Paying the Bills In Style

This weekend I did a macaw that I rather liked...

Making a living in a creative field demands a certain commando flexibility, certainly at first. The early days for me were like being dropped behind enemy lines with a knife between my teeth and a mission to commit general mayhem.

Before I reached the point of just drawing pictures, I supplemented my art revenue, I taught fencing and self-defense (not together, obviously), was a roller-skating disco-dancing waiter, a porn store clerk, an apartment remodeler and (for six hellish months I can only chalk up to a quarter-life crisis) a mortgage banker. That's in addition to the usual round of waiting tables, tending bar and assorted other shit jobs.

Every now and then it occurs to me that it's been years since I worried about having to get a 'real' job. When your day job is doing a few of these babies a week, life is pretty sweet indeed.

I'm putting together a graphic novel package in the next few months. That means I'll have a chance to do another run at the comics page post that blogger ate. More to come...

Buzzy Bee Busy Bee

Yet another of my usual promises to post more-- soon! Really. I mean it this time. I know I said that those other times, but this time it's for real. C'mon baby, you know I wouldn't do you like that...

Of course, I'm not the only blogger to go dark around the holidays. I'm just one of the few not on any sort of holiday.

The changes Agent Anne suggested have been written and rewritten, and the Poison Door is stronger for it. That goes out in the email tomorrow.

Comics are being drawn. More or less. I love them, so of course give in only sparingly to those forbidden desires that so easily engulf my world.

My reading pile is falling. Rapidly. It got pretty tall there, since I write the sort of stuff I love to read, but reading the sort of stuff I write stuffs me up. It's awfully hard to listen to the unique voice inside me when I'm also trying to do cut-rate Dennis Lehane impressions.

The next book has started clawing its way out from under my skin. More on that in another post.

And despite the nastiest, wettest, coldest damn summer in seven decades, people keep coming in for their warm weather tattoo fix. Which means nights with my hand on ice and cold drinks pressed to my forehead. Big deal.

And I'm told that somewhere in there, I gave some lovely people presents and received wrapped packages from them as well. I understand food may have been involved.

Ah, I'll sleep when I'm dead.