Desert Peach Display Art Will Be For Sale

This quick display art will be available for sale after April 12, 2009, when I get back from Norwescon.

It portrays the Desert Peach, as he appears now in the series AFTERDEAD.

It's just an acryclic on a piece of cardboard, about 3' x 3', but it's pretty fun. It's actually square -- I had to photograph it instead of scanning it.

I'm thinking of an ebay auction -- but I may have a very interesting option, within the comics world.

Watch This Space.

Whale painting

The sort of thing that inspires a writer.

Thu Stephens bought this painting from the prison on the hill.

It looks like it was done by the guy with the killer whales in his yard.

Thu's husband Robert was the head of the dragon in the 2009 Dragon Dance.

The One True Refuge

For the second time in a row, Diamond refused to ship my orders. In fact, with the economy making it tougher for retailers, they raised their order level requirement from $1500 to $2500.

I'm thinking about not bothering with Diamond. Haven Distribution orders as needed as backstock, and since I use POD, EVERYTHING can be treated as backstock. If anybody insists on using a distributor.

Everyplace we look in books, publishers and distributors are scrambling. Websitecomics sites and the publishers working with them work authors to pieces, then collapse and take most of their money with them (you know who you are). When I found out who was working at Clickwheel, I gave them a sample booklet, but that's as far as I'm going to gamble with those guys.

I've had to send a rather -- cool -- letter to a newspaper about back payments. That paper is now very good about paying me. The person in charge of those payments has moved on to another newspaper -- which is now having trouble paying me. I may have to rework the letter.

The two income streams that are really working for me are Projectwonderful, and my Lulu page. Both of them are simple -- they sell ads or they print and sell books. PERIOD. Once I upload files, there are no loony program changes that force more useless work (Hello, Firefox!). The only upgrades I need to do are the ones I do myself, because I want to make a collection out of smaller books.

Lulu also automatically makes all book files into downloadable PDF's. And if you, my dear readers, ever feel you're making me more money by buying hard copies -- you're not. I clear as much out of a small download fee as I've set for the hard copies. If you WANT a hard copy (and -- for you collector crazies -- $6.00 books are now selling in India for around RS 1300 -- about $26.00), please order one. I love paper, myself, but it's not the ONLY way to do it. If you'd rather just grab a pdf, please do so. I still get paid about the same amount.

I'm keeping an eye on Kindle. Any comments from anybody who have tried to use the device for comics? Good links on real-world experience?

Sew What?

NPR was interviewing another woman artist today. They asked her about sewing, and the weddings and romance she sings about.

Is it just me, or is every woman who is interviewed in the arts singing or painting or writing about Women's Stuff?

Have you ever picked up a book that a woman wrote that isn't about love or sex or relationships? I know I've been turned down for writing seminars because I wasn't -- ahem -- writing about the women's stuff. Then again, I was turned away from a Magic Realism writing group because I wasn't -- quote -- "Spanish enough." 'splain that one to me.

I should qualify the question when asking about non-mainstream art. Sci-fi and fantasy writers who happen to be women get to write just about anything they want to. Mystery writers have broken every barrier there ever was -- stick a dead body in it, and you can add demons, ancient cultures and talking cats if you want to.

But if you're at a mainstream writing seminar, show, or in the literature section of a mainstream bookstore -- look around and see what the women are (allowed?) to write about.

And why do women always adopt that whispery court voice when they're being interviewed? "Court" refers to those samurai films with those upper-class women adopting a peculiar weak voice. The old-movie voice that was either husky to attract, or murmured to soothe. Nobody talks like that! Even in the samurai movies, the women who are cooks or farmers yell just like the guys.

I always wondered if Julia Child's voice wasn't an attempt at a court voice. I wonder what her REAL voice sounded like?

AFTERDEAD Novel

The ideas for prose are beginning to gell. An afterlife series based on the ideas in AFTERDEAD -- but in a more contemporary vein.

I've even figured out how my main character gets INTO the afterlife, and it's one that I've found irresistibly funny and relevant ever since it popped into my little pointed head.

But then, my family competes to tell horror stories about the deceased at a funeral. Sort of like: "Mom came closest to killing ME, so I WIN!"

And I did.

AFTERDEAD Page

Another AFTERDEAD sample at Deviantart.

One of the AfterLife rules is that the closer you were to someone or something in your lifetime, the less likely you are to know them in the afterlife.

Rommel WAS a techie while he was alive.

Life of a Writer

Random thoughts:

I don't think my newspaper editors care if I'm a subversive as long as they know they can send me tearing out into the storm to get any weird crime story that happens out here. Or lose my mind writing down all the paper-of-record numbers at some awful community-development meeting; I would literally rather stand in the icy, pouring rain than listen to a bank manager drone on (I've done it; I can compare). I'm a amateur stringer --- I don't know no better.

Creative people are crazy. You have to kill us first to make us stop writing or drawing or making baskets. But sooner or later we have to admit we have to make choices, and if we want to continue to create, we have to back out of other things. The books and pictures and woven things come first.

NOTHING hurts as bad as the migraines that I had all my life and are now GONE!!!! I don't know why; they used to cripple me, but now they've just disappeared.