State of the Union

I put my parents on a plane yesterday around noon, sending them back to Little Rock and ending a four day period of gluttony, debauchery, and non-productivity. I am ready once again to get back to work and to look at the things that I need to get done and when I need to get them done.

On the job front, I renewed the attack with increased vigor. I went back and emailed, basically, every single person that I had talked to concerning work. I trolled Craigslist with an almost sickening frequency and was rewarded with two replies to job posts less than five minutes after they had been posted. I got no word back from the beverage director at the Rivers Casino, but I did hear back from Todd at New Dimension comics with some promise. We emailed back and forth all day yesterday and it sounds like hopefully he might have something for me in the next week or so. That made me feel good. Good and hopeful.

Mihailo (The artist that asked me to help him write this story that has been floating in his head for the past five years) and I have been out of touch a bit. I have been preoccuupied with other projects and he has been constantly working at the tattoo shop. I am hoping that we can get together today for some shop-talking.

I am looking at basically ten days until the Pittsburgh Comic Convention. I am assuming that Mr. Hoffman's illustrating is coming along on schedule for "Everyone Is Going to be There," and a part of me is still hopeful that I can pull off a small book of my own illustrating before my tentative illustration deadline of monday morning. That is when I have to get the files to Joe at Ditto Documents to print them up for the Convention next Friday.

Once the convention has passed, I will be more willing to dedicate my time to writing a script for "Three Rivers" and working with Mihailo on "Worm in the Blossom." We really need to get some script work done, but the brainstorming (or 'polishing the pebble' as he calls it) keeps getting more and more intense. Our original 10 issue book turned into 30, and then back down to a manageable 18 (three six books part). We were wanting to have our first issue finished by September but that has not happened. We will see. I am going to call Mihailo as soon as I leave the coffee shop here.

October Stories is up and running, even though I have been pretty sparse publishing to it. You can follow it at www.twitter.com/octoberstories or at www.octoberstories.blogger.com . Parents in town and other distractions have kept me from doing it more often. That and the fact that I have to really really get myself into that october mindset which involves beer, whiskey, and tom waits. More will come, preferably with more regularity.

November is national novel writing month, which I plan to do with some friends. Who knows how that will turn out, but it seems like it will probably be fun. There is a script writing contest as well, but that is not until december I think. It is a 25$ entry fee, but I might as well consider it.

September has begun. October is on the way. Already my heart is being tugged by these cool breezes and its pulling me back to that central zone of my life...steel window screens, breezes blowing down Southridge Drive...meeting girls in parking lots with tall bright street lamps...driving with songs pouring forth from open windows. I have a feeling that this one is going to be tough. I am going to try and do my best, as always, to prepare and be ready for it.

Thanks for listening.