The book doesn’t have a real title or a cover and only has like 1400 words right now but hell let’s spend an hour fiddling around with title logos just because. Why not, right?
Category: art
In which I get lucky
My wife and I get to see Shazam a little bit early tonight, which is super cool. I kinda lucked out getting the tickets; the folks at the comic shop had an extra pair that a customer had given them to “give to a good home,” and I guess we’re a good home.
I’m spending the day fiddling around the house trying to accomplish minor things– the impending end of my Spring Break is starting to weigh on me a bit– so in lieu of an actual post today, have this Superman/Captain Marvel short comic, which I found on imgur yesterday and am frantically trying to find the source material for because I must own it. “Who did this to you?” is the most Superman reaction ever:
(EDIT: This is from Superman/Shazam: First Thunder, by Judd Winick and Joshua Middleton. It came out in 2006.)
(Oh, what the hell– while I’m at it, these pages from Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come, one of the best Superman/Captain Marvel stories ever published. Context: it’s in the future, Superman has returned from retirement, and Captain Marvel has been brainwashed into villainy by Lex Luthor, which is why they’re fighting.)
In which I tease
I am not telling you what this is.
But I’m psyched about it that I legit squealed like a pig when I saw it, and I’m posting it to the blog on my lunch break.
Wheeeeeee!!
In which my ambitions exceed my talents but not my sense
It’s old news by now, I know, but I’m still grooving on the fact that I don’t work weekends any longer, and whenever I get to go do something that I haven’t been able to do for a while– like the zoo last weekend, or Art Beat with my wife today, I’m still enjoying it just that much more than I might have otherwise.
So, yeah, today’s excursion: Art Beat, South Bend’s annual one-day outdoor art festival, held in South Bend’s rapidly revitalizing downtown area. Your town probably has something similar; local artists of varying stripes rent booth space, there’s live music, a bit of food, everybody shows up and spends money and goes home. I got to see Michelle Wern and Melina Sapiano, my booth buddy and across-the-aisle buddy from IndyPopCon, and showered both of them with well-earned moneydollars.
“Why weren’t you at Art Beat, Luther?” you might be thinking right now. Well, apparently wordwritin’ ain’t art. I actually tried this year. They won’t let me in. There was a table for a local used bookstore there, but the used bookstore is actually downtown, and they only had a very small table and weren’t selling their own books. And they aren’t even the good bookstore downtown, and that bookstore didn’t have a booth.
I have actually bugged the mayor on more than one occasion about letting authors into Art Beat.
South Bend needs a literary festival, guys. And I have spent all goddamn day thinking about how I might bring such a thing about myself. Which is a fucking terrible idea, because I have no idea how to run any such thing and I have read enough horror stories about nightmare failed cons to know good and well that this is not something I want to try and do myself.
But.
Maybe if I just got the ball rolling, by finding out how many other authors, independent or otherwise, South Bend and northern Indiana in general, actually has? I mean, Notre Dame is here. There are plenty of people who have written books. I just don’t know of any other fiction people– the closest other author I know used to live in Elkhart and I believe has moved to Indianapolis since I’ve known him– and I’m not sure how to find more of them/us. I did a couple of elementary Facebook searches and there don’t appear to be any relevant groups; there is probably more to be found with Google-Fu but I haven’t quite gotten there yet.
But yeah. This needs to happen. And I’m probably not the guy to do it. But maybe if I put some legwork into it I can find that person.
Feel free to do my work for me by volunteering, y’all.
There will be a new short story– not a microfiction, a full-blown, downloadable and e-readerable short story– posted to my Patreon by tomorrow. That makes two short stories, a bunch of microfictions, a WIP excerpt, and an audio story, all accessible for just $1 a month, with more getting added all the time! Come join us, dammit.
Proof of art
I didn’t do anything today other than draw and sleep, and … well, I can’t make a post out of what I did while I was sleeping. I’m still not any good at this, really, but I’m enjoying it.
Art, again
…okay. I can draw recognizably female human faces. Good, that was worrisome. 🙂
I am sleepy so here is art
So as goofy and simplistic as they are these actually kind of represent some progress; I’m starting to draw original pictures rather than copying something that’s in front of me, and at the suggestion of drawabox.com I’ve switched to working with pens rather than pencils because they force me to stop and think before making a mark on a piece of paper. Sooner or later I will start doing little cartoon dudes with, like, bodies and shit, but I’m not quite there yet. Just faces for right now.
Weird phenomenon: I drew these five faces, and then realized they were all dudes. I mean, I suppose the monkey-thing doesn’t really have to be a dude, but in my head they were all dudes. And then I thought I ought to draw at least one girl to even things out and then panicked because apparently I have no idea how to draw women.
So, uh, I’ll work on that unexpected problem tomorrow, I guess? Sure.
Self-improvement is exhausting
I remain fully caught up on the “draw every day” project, if only because I drew two pictures tonight. I am beginning to think that the best use of my time might be to actually find some sort of art tutorial thing rather than constantly drawing from .jpg files of animated characters. I can whip up a Buttercup in a hot second but I’m not convinced that being able to draw Buttercup well is the same thing as being able to draw. I remain vaguely terrified of the idea of drawing something unique for some reason. This is, of course, not why I started this project. Fuck fear. But if I’m going to take this seriously I feel like I ought to try and find some sort of resource more useful than thinking of a kids’ TV show I like and Googling good images of the characters.
Speaking of creativity, I left work today after telling my boss that I was only coming back on Saturday if I’d managed to get some writing done in the next two days. Luckily I have nothing in particular that I need to get done tomorrow or the day after, or at least nothing that I can think of (well, okay, I could use an oil change for my car, and I have to take the boy to school both days; I don’t think either of those really count) and so I won’t have any good excuse to not get something done. Then again, I’m really good at generating excuses.
I’ll finish Fonda Lee’s Jade City tonight, so expect a glowing review in the next couple of days. It’s an early frontrunner for my favorite book of the year, I’ll tell you that. I’m considering spending February only reading books by black authors, so if you have anyone in particular you’d like to recommend, please feel free to chime in in comments and make some suggestions.
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