Tag Archives: mandala

Killer Clover Mandala

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In hindsight, I notice the alien quality of some percentage of this project. 

My head is pretty much swimming from working to finish this comic book. There were sixteen pages for the Mothers, Tell Your Daughters project, plus the original Susanna comic, plus a front and back cover for the book, which leaves one blank page. Wednesday at the latest, though, I should be through. And I might have to take a break from the Wacom tablet for a while, just to ensure my hand doesn’t fall off.

Maybe I could have gotten more done today, but the Fox randomly showed up before I had even gotten out of bed, and we ended up on a magical journey that included being comped into the roller rink and visiting the Misseses Kitties, who have both been sick. That’s probably good, though. Any more work in one day and my hand might have really fallen off.

Golden Snowflake Mandala

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I know it looks like I spilled coffee on this mandala, but I don’t drink coffee, so I can’t say what that stain is, but it’s probably not coffee.

I wrecked my hands pulling weeds this weekend, because I received a letter from Big Brother explaining that my property was in violation of local law, and if I did not pull weeds, the city was going to pull my weeds for me, and charge me for the privilege. It’s a pretty irritating system. For one thing, I don’t believe in weeds. A weed is a plant growing where a human doesn’t want it to grow, and I was perfectly happy to let those plants grow in my yard. The birds and lizards seemed to appreciate  my laissez-faire approach to landscaping, as did my cat. So, I could argue, there were no weeds on my property to begin with.

The other super-annoying this about this is that I still live in Arizona, and these plants only grow in the monsoon, and the monsoon is over, so in a couple weeks, they’ll all be dead anyway. But no dice. The city doesn’t care about the natural cycle of the land. Remove all weeds and grass within 10 days, or I would be abated. Abatement does not sound like something you want.

The third terrible part to this is that I need my hands to draw webcomics, and now they are covered in blisters and micro-abrasions. The blisters are pretty prominent. I only figured out about the micro-abrasions later, because I promised the kids lemonade after they helped me. And really, the kids aren’t that much help at all. But they drank most of the lemonade. And I got to figure out where exactly on each hand I had a tiny little cut.

Still, tomorrow is the last scheduled BJC comic, which I have been writing for a month now, and tomorrow is also the day that I write with the Fox, and also get a massage to help undo the ravages of time and the physical strain of drawing webcomics 25 hours a week, which doesn’t leave a lot of time left over for shilly-shallying.

Superstar Mandala

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Beyond gold stars, we have fuchsia and gold stars with the Eye of Sauron hidden in every ray.

Less productive weekend than usual, but sometimes you have to take a little time to screw around. Friday night I went roller skating with the Fox and the Otter, and sort of lost that evening. Saturday was the day I write at the Historic Y with SFWA, and then I was up late with The Man, so nothing got accomplished then. Today I ended up bringing my equipment to Mrs. Kitty’s house and working there, so I got tomorrow’s comic mostly accomplished. Now it’s accomplished, so if I write a comic tomorrow, I won’t be pressed for time on Tuesday, when I go write with the Fox.

The Wacom tablet is on its very last legs. Yeah, that thing is almost 3 years old, and it’s really taken a beating. Right now I’m using the smallest size of tablet, because the Boy happens to have gotten one some years ago, and he doesn’t use it much. Otherwise, who knows where this project would be? But I’ve got $50 Amazon credit, so I will purchase my own larger version and try to take better care of this one.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print.

Star Scallop Mandala

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A little bit feathery, a little bit pointy. 

Productive weekend! Got a really nice comic finished for tomorrow, which is helpful, because tomorrow is the day I go to the Fox’s house and we sit and silence and write for 2 hours, and also the day that I volunteer at the elementary school, and I have another engagement as well, so that doesn’t leave a lot of time to make comics. Also got a good chunk of the next day’s comic started, which is helpful.

Also, I got a new phone, because my giant ZMAX died an ignominious death after an entire week of not really letting me play Pokemon Go. Sadly, they don’t make this kind of phablet anymore. The Man found one on Craig’s List but someone else got there first, so he bought me an LG, which will probably be OK, once I get everything arranged the way I like it. How anyone can not organize their icons by alphabetical order is beyond me.

This is a really pretty mandala, only slightly askew.

And that’s Labor Day weekend. There goes summer, once again. The autumn always gets me a little bit down, and it’s hard not to compare the year to my life, i.e. if my life were a meteorological year beginning in the spring, it would now also be the beginning of autumn. On the other hand, The Man and I went to the last late night of the season at the Desert Museum on Saturday, and in the weird fluorescent light of the bathroom, I thought I’d found my first gray hair. But it was just the lighting. So maybe it’s still the 4th of July.

Purple Classic Mandala

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Around and around and around it goes, and where it stops, nobody knows.

If I focus only on the good stuff, it’s hard not to be optimistic. Not only did I manage to convert 1/4 of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters into comic format in a single week, the comics were well-received in literary circles. Two professors told me that they intend to teach the comics with the book in the upcoming year, and Bonnie Jo is already talking to a printer about having the comic printed and bound as a comic book, to take on her paperback tour this fall. There are some other good things that could materialize from this, too.

Plus, just on the strength of the story of how I came to create these comics, another author who I greatly admire has stated that she wants to work with me to create a couple graphic versions of her stories for her next book. (Maybe I can name names when the project has a little more behind it than a single conversation, but it seems fairly likely that it will go forward. I suggested the writer scrutinize my work more closely to ensure that my style would jibe with theirs, and was told, “I feel this in my body,” i.e., she didn’t care what they looked like, she just knew she wanted to work with me.) There was a lot of synchronicity going on that day.

I had to tell the Rabbit that she was correct; putting The Hermit into the Kindle store was the right idea. In the fall, there will be  dead tree version, and it will most likely have quotes from several well-known and successful authors on the back cover.

5 Tomatoes Mandala

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And then those are olives on the outside, I guess? And some kind of columbine flowers. 

Per usual, my weekend consisted of me compiling long lists of imperative tasks and then not doing them while I messed around on the internet, hung out in other people’s houses, went swimming, and played Pokemon Go. Also spent most of Friday night sitting in a bean bag with Misses Kitty, playing the ukulele and singing.

I’m also reading the Owl’s book, which was just released last week, although I probably read 4 complete and 12 partial drafts of the manuscript before its publication. It wasn’t fresh enough in my mind to write a book review. Soon I hope to write that review, and then there may be a little news regarding where that review will be published, but I’m not supposed to talk about it just yet, and I don’t have all the details anyway.

This mandala is nice and cheerful and juicy, probably hailing from a time in my life where I didn’t neglect my plants for days at a time and instead took good care of them so they remained healthy and bore fruit. Not this year. This year I murdered two tomato plants and sorely abused a couple of peppers.

Should try and take another stab at that logo design. My first was rejected for being too cute. But I thought the original design was too ugly. So we’re shooting for something in between.

Amethyst Mandala

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The crosspieces look like a Chinese finger trap. Today I learned that the Chinese finger trap has a medical application and can be used to straighten human fingers with traction.

Another weekend draws to a close, and I confess that I didn’t start crossing things off my “imperative to do today” list until one hour to midnight. In fact, this month is drawing to a close and I have barely scratched the list of “things I must accomplish before autumn to justify my existence and create even the slightest possibility of personal success.” Maybe I need a manager.

This weekend, in addition to the above face about Chinese finger traps, I learned that one of the things authors are apparently supposed to do upon uploading their books to the Kindle store is get 25 or 50 people to leave Amazon reviews. Maybe some part of me understood some element of that concept, but it literally didn’t occur to me that I was supposed to be asking random, non-writer friends and relatives to give me 5 stars. In a general sense, when it comes to Amazon reviews, it turns out that it doesn’t matter if half of them are written by your mother’s friends from folk dancing and the other half are by the people your Aunt Hattie played canasta with during the Nixon administration. According to my reading, it’s just a numbers game. So any time I spent thinking about how to ask successful writers for endorsement was wasted when I could have been demanding my relatives do the job for me. Although that might necessitate teaching my relatives to leave Amazon reviews, which wouldn’t save me any time in the long run.

What else…got to hang out with the SFWA crew on Saturday, for another thrilling and productive writing party at the Historic Y. It’s just as glamorous as it sounds.

Oh, August, give me strength. And determination. And concentration. And focus.

And, as always, the confidence of a mediocre white guy.

And if you can’t give me that, please consider buying my book, supporting my Patreon,  or ordering my merch.

Green Cell Mandala

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Sometimes I think: this could be an element of something really beautiful. Or it could be a cross-section of something really horrible. 

Not much to report for this weekend. Added 3 new designs to my RedBubble shop and started to work on a 4th. Wish I understood more about typefaces, about how designers choose lettering for visual appeal, readability, and emotion. Also, how to design specifically for different article of clothing, versus drawing things as they come to me and then sticking the same image on a variety of surfaces.

This is a tidy little mandala, another amoeba type. They really do fall into simple categories.

Sorry there’s nothing of any depth or substance in here. The Rabbit told me she wanted us to make a business plan, and I told her, “You make the plan and I’ll just do whatever you tell me to do.” I swear to god, a woman came up to me at a party this weekend and said, “I had this idea for a T-shirt and I heard you sell them online,” and then proceeds to tell me that she works in marketing. I’m like, Lady, you don’t need my help. You’ll probably sell more T-shirt than me without even trying. I have no idea how to sell things. I just create the.

But, you could buy my book, support my Patreon,  or order my merch if you wanted to prove me wrong.

Candy Delight Mandala

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Delicious and nutritious. Tastes just like chicken. OK, just like chicks. Well, actually, like marshmallow Peeps.

Today I had some very intensive conversations, one with the Rabbit and one with Misses Kitty, on the subject of marketing for artists. I have a fair amount of experience in marketing for other people. It was a huge component of my last real job, and I worked closely with the marketing people when I was in traditional publishing, but I never enjoyed it, or excelled at it. The Rabbit and Misses Kitty are sort of better at it than I am. But I’m supposed to try.

After all, the Owl, whose book coming out really soon, sold her house, bought a van, and swore to spend the entire year on a publicity tour. That’s a real commitment. And what have I done? Made some posts on social media? My books are good. I’m a good writer. But beyond that, the process loses my interest.

Also today I finished reading my next big novel to The Man (I have a slender kids’ book that will come out later this year, but it’s actually older than The Hermit.) This next book is science-fiction-y, and murder-mystery-y, and dystopian-y. It’s also about 800 pages. For quite some time I puzzled over how to cut it down to a manageable level, but the people who’ve read it don’t seem to think it needs cutting down. Still, it needs some editorial work. In reading it to The Man (800 pages, which took about 5 weeks) I found dozens of typos and a number of continuity errors and things like that. After this next book is published, and I have participated in some marketing-related activities, I will make about 2 more passes and then maybe start the entire agent-seeking process all over again. If I can actually sell some copies of The Hermit before then, it will help.

Now I’m writing a horror novel; it’s a genre I’ve barely touched on in my life, even though I read everything Stephen King wrote prior to 1996 and some of the stuff he wrote after it, and all of Clive Barker’s early stuff, and HP Lovecraft and other writers in that vein. I know I can write a novel; it remains to seen whether I can be scary.

Not that I’m scaring anyone with a crayon mandala in cotton candy pink and marshmallow Peep yellow. And I guess those are blue M&Ms and the green are those weird sour candies that kids like today. They didn’t have them in the ’80s, as far as I can remember, so I never got a taste for them.

You know what would help, though? You could buy my book, support my Patreon,  or order my merch.

Soft Forest Mandala

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Just a little skewed.

Whew! I’m trying to pace myself this weekend. Happy 4th of July, American readers! I’ve been working on a fun comic for Tuesday but not today, because everyone is in party mode and this is the first moment I’ve even gotten to sit down at the computer and it’s 1 a.m. We had to drive out to the desert and go hiking to water and then get in the water and then dry off and then have a picnic and then hike out and then have more snacks and then swim in a pool and then shower and then go out to a party and dance and dance and dance. And here I am, with half a comic and very little to say.

Oh, yeah, buy my book, support my Patreon, order my merch.