Tag Archives: book

Dragon Comics 135

Leave a reply
dragon comics 135_edited-1.png

That and some spare change will get you a cup of coffee. Good thing I don’t drink coffee.

I’ll be getting public assistance for the first time in my life, I guess. I’m losing my pretty-good insurance at the end of the month, and even the lowest rate on the exchange would be a hardship for a dragon who makes $27 a month. The Man went down to DES for me because he knows government offices make me go crazy and bite people, and he texted that he learned we really were probably eligible for $5 a week in food aid. And also that I still need to go to DES anyway to be fingerprinted, in case I am an imposter who doesn’t actually deserve medical care. Because heaven knows the world would screech to a halt if the wrong people got to see doctors.

I also did make about $27 last week, mostly from sales of my novel, along with a couple of stickers, but my margin on stickers is laughably low. So, 7 copies sold. Now, I just need to sell 865 more in the next 51 weeks, give or take, in order to reach my goal of becoming a professional member of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Today, the Owl was saying on Twitter that some writers find self-promotion gauche. I was always taught not to ask for things, but in a world where it’s totally normal for people to set up IndieGoGos and GoFundMes so they can take dream vacations, there can’t possibly be anything untoward about an artist saying, “I’m not famous but I am worthwhile, and you can acknowledge that worth and help me become self-sufficient by paying money for my art.”

So, buy my book, support my Patreon, order my stickers, because otherwise your tax dollars will pay for my medical insurance.

Evolving Mandala

Leave a reply
img015

Everything in its place, and the universe is harmonious. 

It was a good week for QvD. Four consecutive days of excellent traffic, a request from Tony DiGerolamo of The Webcomic Factory and Super Frat to trade links, and the soft launch of my novel, The Hermit, in the Kindle store. I’ll be doing a hard launch with publicity and email blasts and things like that in the future, but if you want to read it now, go ahead. I promise that it’s a much, much better love story than Twilight. And no wussy monsters. My monster is extremely badass. I can’t think of anything else you could do with $4.99 that would provide you with so many hours of pleasure, while going so far to help to prevent me from starving to death. Well, I guess you could support my Patreon, but I won’t expect too much.

I should make some new comic T-shirts. Definitely the drunk painting panel. Probably the charcuterie. Some of the other 1-panel comics, the cover of my book, and that super-cool dragon mandala. Now I have a migraine, though. Please enjoy this mandala that suggests the world is finite, knowable, and in balance.

The Hermit: First Glance

2 Replies
hermit cover_edited-2

Well, here goes something.

There will be a bigger deal made about this in the next week or so, but: my adult-fairy-tale-with-elements-of-horror-and-romance novel will be coming out through Brother Wolf Press (e-pub available in the Kindle store), exact date TBA, and here’s the cover!

Unlike some of my art projects, I was able to create to something that almost exactly matched what my brain visualized. Actually, in this case, the cover is better than I imagined it, because I hadn’t figure out how wonderful the sky would be. But it is wonderful.

I wanted it, first of all, to look like a tarot card from the Rider-Waite deck, at which task it seems to succeed admirably. The coyote is crazy adorable; her design is based on the wolf from The Moon card. The Hermit is, of course The Hermit, but her face is more the Queen of Cups, except less constipated looking, and she is disarmingly unassuming. The landscape also takes cues from other cards, although the sky is kind of improvised. Even the font turned out spot-on.  And then there’s the gallon jug full of magical water. Intrigued at all? I even had a lot of fun with the little sigil/signature in the bottom right, which, at first glance, looks a fair amount like the artist’s mark on the Rider-Waite deck, but is actually comprised of my initials.

My instinct is to always keep tinkering with it, but of course the Rider-Waite deck is hand drawn and imperfect, and anyway, my whole thing now is letting it be imperfect. Perfectly imperfect.

Love it.

 

Stories Start with Characters

Leave a reply

Got 3000 words written today, and hope to get another 1000 before bed. Also finished reading Will Eisner’s Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, which is among the most delightful instructional manuals I’ve ever read. Eisner had an intricate understanding of not only drawing and writing, but of human psychology, and this last was effective to two ends: it allowed him to tell compelling stories about believable people (even if those people were caricatures of regular people, or more amazing than regular people), and it allowed him to tell those stories in such a way that readers remained interested in the work.

Eisner's "Contract" with the Reader

Eisner’s “Contract” with the Reader

Above is one of my favorite panels from this book, illustrating the contract with the reader: the artist may safely assume that the reader lives in the same reality and shares many of the same basic understandings of the world. This allows the art to work as a form of shorthand: i.e., you don’t need to explain to your reader that a coconut released from a tree will descend in the direction of the earth’s core, or that coconuts grow on trees, or that trees drop seeds.

This book has vast quantities of things to recommend it, and even if you’re not interested in drawing or writing or storytelling or human psychology, some of the reprints will certainly be worth your time: Eisner’s beautiful new ending to Franz Kafka’s bleak The Trial, and an example of “compression” by R. Sikoryak comprising Dante’s Inferno retold in 10 Bazooka Joe comics were my favorites.

If you’re here for my art, and particularly if you’re here for my dragons, never fear. I’ve got a couple of compelling characters for you right here:

Sophia Violetta Regalia, a heraldic dragon

Sophia Violetta Regalia, a heraldic dragon

Obviously, there need to be as many, if not more, girl dragons than boy dragons.

Pentalara, a serpentine dragon who could probably benefit from some orthodontia, if she could find an orthodontist willing to work on a dragon's mouth.

Pentalara, a serpentine dragon who could probably benefit from some orthodontia, if she could find an orthodontist willing to work on a dragon’s mouth.

These lovely ladies certain exude personality.