bus -- for three dollars they might not have -- and wait over an hour for it to come back? Or lend out their box key to somebody else? Is the postmaster aware of any of this? I doubt very much she's trying to get somebody killed on purpose. I'd never accuse anyone of that, but short-sightedness and sloppiness in a very important job like this can be lethal.

Anyway, for anybody up here, don't let our postmaster force you to move your mail. Call the United States Postal Service and start a case file:

Call 1-800-ASK-USPS® (1-800-275-8777)
M-F - 8:00am-8:30pm ET Sat - 8:00am-6:00pm ET Sunday - Closed. Holidays - Closed except for: Martin Luther King Jr., President's, Columbus, and Veteran's Days, 9:00am - 6:00pm ET.

ValentineMan Brings the Love

2011-02-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

The Grandmother's Hive -- The June Review.

2011-02-13T14:39:00.000-08:00

The Grandmothers' Hive got this really nice review. I'm really going to have to post some of the art.

The Price is Right

2011-02-07T16:16:00.001-08:00

Just got back from a 241-mile round trip with Price to the vet specialist in Kitsap County. What a good kitty! Only an occasional "Are we there yet?"

Lung x-rays clean, all bloodwork clean, no infections.

He has a 3-centimeter-long thickening of the walls of his small intestines. The radiologist will have a report back in a couple of days.

Light some incense for it NOT being cancer.

Can we get the Price right?

2011-02-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

Our cat Price, whom we've since about '98, is suddenly losing a lot of weight and not wanting to eat. Been through blood and senior tests, nothing wrong but a low thyroid reading -- and he's getting thin, not overweight. We've put him on thyroid medication, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything. So we'll be setting up to go to a specialist. He had a cancerous growth removed from his face a couple years back, and that will be part of the consideration.

Don't laugh - I've known people to spend $4500.00 on a dog for cancer treatment. Ask what happened after Hurricane Katrina when people were told pets couldn't be rescued. Family is family. A good way to get hurt is to go for somebody's animals.

Price is from Bremerton, by the way. First time I saw him was butt-first in a homeless woman's arms. She told me, "You have to take this cat!" Her kid was looking up at me, hoping I would. I finally did take the cat and put him on the bed, and when they'd left, I went back into the bedroom to find him crossed-pawed and looking around, like, "Yeah, I could live here."

Turned out he'd been dumped at the local St. Vinnie's and had been living in the parking lot for a couple weeks. The woman couldn't stand it any more. As usual, it's the poor who try to pick up the slack.

Price was named after our other tuxedo cat Vincent, who disappeared in 2001. He's too young to be going into what looks like old age failure -- but that two weeks on the street might have set him up for a shorter life.

Here's hoping we can do something, but when they stop eating I've never seen it turn around.

Getting the Fix In

2011-02-02T11:14:00.000-08:00

Problem with reporting a story to a local paper led to my finally being able to suggest something I've wanted to ask for, for a LONG time. Here's a suggestion: a press officer. Especially for official departments during an emergency.

Clallam Bay has a very small and dedicated fire department, who do excellent work in all areas of firefighting and emergency care, and in getting their message out. The chief should be especially commended for taking time to organize PR in non-emergency situations.

The Sheriff's department always has a press contact. Of course, it has a much larger manpower base, and a larger budget. But it knows the importance of getting an accurate message out to its community.

I know it will pose a hardship for such a small fire department, but even a quick cell-phone call to me (I'm the local, after all, and can get there sooner), and details when available within the evening if possible, would be a huge help in centralizing information, especially when it will cause suffering if mis-reported because there are no official sources (ie only neighbors). The fire chief isn't always available; fires can take off again, and the moment for an interview can be missed, at least that night.

When I called the editor of the Forks Forum to advise him of mistakes, he gladly gave me the information he was able to get with his longer deadline. He also paid attention when I told him the information was iffy -- that most of the people I was able to talk to said, "I don't know.," or were distracted by the fire. He has helped me out on pooling resources for local papers before, so I was able to get some official information back to the other paper, if only tardily. Cooperation between local papers is very laudable in community information support.

Normally, a reporter could be sent right out to a street address, but up here, a wrong position can lead to hours of lost time, by which time the emergency is over. Often, out-of-area papers think everything up here takes place in one community, IE Sekiu. We take time to check out actual addresses, and I still end up running up and down switchbacks because the editor didn't make the contact to get a gate unlocked. If I were a full-time paid employee of the papers, with benefits, this wouldn't be so much of a problem for me, but it still leads to missed opportunities.

I do have to say that I'm not going to wait around for up to four hours in the rain for the sheriff or any other officials any more, because I get paid minimal freelance rates. I've had two cameras ruined by weather (have a nice waterproof one now). It may lose the local communities coverage, but I have to prioritize work based on payment, and my fans and readers just pay better than these small side newspaper jobs. I'm not trained or really paid as a reporter, but am a fiction writer and artist. Journalism is a full-time specialty. Out-of-area papers are just going to have to pay the gas mileage to get their people up here.

The Forum, which is in the west end, does take this into consideration when asking me to do a story, thinking about mileage and time, and pinpointing places. The former editor, Denise Dunne Devaney instituted a page for the West End in the Forum, and I've tried to keep it live. A lot of the local community work with me to keep that page in place. Thanks especially to the Three Sisters of Clallam Art Gallery and the co-op and community gardens in getting their news out. And holding still long enough to get names spelled right! I'm sorry your photos have been cut up by the layout people, but space is at a premium for ads in a print newspaper, and it's an editorial and layout decision to chop your heads off. I try to send them photos they can't chop, but once the paper's got it, that's their business.

Prediction re costs of printing newspapers: paper may stay around for newspapers, at least for the life of the aging population, but as weeklies, putting up daily news on the internet where it can be quickly corrected. The Forum already has that system in place.

The only thing that might save paper printing is making paper out of fiber sources other than wood. It makes terrible paper, very high in acid, and takes a huge amount of resources to produce. It's an antique technology, though, and usually once such a technology is thoroughly integrated into an empire's system, it can't be shifted and adds to the burden of the failing economies and systems that appear at the end of an empire.

Beowulf; Somebody Else Knew There Was More Story.

2011-01-29T12:53:00.000-08:00

I've FINALLY figured out what bugs me about "Beowulf." It's an Excuse Tale, like an American western: what the invading society tells itself as it wipes out the locals. I KNEW it was true because there is a "Mother," and "son;" those are signs of a news report.

I'm not a very good reporter myself, or at least not in the modern AP style. But struggling to be a freelancer has taught me where the seed in a story is hidden.

There is such hate for these obviously nonexistent characters -- there are, after all, no demons from hell or dragons or sea-hags or sea-serpents -- such ego-pumping, long-told and long-developed, that it's probably representing repeated ancestral behavior.

If anything, it's the conquest-tale of the Indo-Europeans as they take out the European locals, especially any that refused to accept defeat or hid or resisted. You Finns and Hungarians may be proud you've still got your language after the ancestral Beowulf gang got done with you.

The dragon? We've all got a little file in our basic mammal brain that pops up an image of the 3-foot dinosaur that used to gobble us up by the millions over the millenia. Scare a heron and you will see it, yellow with green stripes. Some of our tiny mouse-sized ancestors escaped the long toothy jaws, and felt the hot breath.

Proof that dinosaurs were hot-blooded? That Grendel really was the last of a tribe? I'm just asking, and wondering.

Oh, the comment on this post reminded me: I just saw a really fun movie based on a rethink of the old story: Beowulf and Grendel. Don't miss the special features and the commentary.

And OF COURSE a there's a lot of pissing in it -- there's a lot of GUYS in it. That's the most reasonable way of getting a torch down a cliff I've ever seen. And the funniest. There's a law in movies: if it comes in from out or moves out of the sides, it reads as funny. How ELSE would you get a torch down a cliff if all you had to descend was a knot rope? I bet they found that out by accident.

Stinz to the Rescue

2011-01-24T12:25:00.000-08:00

Cartoonists Northwest auctions art at their Toonies Awards banquets. They need funding right now. Like most artists, I got more art than cash, so offered to do them some art for the banquet.

Bidding for this piece starts at $200.00 -- I'll be posting more details once they get them to me.

How to Draw a Horse -- The Short Version

2011-01-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

Note on Facebook, and thread: Get your team-leader to hire me to supervise the horse jobs. Why? When your movie comes out w/badly-drawn horses, it says to the female audience "This crap is good enough for YOU," and WE DON'T SHARE THE MOVIE WITH OUR FRIENDS. Girls go on WORD OF MOUTH. Can we say "TITANIC?" or "TWILIGHT?"

Okay, quick horse-drawing course:

"A horse is a box with a leg at each corner."

Its front "knees" are its wrists; its back "knees" are its heels (hocks).

It's walking on its fingernails.

The neck is a springy flat curve.

The head is a parallelogram, w/long crocodile jaws inside (joint under the ears, not under the chin).

The tail has bone & meat in it, like a dog's tail.

It has a big belly, viewed from above.

It can take 10 lbs out meat out of you at a bite.

The hind-leg kick releases the same level of energy as a hand-grenade explosion (the leg extended by a movement of the upper hip-joint, lashing out the entire limb).

With this in mind, go watch moving horses on YouTube, and see if you don't improve. Send me your pictures or links and I'll post 'em here.

Okay? No more excuses, like that mess in the movie Beowulf. And THEY had real horses, for crying out loud, and they still managed to produce marshmallow horses.

First submission, from Wendy Parker, an old friend, army buddy, and now civil engineer assigned to obscure posts in the snows of Alaska:

Wendy's notes:

"I know you are not supposed to teach us dweebs about drawing for free, but since you gave some advice, I attempted to do what you said.

"Here it is after three hours of erasing. The hardest part was the head, and the legs, getting them the right length. Not sure how I did on that. Anyway, here is my horse with a stick up his butt. I think I did his tail okay though....from the spine."

My critique: "Your first horse? Nice, solid weight on the earth, excellent work on the feet. And yes, that IS the hardest part, getting the legs right. The head is very nice.

Remember there's a dog-like tail under that hair. And that everything a horse does with the ears and tail is a language, and they have many different positions. The heavy, straight hair flows around the tail as it whips about.

I'd say this horse is calm, but with some ambivalence; that ear and the slight switching of the tail telegraph emotion very well."

I should point out Wendy has owned horses; being around real ones helps. All these notes may help you understand your own process of learning to draw.

Next step:
Wendy: "I did what you said and looked up a page on drawing horses. My goal was to draw a horse with his head down like he was sniffing for grass. I found this site that dealt with the horses muscles and skeleton. Anyway, it still took forever, and, I'm not sure about the legs. They look better than they did because they reminded me of Gumby or that super hero that stretches lol!. I don't think any of your friends would believe that I couldn't draw a decent horse before. I thought maybe the neck wasn't long enough, but the way the horses head is tilted meant it should look shorter because she is looking this way. Am I right? I thought about the back leg, and it occurred to me that it looked like a leg bent at the knee and the hoof was a foot. So when I approached it that way, it came out better. I know I have a long way to go, and I'm not sure I will even go there, but I did what I did. Nifty eh?"

My critique: "Here's another drawing hint: stew a chicken, then slowly pull off the meat, paying attention to all muscle masses and bones. Most muscles and bones are the same -- evolution is a very simple tool-box we all dip back down into (we have a lizard collar-bone, for example). The neck is exceptionally well done for a first tie. Pat yourself on the back! REMEMBER; the horse walks on a single fingernail and the hock is YOUR heel, and the knee is up against the body. The rest of the leg is "buried" in the quarters. Remember there are bones under these forms. Think of them as rebar. To draw a hock, feel your own heel and ankle."

A post-DADT Christmas

2010-12-29T15:59:00.000-08:00

Joyce Farmer sent this lovely card for the 2010 Christmas, just in time for DADT to bite the dust.

Joyce has a new book out! Special Exits -- life with Mom.

A great review of the book.

Primitive Art

2010-12-29T09:09:00.000-08:00

How we used to do it.

If you're a traditional (old) creator, you'll laugh (and cry?). If you're a kid, you'll go WTF?

The Grandmother's Hive -- Happy Reader

2010-12-25T11:46:00.000-08:00

A reader who posts her rather wonderful KrautGrrl art and stories (go look!) over on Deviantart sent me this little review, and gave me this permission to post it. First our little conversation about that:

Donna: "I am so happy you like that! Did they get it from here? [link]

And I'd like to thank them for getting it for you! Which shop is it?

The book was written as a kid's book, but it's probably too much for most kids. I mean, it would have been fine for me, but most kids would probably not get it. I had a lot of fun with internal art puns, as I recall (couldn't point 'em out now)."

June: "Oh I would have loved it as a kid. And I have no idea where he scavenged it from. That shop is crammed full of so much -- and I didn't think to ask but I shall next time I see them.

It's called "Buried Under Comics" in Manchester, Connecticut."

And now the review:

"So... while it seems unlikely I'll find anything peachy in my stalking or under the tree -- my good friends at the comic book shop remedied this.

The Grandmothers' Hive ... I don't even...know where to start O_O
gah it was like some sort of whimsical trip minus the anxiety of waking up not knowing where I am.

I mean...in everything!!! the story, the words, the text, the pictures! I had to re-read the pages several times to soak everything in...

it is utter eye candy...

I could go on and on about how much I enjoyed this work but well...I realize I must pester you so often with my fan-girling...

point is... it's the best Christmas present I could have hoped for.

Marvelous Work, as always."

The Demon

2010-12-19T10:19:00.000-08:00

Letter to the magazine Astronomy:

"Twilight Musings in the January 2011 Astronomy reflected why our household finds the sunset hours so fascinating, especially the cut line "We commonly wait to view Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse, but it also appears projected against our atmosphere any transparent night." The shadow of Mauna Kea on the atmosphere made me shiver.

We are -- and probably always will be -- on a giddy, ancient or kid level of astronomy: identifying bare-eye objects, oohing and ahing at the Milky Way, tracking planets.

In August 2010, walking on the beach on Clallam Bay, on the Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, we saw on airplane over the beach. Or an oncoming helicopter? Something too large to be a star or planet, at least not there. As it lowered winking angrily red and green against the silvering sky, we realized it was much farther out than any man-made object. Racing back to the house, we grabbed our astronomy texts, and soon identified it as the binary system Al Ghoul, or The Head Of Medusa, in Perseus.

Its powerful appearance as its rising, with nothing else visible in the sky, made us realize why the desert peoples called it "The Demon." As you can see in the photo at http://www.sekiu.com, the ridge we live behind blocks low-level objects. We're used to seeing Perseus as a pretty but not spectacular overhead winter constellation.

(Has anybody at "Astronomy" tried my experiment of running down a hill at a green flash to intensify the perceived color? It can be replicated as a sun sets, allowing anyone, kid or adult, to see a green flash over and over. Admittedly, that might be pushing playing with science a bit far.)."

Rescue Me!

2010-12-18T18:38:00.000-08:00

After Definitely Not The Opera put out a call for rescue stories, I wrote this one, and I might as well put it here:

"I've never been rescued, but I've rescued others and their lives and limbs many times, including myself, people, animals and at least one horse. I don't know why this is: I seem to have inherited my father's lightning-fast reactions when there's an emergency, and only panic when the incident is over and everybody's safe.

One rescue disturbs me because it was of a child when that boy's parents should have been there to watch over him. I was splashing around in the warm, calm waters of Belfair beach at the very end of the Hood Canal, near Shelton, in Washington State. I noticed a small blond boy picking his way along one of the small oyster-shell island, accompanied by a little Asian girl, both of them in bathing suits.

Belfair Bay seems very safe, but there is a First Nations tale about a witch that eats children there, and I think it must be based on the tide, that comes in very fast over a wide, flat bay, filling in deeply through one or two deceptively shallow-looking channels. Some of the mud is like glutinous quicksand, dangerously deep for a child.

I was splashing around happily in the rising water when I looked up to see the boy balancing on sharp oyster shells, with a look of panic on his face. The little girl was trying to get him to cross the fast channel. She could swim, he couldn't. There was no way he could have gotten back across the island in time before it was covered. She was going to have to watch her friend drown.

I waded and swam over to the poor kid, and told him to hang onto my waist and not to panic or let go, no matter what happened. He was very brave; even though I could feel him shuddering with terror, he just hung on tight as I swam us both back, the girl darting through the water ahead of us.

When I got them back to the beach, I told them to tell their parents to NEVER let them go to the beach alone. And to never do it again, no matter what. When they nodded, they seemed to mean it. Last I saw of them, they were heading back over the ridge to the trailer camp where they were staying with their parents. I probably should have gone over and had words with their folks, but it seemed like talking to the kids was going to have better results."

Getting Around The Censors

2010-12-15T09:24:00.000-08:00

Facebook forum on the censorship of one man's book by Createspace (ask him for details, see if you agree).

I'm God In Eastern Europe

2010-12-14T08:36:00.000-08:00

Even though I can't read the long and obviously complimentary reviews that keep showing up.

However, if you paste this link into the SEARCH space of your browser, it will take you to a Google search page with a translation link!

http://www.voxfeminae.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=85%3Adonna-barr-veteranka-stripa&catid=55%3Aintervjui&Itemid=193

When you read it, please remember that fućkati is evidently the Croatian word for "whistle."

I CAN be hired

2010-12-13T18:03:00.001-08:00

OH, YEAH.

Donna Barr Lets Her Characters Go Play With Fans

2010-12-11T09:41:00.000-08:00

I love my agents. Letter from me to Dave Baxter and Dallas Miller, of Killing The Grizzly.

"Hi, D & D:

I would like to extend a huge gift to my fans, but I want to ask you first. You know how Gene Roddenberry allowed anyone to sell any Star-Trek-related things they created themselves? I'd like to do the same with my work. Not the old stuff you're representing -- anything THEY make, new and pretty. I'll let you hyperventilate for a bit, and then get back with me."

Dave Baxter:

"Hyperventilate? Hell, no, that sounds fantastic. I mean, personally, I think every creator should pirate their own work and stick it out on torrents and forums and P2P sires. Anyone who downloads the work there and reads it on a computer (un-ideal) wasn't going to give you money anyway, either due to not having any money or just being a stubborn ass, but either way I don't believe you actually lose anything and you gain word of mouth and exposure.

Creator-approved fan-fic (even for profit) is a profound idea, and can do nothing but good. It's free marketing and reader engagement for publishers, too. On paper they all have to poo-poo these kinds of ideas, but if they're already in motion.... :)

Dave Baxter (of Dave Baxter and Dallas Miller, of Killing The Grizzly).

So there you go, folks. Go nuts. Send me stuff (email files, copies, links) to read or enjoy. Sell it without worrying about paying me. Invent new characters, whatever you want to do. It's a big desert out there (and Gene was usually right).

Cool Facebook Thread about this.

Vincent - Missing Ten Years

2010-12-08T12:25:00.000-08:00

It's time for the yearly "have you seen this cat?" notice.
Yes, I know, cats have been found after 14 years because they were microchipped, but Vincent wasn't. But now we have Facebook.
A cat psychic doing a reading at the time said someone stole him and that he died trying to get back.

Update: The following psychic reading December 9, 2010, by Animal Communicator Hilary Renaissance

"He saw a woman with her hair in a bun or ponytail who was carrying groceries in a bag into a 'medium-colored' (brown/green/even light red) building."

"It was within three homes of yours (in Bremerton). Then he saw something near the building. He saw some milky-colored cat food and he ate some."

"He became sick, and felt like hiding. He went into some bushes, somewhere between your home and bushes. There was a recessed area, or alcove under a deck or a porch, or even under a foundation. The bushes had a slight arch. The leaves were like plumes, and slightly arched. Possibly ferns?"

"He was in and out of consciousness. He didn't physically travel, but cats can associate travel with bad things. He didn't go anywhere physically. Then he crossed over."

"He says he feels like a star. You made him feel like a star. You can stay in communication by doing something good. Plant a tree, write a poem for him. Making him a cat bed would be an excellent idea."

Homeopathy (prescribed for grief): St. Ignatius Bean. Take 1 drop ever 15 minutes for an hour, then twice a day for 60 days to help make the grief flow out. Drop one pellet in a gallon jar, put in pet's water, refresh daily.

Immediately upon hanging up the phone, I put out a folding chair, and an afghan I'd crocheted, that he'd known and slept on. Fearless -- whom he'd known and slept with -- and Kiki, whom he didn't, got into a squabble over the chair. Then Fearless came back and snuggled down in the chair.

The weird thing is, for months afterwards, I kept wandering near that house, feeling something pulling me. I have no doubt the body was removed. Other cats disappeared in that neighborhood, too. Now I know why we hope there's a Hell. I'd look for a homeopathic medicine for grudges, but when we're part Irish, those don't do any good.

Happy Happy Merry Merry

2010-11-29T19:36:00.000-08:00

THE PUBLISHER VERSION OF GAMING

2010-11-21T11:50:00.000-08:00

I just want to see if I can do this.

With OpenOffice:

Das ist ein schönes Pferd, daß frißt und dann mich trägt am Übermorgen.

On Firefox:

Das ist ein schönes Pferd, daß frißt und dann mich trägt am Übermorgen.

And then with this:

˙ʇƃäɹʇ suǝƃɹoɯɹǝqü ɥɔıɯ uuɐp pun 'ʇßıɹɟ suǝƃɹoɯ sɐp 'pɹǝɟd sǝuöɥɔs uıǝ ʇsı sɐp

Early Desert Peach (Peach Pitts) film

2010-11-20T11:27:00.000-08:00

At Norwescon, I had food poisoning on this panel.

My Trade School -- The Truth

2010-09-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

To tell the truth, I dunno if the Trade School would ever work; like it says, I can promise nothing afterwards. All I can help people do is develop as authors and artists and put them on the right path.

As for teaching time -- it's really about making the students do all the work, and making them think. Tweaking the sails, so to speak. For those who want to be turned into clones, I'm of no help -- and for those who don't, I may not be necessary.

So nothing may come of it -- but I could promise a good return if someone wanted to take it on.

My REAL trade school goes like this:

Writing and drawing: Don't copy -- go out and draw stuff and experience things! You have 10,000 bad drawings/pages in you. Do 'em and burn 'em (or share 'em in Sketches at Deviantart.com)

Materials: DickBlick.com (DanielSmith.com when you want to do gallery work)

Programs: Art: GIMP Layout: OpenOffice Files: Irfanview (PC) Automator (Mac)

Publishing: Createspace.com, Lulu.com, Ka-Blam.com

Internship: spend a full weekend at San Diego Comicon, scamming interviews with working people in the entertainment and media industry (BUY THEM LUNCH).

Welp, that's it. That's my whole trade school, the awful truth. I just put myself out of work.

The Donna Barr Trade School

2010-09-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Now I've had a couple of students serving internships with me from the MCAD, I've had a chance to think about what I can really offer and what I need out of it.

I am no longer going to offer internships; I don't need people to show up here to do scanning and scut work. I need to be able to pass on years of experience in art, writing and publishing -- and be paid for it. Instead, I am offering a trade school.

If you're short of time and money and just want to get to work in any end of this industry, consider that I can offer you the same training as a college, with fewer costs in time and money.

Online option: only three students at a time.

Required programs: Skype, GIMP and OpenOffice required. ComicLife optional.

The details for a one-month course; you must be a legal adult:

1. Costs for either on-line or in-place option: $4500.00 Paypal (with additional fees) or money order.

In-place option:

2. If you opt for training with me directly, you will find your own place to live while training, and feed yourself.

3. You organize and pay for your own travel. If you are late because you didn't take into consideration the distances or bus routes, you may not change your schedule; you'll have a lot of travel to do in this business and you can't be late for anything.

4. Courses will consist of five hours per day, with an additional lunch break, from Monday through Friday. You will have weekends to yourself, but you will be expected to finish all assignments.

5. The first two weeks will be drawing, writing and comics layout. The second week will be more full training in open source programs, including the art manipulation program GIMP, the layout program OpenOffice. The final week will be networking, accounting, marketing, small press publishing, cooking and health hints for authors, etc.

Be prepared for a LOT of work, and no pity if you don't get it done (you'll never get any from a editor). Time at the beaches and in the forests of the Olympic Peninsula can be earned by finishing projects in time for weekends. Since I seldom get out to see them myself, I will be willing to provide transportation so I can see them too. However, I am not a hang-out buddy, so don't expect it. I'm also a working freelance reporter, so I may have to leave you to work on your own; you should have enough independence to work hard without supervision. Please don't bring up personal or family problems, unless we're just gabbing on beach-runs -- then anything's fair.

At the end of this course, you should have the tools you need to go out and work in the comics industry with fewer expensive or scary surprises. It will not gain you recognition in academia, unless you think associating with an historically-recognized comics author will do so. It may not necessarily open any doors for you (although I have a huge list of contacts who will listen to my recommendations), but it will give you the tools for being prepared to do so yourself.

You will also have the right to contact me any time after the class with reasonable, well-thought-out questions about anything having to do with comics, as well as access to my extensive colleague and reader community. Your performance will count. If you make a bad impression during the course, you can redeem yourself by future life performance; I do not burn bridges, and people can change. Points are given for honest effort.

First person who signs up and pays for this gets to take me out to to the Clallam Bay Inn for fish n' chips and beer and a walk on the beach; no holds barred on the evening's conversation or questions.

What will you be doing at Armageddon?

2010-08-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

That's the question for the Killing The Grizzly Art Contest. So get drawing and writing, folks! It's a chance to not only get a page in a sharp new anthology -- they're actually offering a token payment for publication rights.

Yeah, yeah, it's only $25.00, but that's better than you get from most people putting together an anthology! Most of 'em don't even get you a free ad in the book for clients to find you. Even a little $25.00 is better than ANY other anthology (you know, those clowns with their "we'll offer you two free copies for slaving away all day") -- and these guys are just getting started as a real powerhouse company. Join in now and be there when they can really offer what your amazing art and writing deserve!

Shell Shocked In Proseland

2010-07-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

Went to the PNWA Convention yesterday. God knows why; I've spent literal decades being sneered at when I say I do comics (with that little cringe and eye-twitch). Admittedly, I'm shell-shocked (for those of you into psychological terms, that's PTSD), I even titled my little talk Eyes and Hands, and gave it a real under-the-radar tone, to hope to at least fool a couple of people into coming in and seeing what I did.

Surprised was I when three people showed up, eager to hear everything I had to say or maunder about on. One guy was even using Comic Life to create fumetti with his gaming figures, and doing a perfectly readable and shareable job of it.

After the talk, stayed around for dinner, and found -- to my utter surprise -- that all these writers were surprised there was a comics panel at the show and were sorry they'd missed it.

All I can figure is the old farts who thought comics were an Inferior Art Form are dying off, and thank all the Manga people who are running around in love with words and pictures. A whole generation of older writers are seeing that what we do is valid.

AND -- for those of you artists who are trying to find writers, these people are NOT embarrassed to admit they are Prose Genre. They will be perfectly happy to do you a script for a nice payment and then go away without demanding rights or artwork. These are script jockies and screenwriters, nice hard-working people.

Let's hook up our industries; artists and a very available pool of professional script writers. I want to see what happens.

BUT: there was only ONE sales outlet -- previous consignment through Barnes and Noble. Because B&N owes me money, their shop at the convention lost my consignment form. Yup, actually NO other way to sell books -- a one-distributor gateway they keep locked. Why do they let themselves be treated like this?

Killing the Grizzly

2010-07-13T19:50:00.000-07:00

Neat things going on with my work and that of a number of other comics authors: http://www.killingthegrizzly.com/the-desert-peach-by-donna-barr/

I'm letting these guys do what they do best -- promotion and finding the money. I'm hoping to be able to be getting out of the processing of my work and the marketing yada yada and back to actually concentrating on writing and drawing.

I plan to take all the files I've processed and sending DVD copies to the San Diego State University Collection of my work. Then, any publisher who wants a copy can be directed there, and for whatever fees SDSU requires, obtain a copy of the files for future processing, after coming to contractual agreements with me. It can be hands off for me: I can turn over all my original art and let them begin to sell it.

Because We CAN

2010-05-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

Had to leave this letter at Jian Ghomeshi's Q:

Dan Clowes is a great drawn book author ("artist/writer/letterer/colorist/owns copyright,"), and a nice guy to boot.

But here are the dumbest questions he and I and ALL of us drawn book authors are asked by interviewers, with my answers (first heaving huge sigh):

"Did you draw that TOO?" (No, elves on crack did).

"How long did it take you to do a page?" (WTF does this one mean? My answer: 52 years -- and I've been publishing since 1986.)

"Why do you do comics?" ("Because I can write and I can draw.")

"Why did you draw it that way?" (Because I CAN)

"Who's your inspiration?" (WTF? Do ALL prose people think we're tracing other artists? I was inspired by ancient anonymous tomb art, specifically Egyptian, Mayan and Scythian).

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE start writing smarter, more uncommon questions than this, the ones we all get tormented with. Interviews are like programming: GIGO.

Poor Dan....at least he doesn't get invited to the idiot eternal "Women in Comics" panels. But I would have loved to have heard some really good questions asked him, instead of the SOS we all get tormented with. I'm about to do a t-shirt, I swear, with those questions on it....

Educating Hunters, One Brain Cell At A Time

2010-04-21T09:18:00.000-07:00

Just sent this to President Walter "Bud" Pidgeon, Jr., head of the USSA

You can contact him too, with YOUR favorite comics sites! At: bpidgeon@ussportsmen.org

"Hi, Bud! Hi folks!

Just read about the action of the USSA at: Ellen Degeneres

Since you are being introduced to comic books, I thought you'd enjoy my long-running comic book series: The Desert Peach

Here's another one I heartily recommend: The Virgin Project.

And we can't leave out: Cuckoo.

Or the smashing: Colin Upton's World

And we can't leave out a WORLD of fun comics: Prism Comics

Welcome to wonderful world of comic books! It's more books, more kinds of books -- and more people worldwide -- than you can imagine. I recommend you look at all these sites. And imagine how many more there are.

Donna Barr

Regular ASPCA contributor"

Broken Heart, Small Soul

2010-04-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

This isn't going to do any good, but I have to do it anyway, because every once in a while I have to try again. It's worn a hard rut of sorrow in my heart, and at this point I know I'm never going to get over it. So if you've run into me and found me snappish, narrow-minded and sour, read the title on this post.

Soon after he went missing, I dreamt he met me at the foot of a street going straight up from the west end of the Fremont bridge in Seattle. There is no such street. I've even checked a Fremont street in Bremerton, and a Fremont neighborhood in Tacoma. Thinking of him the other day, and discovered there was a Fremont neighborhood in Las Vegas.

If you can tell me what happened to him -- and prove it -- it's $250.00 bucks for you. If you can bring him back alive, it's $500.00.

There. I've got it out of my system for another session of weeks or years. And don't tell me to Get Over It; a local poke-into-your-life wanna-be spiritualist leader told me "We (him and his just-as-bad partner) can cure grief and guilt." He's lucky I didn't slap him silly on the spot.

Emerald City Comicon

2010-03-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

Got back from Emerald City the day before St. Patrick's Day.

What can I say? A good show, as always; sold lots of books out of the booth I shared with five other artists at the Cartoonists Northwest booth. I like sharing a booth better; there's always somebody there to watch our stuff and it's a party all the time.

Managed to physically see Leonard Nimoy, so I can add more steps to the Kevin Bacon game Dan and I have so much fun playing. It doesn't get me any closer to Boston Legal (George Takai playing pingpong did that years ago), but it does get me one step closer to Gunsmoke (be sure not to have anything liquid in your mouth before you go to this link).

Now, the best part of traveling: trying out new restaurants with Roberta Gregory!

Steelhead Diner: poutine and smothered greens (that's Roberta's happy mouth).

Poutine: flat, blah dish. Supposedly extra-tasty with special gravy, sausage and cheese curds. But -- that may be our fault for sprinkling the white chili vinegar on our olive oil and butter before dipping in the scrumptious bread the restaurant had bought at the Pike's Place Market. Or pairing it with the yummy smothered greens with Italian bacon and sherry vinegar (deservedly in the foreground). We did rescue it by slathering it full of torn pieces of Thai basil we'd bought in the market. The chef said that in season it was served with truffles; that's right, put something earthy on something flat. Coffee: so very good. Black as evil, but not bitter or oily. Not a drop of milk needed -- and it's bottomless. Then again, I'm an artist, and if the coffee's good, we're happy with the place. No, the portions are not dinky; we always split, so we can pretend we're at the Bite Of Seattle as we walk.

Such as Sweetie's, the candy store in the Pike's Place Market. The owner is the proverbial kid in the candy store -- that's him grinning after he discovered he could get mango sour-powder in Seattle. We simply HAD to get us some Kookabura licorice, some salted licorice, and licorice all-sorts. Yes, dears, we are fond of licorice.

Northlake Hawaiian Barbecue: That's Roberta and her guy, Bruce Taylor, digging into home-style Hawaiian comfort food, pork lau-lau and pork adobo (and each other's plates). Very clean, but very tasty. I never thought I'd like poi or slices of fried spam in my ramen soup. Even the plain rice and coconut pudding are delish; the latter bounces with flavor. They bring you a tray of assorted teas -- I always let Pele choose -- and then run by every once in a while to replenish the hot water. This may not mean much to you, but I'm terminally thirsty, especially after walking all over downtown Seattle with Roberta. Where is this place? At the bottom of Yesler and Boren. It is a most unprepossessing heap -- an ex-gas-station -- with all its charms on the plate. Large dining room and deck in the summer, and they cater.

Emerald City Comicon Poster

2010-03-07T08:21:00.000-08:00

Look out for my poster at Emerald City Comicon (booth 610).

The original art used to build the poster will be there for sale (unless you grab it first; $449.95 -- and there's only one).

Emerald City Comicon Coupon

2010-02-10T15:28:00.000-08:00

Going to be at the Emerald City Comicon? Bring this coupon! Download and print out. See you at booth 610! (The coupon opens up the right size if you click it)

Sorry Loggers

2010-02-06T12:03:00.001-08:00

Just some amateur musings from an on-the-job-trained stringer reporter.

Poor Clueless Pimples

2010-02-02T13:12:00.000-08:00

My answer to: http://blog.copyrightalliance.org/2010/02/pilfering-copyrighted-images-mock-freedom-and-respect/

"Oh, come on, my fellow authors/artists. Haven't we all met the trembling fan-boy at the conventions who has a picture of our art or a photo of Betty Page in the alltogether and acts like he pooped it out of his own butt? Or the quivering fan-girl who pretends to be us at trade shows -- or even goes into bookstores to sign our books? Hey, we used to call them Trekies. Give these poor, talentless, uncreative people a break. They can't make it themselves. Most of them never got near an art class because our schools don't provide them any more; they've been harnessed mind and soul to work on factory lines or punch out code. The best they can do themselves is make bath bombs or Martha Stewart Halloween potpourris. Poor things. have some sympathy; what else have they got?"

Stinz Drinking Song

2010-01-24T11:25:00.000-08:00

Dear Donna,
I never wrote a tune for that, although it wouldn’t be hard. Of course you can share it, illustrate it, anything you like—mentioning authorship and my author’s site would be lovely.
Fond best,
Rob

Can I share this with my customers and on my blog? It's great.
D

Wendy asked me to send this along-- I wrote it not long after seeing your ‘Seat for the Baron’ picture in the ooooold Centaurs’ Gatherum. It’s yours, although I’d love a plug for my book site

Rob

A Stallion's Drinking Song

The day's at an end,
Come with me, my friend,
The barley's been threshed
And we've time we can spend,
With beer, or with ale,
And the barmaid's full tail
Still has an attraction that has yet to fail!

CHORUS:

Lift glass, and one hoof,
See there? That's the proof!
I'm sober as stone, and that's clearly the truth!
One stein, at most two,
For me-what's for you?
Another full tankard?
Don't mind if I do!
I've plowed with a will,
I'll now drink my fill,
My mare won't object 'til they've tendered the bill!

CHORUS

Hey, there! Watch your rump!
I've spilled at that bump!
You'll buy me two others?
Colt! Two more here, jump!
I've met you just now,
Yet I'm sure, I vow,
We're long lost herd-brothers, I know it, somehow!

CHORUS

My friend, you're grown tall!
Or do I now sprawl
Hooves-up on the floor?
I fear that is the call!
It's to stall I must go,
My mare will soon know!
I'd best have three more, then, to cushion her blow!

CHORUS

What the hell is this thing?

2010-01-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

As the result of a bad case of end-of-project anxiety ("Whadda I write about NOW??"), I'm poking at a -- novel? -- novelette? -- historical fantasy thingie? -- sci/fi? -- which is my usual way of starting something completely now.

Right now it's only some vague historical meanderings, with a gloomy kid (guess what I was like as a teen) wandering around in it. No, it is NOT Catcher In The Rye.

I'm actually going back and putting the action and dialogue in to spice up the liveliness (I can hack as good as the next guy). What I've got is just a skeleton, and an author with no clue. I don't even know what this thing is about, yet. Mystery? Teenage angst? Rage against the machine? It's talking to itself and I have no idea what it wants. I'm waiting for it to start talking to ME. The kid is probably just a place-holder until the real character shows up -- which is what Stinz did.

What later became the the centaur hero of one of my most -- dare I say? - beloved series was just some two-legged sidebar mayor in An Insupportable Light, a story about a young nobleman trying to take over a position in life he didn't really want. Stinz was standing on the sidelines smoking when he perked up and said, "Okay, I'm in charge of this plot line now."

My best work is nothing if not organic.

"Last Kiss" Caption

2009-12-30T12:30:00.000-08:00

I HAD to put up a caption on John Lustig's page. Go laugh! (Search "Donna Barr" when you get there).

ARGH! Missing pages

2009-12-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

This refers to a problem in the BOOKSTORE.

The missing or mixed-up pages for AFTERDEAD 2. Download and print out and stick in book. And yell at me for some original art (a nice little bookplate you can put right in the book), for your trouble, IF you already have a copy of this:

Indy Comic Book Week

2009-10-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

Here's the ICBW website. When I was originally beginning to work with this event, I mistook it for an actual independent comics event. From what I've been able to glean in email messages, it's been put together by industry distribution and art people who fear for their jobs in a failing bookstore world.

I love the comics shops and bookstores. I also wish to make it clear that I hope the very best for this event. But it may not be possible for traditional shops to survive in a world where the author no longer has to go through middlemen, and can speak and sell directly to readers (ie customers). Many of us find working with middlemen too difficult and time-consuming, and have turned to print-on-demand, with ad-powered webcomics. Our readers have left the shops and followed us online. This is great for us, but it leaves the middlemen completely out of the loop. We get paid, they don't. Distributors turn into second-hand stores because they can't get our books new. Or not yet; they may figure that out in the future.

The site wants to place a lot of strictures on book authors, limitations which were traditional in the old distribution and retail world, but which we now no longer use in doing business. None of the authors have signed any contracts with the event. And I, for one have to stay within my own business model. This may or may not work with a traditional event. But it's only the first year. It takes a while to establish these things.

I still want to cooperate with this event to try to bring my customers back to retail outlets, but I have to make my own offer to the retailers. This is how it works: I need to have all retailer orders to me by November 30, to make the Ka-Blam deadline. This one time, I can pay shipping -- or I can offer 50% off. Otherwise, it's 45% off. This is not normally how I do business, but I'm doing it for the event. Print-on-demand works as an automatic engine, and normally I would not be involved in any sales (with some backstock and special exceptions; see below).

Ka-Blam is working to take advantage of the event. They will be printing new, competitively-priced comics POD editions of all my books. A choice of the books so far is at Indyplanet, search "The Desert Peach." Those are the retail prices.

For a list of all my available books, click "The Little Store" in the column to the right.

Anything at http://www.lulu.com/desertpeach can be ordered directly on-line by any retailer, for the same wholesale price available to customers and distributors. You just can't get these deals unless you use the site to order directly. It's as low as the prices for Lulu POD go. I DO have some extra copies that can be included in a direct order, but you need to make your needs clear very early, in case I don't have any more, at least for now.

BUT -- The special AFTERDEAD 1 and 2 collection special must be ordered through The Little Store, but you will receive the same special price as any direct-order customer. These are near-wholesale prices, and you can order as many or as few as you need or like.

PLUS: I'm clearing out her (non-POD) backstock. All of it. Retailers can get amazing deals during the Indy Comics Weeks. Contact her through this blog site and just ask.

Packages: Put together your dream package and let's negotiate to make your store and me some sales and profits. And -- most importantly -- to make my customers very happy and bring them into your store. I tend to throw in bonuses and goodies.

It's not that bad a deal.

Advice to Academia

2009-10-01T10:13:00.001-07:00

Recently I had one of my culture clashes. It was between the professional artist and the fan/academic world.

I sorta promised to be part of a charity - which one does not matter. It's something I'm concerned about, but that I've been working on a long time. My inclusion or not in any project about it won't really matter. I want to admit that I used to do a lot of fan projects, including donating pages for advertising, charities, and even putting books together like this one myself. It's something we all do, as part of the learning process, and not something I regret.

But I've been at this a long time. I need to pick and choose what I support, and a partial promise to be part of a charitable project doesn't guarantee it will go to the head of the line; you get what you pay for, folks (unless it's an artist in trouble or needing health care; then I donate anything I can give). I'm also commissioned by paying customers and they come first.

I'm rather busy right now getting all the pages up for the Desert Peach website and the books processed for Indyplanet. Among other things.

I recently became part of the movement to teach artists and writers to always get paid, and stop acting like they're part of a usable free pot of pretty stuff, especially in America (besides, anybody who does so is a damn scab). Things sort of spiralled downhill from there. Someplace in activism, it often does. Heads get butted before I wander off grumbling and then attempt to analyze the problem.

So here are some simple rules for academics:

First of all, PRO UP:

1. Do not approach professional artists without offering payment for any projects. This includes charities or educational projects, which can be deducted for taxes; do the research and paperwork on becoming a non-profit.

2. As professors, you should be well aware of the methods of discovering and applying for academic funding. Do so, when looking for funds for shipping and advertising. Offer each comics artist at LEAST $150.00 per page -- for use alone. Add (don't replace payment) an option for royalties. If you find legitimate academic funding, you will lend professionalism and recognition to the project.

3. Do not presume to browbeat a professional artist as you do your students. Whatever you think or make up about art or writing will always be far behind what the creators are actually doing, and they will always be doing it for completely different reasons than you can actually imagine.

Remember: FINANCE, FUND and don't FUSS.

Stop Treating Us Like Free Monkeys

2009-09-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

Artists, illustrators, graphic designers, web designers: what to tell people who keep thinking what you do isn't worth a penny:

http://www.webcomicsinc.com/forum/topics/rules-for-engaging-an-artist

You have my permission to copy and use the "Don't work for free" logo in this post any damn way you want or please.

(Yeah, it's quick and dirty; you get what you pay for.)

Out-Of-Print to Print-On-Demand Press Release

2009-08-30T17:27:00.000-07:00

For immediate release:

August 30, 2009

Contact information:
Donna Barr, A Fine Line Press
donnabarr01@gmail.com 360 963 2935

Xeric-grant funded “Seven Peaches” sells out.

“Seven Peaches,” a collection of the first seven Desert Peach episodes that was funded by the Xeric Grant, has sold out.

The Xeric Foundation is a private, nonprofit corporation established by Peter A. Laird, co-creator of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Planet Racers. The Foundation offers financial assistance to committed, self-publishing comic book creators and qualified charitable and nonprofit organizations.

Donna Barr's work has repeatedly sold out print runs, including collections. To guarantee that her books stay in print without interruption -- and to keep from being forced to re-process them for a print one -- Donna is offering her work through her own company, A Fine Line Press, using new, more permanent technologies.

As a forward-thinking company, exploring new technologies, A Fine Line Press is committed to offering webcomic and print-on-demand versions of all past series by Donna Barr, including The Desert Peach and Stinz, as well as the on-going Afterdead (availale at Amazon and as a webcomic) and other, smaller series.

The first steps include the full Desert Peach collection, available now as a two-volume set at Lulu.com

“The Desert Peach” is also running as a page-a-day webcomic.

The first issues of the print-on-demand reprint of The Desert Peach is being prepared for use with the print-on-demand company Ka-Blam.com, and its distribution arm Indyplanet.

The ISSN numbers for this new reprint are:

ISSN 1948-9269 (print)
ISSN 1948-9277 (online)

“(Donna's) astonishing productivity puts most of her fellow comics creators to shame, particularly since she has never benefited by having the big-time comics publishers blowing wind into her sails. Donna has charted her own course and controlled her own creative destiny, and in the process she has provided inspiration and generous mentorship to others of us who would similarly like to avoid being shackled by presumed commercial ground rules.”

Howard Cruse, Stuck Rubber Baby, Wendal All Together.

Did you lose this dog?

2009-08-07T18:32:00.001-07:00

This lovely dog was lost west of Joyce, Washington, on Highway 112, on the Olympic Peninsula.

Please call Patrice at 360 640 4907 or contact her at: clallambaysekiu@hotmail.com if this is your dog.

You must give a detailed description.

Who's in charge here? Me or the house?

2009-08-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

For anybody wondering why I am not plugging ahead on art and stuff as fast as usual, I am a home-owner, and it is summer.

Before it rains, much maintenance must be done. Including getting six years’ worth of dandelions out of the yard and replacing it with the white dutch clover that will crowd out the grass, which cannot survive without extra water. The clover will hold available water, including dew, in the soil. It is also very low-growing, and never produces hard stems that our reel mower can’t handle. It stays soft and low, and offers masses of nectar to bees and other insects.

Yesterday, Nearest ripped out the back porch stairs and I whipped in a new set — and was wiped for the rest of the day. I can do anything I did as a kid, but it takes longer and longer to recover. Even got the walking surfaces on the steps and stairs stained and weatherproofed, so we can hit the rest when we can and not be held up using the steps. Today I traded off pulling weeds if Nearest would get the rest of the porch painted, or enough to make it look Intentional.

I have many art- and publishing-related things to do once the rains close in, but for now we’re racing the sun like vampire-hunters.

Next year’s whole plan is to fix one corner of the house’s siding, clean off all this moss, get rid of these stupid shutters the previous owner put on, and paint the whole outside.

Maybe, if I can, I can pull up all the yard tiles, lay down the plastic the neighbors ripped out of their dead swimming pool, and then re-lay the tiles. The previous owner went to the trouble to make and lay these tiles; why lose them?

Earlier this spring, ripped up and re-built the shed floor, built a scrap greenhouse. And got in all the winter’s wood.

I’m almost summered out, I tell you what.

Henna

2009-07-25T15:57:00.001-07:00

TwitterFriend requested I post the Henna job. Done with a Lush color. I'm not grumpy; I was trying to focus the camera. That's my face when I'm not using it for something else. Huh; I've been told to cheer up by complete strangers. The phiz do look kinda cold when it's not being employed.

Why I'm Not At The San Diego Comicon

2009-07-24T17:19:00.001-07:00

1. Airline pressurization. I know why the babies scream during flight; if it hurts an adult like that, imagine what it's like for them while their little ear membranes are shredded.

2. Airline security. From what I've heard, I'd be closer to getting arrested. Or wearing a raincoat to the security line and when they ask me to take it off -- well, wearing nothing but one's social security number marker'd onto one's arm would probably be more bad taste than they could deal with. It would be fun on YouTube, though.

3. Pinched nerve; carrying stuff can lock this one down, and lose me up to 45% of function. I can't even drive like this; it's literally like being drunk. Not to mention blind with pain.

4. Stress attacks; I don't need to be in a hospital away from home going in insane circles by my emergency room bed, so I don't rip out my IV.

5. Virtual model becoming more and more successful, for example, the Desert Peach webcomic.

6. By building the virtual model, more people can take advantage of it; ultimately, this will again make available authors and artists who are distant, aging or ill.

7. Inside information says that the new virtual market is getting very close to working, and the more time I spend on it the more I will be ready when it hits.

8. I don't need anybody's autograph. We are all monkeys on this planet, with the same belly-buttons and toenails.

9. The closest connection I need to a movie star is through his or her work; the library will get just about any DVD I want, or I can get me some nice collections.

10. If the virtual panel ever gets off the ground, I can stay up all night at Comicon in my pajamas with my cats.

The Desert Peach Blog

2009-07-24T07:55:00.001-07:00

If I haven't posted here in a while, I'm posting on the Desert Peach webcomic site.