An Important Update Nearly Missed

In my haste to finish updating the blog last night before going to bed I neglected to mention an important update to the blog.  If you look on the left hand side of the blog after the About Me sections, you will see a listing for Comics I've Done and under that, Dangers of the Road.  The link will take you to a page on this blog containing the 8 page comic book I released last year.  Because it's been almost a year I decided that it was time to offer it for free on my site.  Keep an eye on this list; I plan on adding any smaller comics that are too short to sell digitally here.

Two updates in one week, what's the world coming to?

 

T.

SPX 2014

I just got back from my favorite comic book show, the SmallPress Expo(SPX).  It's an amazing show featuring some of the best and most innovative work that is being done in comics today.  I always leave there feeling energize and ready to create.  I wish I could take a two week sabbatical from my day job and just work on comics.  Given that The day job has been incredibly busy and I only have three more vacation days left, all of which are spoken for, I don't see that happening.

This is the struggle that I find myself in these days.  I'm having trouble balancing my day job with my creative pursuits.  Throw in keeping my home in order, continue to get my body back into shape, being a good boyfriend, trying to maintain my friendships and looking for lettering work while networking.  All of this leaves me feeling rather frazzled and even more susceptible to depression.  Even though I finished up 75% of the editing changes need for my next self-publishing project, I went to bed feeling a general melancholy.  I have no idea where this sadness came from, but it's been with me all day.  In fact I ended up skipping the gym and sitting in the bathtub, near tears before going to work this morning.  The depression is strong right now, but hopefully I’ll get to the gym tomorrow and 30 minuets on bike along with some lifting will help fight it back some.

How do other creative types deal with this sort of struggle?  If you have both a day job and creative life, please leave a comment how you do or don't maintain the balance. 

Back to SPX. MY girlfriend and I had a wonderful time.  We meet a ton of great creators and got to see some old friends.  I even picked up a few awesome sketches:

One of my SPX favorites Monica Gallagher did both a Frank and a Sadie Doyle from the Thrilling Adventure Hour.  They came out fantastic. *clink*

Dean Trippe drew me an amazing Batman for the last page of my Arkham Asylum sketch book. I had always thought that the last page should be Batman, but never knew who I was going ask to draw it.  I just gave the book to Dean, told him the theme and said draw your favorite Batman villain.  When I came back he gave me the book and explained what he had done. It was perfect.

On the comic creation front, I’m still working a few lettering gigs, one of which is about to launch and the others are just getting going.  I’ll tell you more once the work is out in the world.  Till then I’m under NDA.

My own work is coming along good.  I have finished all of the writing for my next project and I’m starting the artist search now.  I have a few artists that I would like to work with and I’m waiting to hear back from.  If not them then I’ll have to start putting out some ads.

I also have plans to do some cooking this weekend for my lady.  I should have some pics and the recipe up this coming Monday.

That’s it for now, until next time, keep making things.

T.

Putting words to Pictures

I have been getting a fair number of lettering gigs lately, but because none of them have seen the light of day yet, I can't really talk about them.  What I can say is that they are both for the same small press and they are both three issue gigs.  One is of the super hero variety the other is more of a spy story.  We're actually fairly close to finishing the first issue of one of the titles.  Hopefully I'll to be able to talk about it more soon.

Speaking of lettering, now that Phenomenal issue #1, a book I lettered for R-Comics, has been available on Comixology for a bit now, I'm able to add some pages to my portfolio.  These pages along with a few other example of my lettering work can be found here http://yommer.deviantart.com/gallery/47825661/Lettering-Samples.  If you interested give them a look and let me know what you think.

On the comic writing front, things are moving ahead with my follow up to Dangers of the Road.  The current working title is "I Hate When They Run."  The script has been reviewed by my writing group and is now with my editor.  Once all the editorial suggested changes have been made and approved, I'll start the search for an artist.  I already have someone in mind and I hope this artist says yes when I contact them.  If everything goes smoothly, I should have copies available mid-fall.  I'll also be posting it to the blog.

That it for now, until next time, keep making things.

T.

#i am comics

I started to write a post about my garden, but I put that on hold when I saw this video by Amy Dallen.

I had been following this story fairly closely and I was hoping mad at the treatment that Janelle Asselin received for expressing a fair critique of a comic book cover.  I have always found the idea that anyone should be excluded from comics offensive and I wrote about last year.

From that video I discovered the We Are Comics Tumblr and  was moved to share my story.  Please check out the site.  Below is what I posted.

Hi, My name is Tom and comic books, in a very real way, saved my life.  I was born with Attention Deficit Disorder, Dyslexia and I’m a host of other learning disabilities they didn’t even know about back in the early 80’s when I was diagnosed. As you can imagine this did not make for a particularly pleasant childhood.  Reading was incredibly difficult for me, but I was able to over come that because of comics. I could always use the actions of the characters as contextual clues to figure out what they were saying and what was going on. That is how I learned to only read but to love reading, both comics and prose.

My learning disabilities were bad enough that I bounced around the public school system for a few years while they tried to find a place for me.  Eventually my parents found a special school that was just for children with learning disabilities.  Even at this young age I was super nerdy in to all of the stereotypical nerd stuff (Star Wars, D&D, computers, etc) that combined with being bounced from special class to special class, I felt like I was never really able to connect to any of my class mates.  When I was sent to the new school for kids with learning disabilities a felt like even more of an outcast.  Comics are what got me through these dark days, especially the X-men.  I could relate to them, because they had to go to a special school too and they were awesome.  I love Colossus, his skin became steel and nothing could hurt him. I badly wanted to be that way too.

My parents fostered my love of comics.  I think they saw how much they help me.  At this school we would get weekly report cards, based not on our grades but our behavior (ADD being an impulse control disorder, making good marks was harder than you might think).  Each week that I got high marks my folks would buy me comics based on how well I did.  That was all the incentive to get perfect marks and make sure I got as many comics from our weekly trips to Comics and More in King of Prussia.

Now I’m 35 years out and I have just put out my first 8-page comic. The comic really more of a writing sample than anything else, but the manager at that same Comics and More like it enough to want to carry it in the store.  I get such a thrill seeing up on the shelf.  I can’t convey how much it means to me to see my work next to comics by some of the people who’s writing and art had such a profound impact on my life. My greatest hope is to write something that gives someone the just a fraction of what I got out of comics. I want to create something that everyone, no matter who they are or what they look like, can read and see them selves repressed in the art form that I love.

I’m here because of comics and I am Comics

#i am comics

A Day of Shinny Things and Vegetable Goodness

Last Saturday the Lady and I joined our friend at Beadfest.  Beadfest is a huge bead and jewelry making convention.  It was a lot of fun and they had ton of pretty beads and doodads.  I mainly went to hang out with my Lady and our friend as beading isn't currently my medium of choice for making things (I'm a words and yarn sort of guy at the moment).  Our friend is the one who's big into the beading.  This is a recent development  and now she is all in.  It was a lot of fun to see her lose her mind over all the booths selling things. 

It was great to spend time just the three of us like back in the old day.  We used to hang out all the time the three of us.  But now our friend has a kid and the Lady and I are dating, so we don't really have as much time to hang out just the three of us.  I want to make a more concerted effort to find opportunity for the three of us to hang out.

After the show and we said good bye to our friend I made us dinner.  The Lady is mostly a vegetarian.  Sometime she will eat meat, but some time the idea of eating an animal just weirds her out a little, which I totally get.  Knowing this I wanted to make her a delicious meal I knew she would like no matter if she was in the mood for meat or not.  I came up with a meal of Pan Seared Asparagus with Tarragon & Lime glaze, Jasmine Rice, Old Man Mitchell's Carrots and Pear chutney.

Pan Seared Asparagus with Tarragon & Lime Glaze

This Recipe is based off of one I found in Cooking light's April 2014 issue.  It's originally for green beans, but had an asparagus variation.  I took that variation and made it closer to the green bean version.

What you need:

Sunflower oil
8 ounces of asparagus
1 teaspoon of butter
1 tablespoon of fresh lime juice
2 teaspoon of fresh tarragon
large skillet

Directions:

• heat pan over high heat for a minute or 2
• coat the pan in sun flower oil
• add asparagus to pan and shake till the asparagus forms a single layer
• without stirring let sit for 2 minutes or until asparagus in lightly charred
• lower heat to high medium and cook for another 3 and half minutes, tossing them from time to time
• turn off heat and let asparagus rest for 1 minute
• add the butter and toss till asparagus is completely coated
• add lime juice and toss till asparagus is completely coated
• cover with tarragon and toss till asparagus is completely coated, you can adjust the amount to taste

I have publish the other Recipes before and you can click on the link to get to those Blog posts:

Old Man Mitchell's Carrots

Pear Chutney

The only difference in the chutney is that I substituted pears for apples.

The meal was a tremendous hit!  The Lady loved the food.  It was also nice for me to cook for someone again.  It was the first time since my last relationship that I was able to cook for one person while they waited.  I didn't realize how much I missed doing that.  While I might not always have the highest option of myself and can be downright mean at time with the self-criticism, one area where I actually think that I excel is cooking.  I like to show the person how much I can about them by pouring those feeling into the food and the fact I can execute it at a high level is really nice.

I want to thank everyone who commented with such nice words on the last blog post.  It really means a lot to me.  I hope that my sharing my own experience, both good and bad, it can help people who are struggling with some of the same issue as I am.  Ultimately this blog is about making things both in and out of the kitchen, but as creative people so much of ourselves goes into the work it only seems right I share myself as well as my work.

Besides making tasty food, I'm currently working on the follow up to my comic Dangers of the Road.  It's still in the early stages but it will feature Sophie and her cohorts.  My goal is for it to be a an ongoing bi-monthly (eventually Monthly) comic that sells enough copies to be self-sustaining.  The time line would be to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund the first issue late summer/early fall, then publish mid fall.  Right now I'm doing a lot of world building and an early draft first issues script is with my editor.  The kick start will not be launched till the first issue is nearly done.  Even if I don't get the funding, this book will come out; it just might take a little (or a lot) longer without outside funds.

I'm also working on a short prose piece based off a writers prompted I did with my writing group.  It's still a number of edits from being done, but the first draft has been complete and once it is done, I think I'm just going to post it one line for free.

That's all for now, go make things.

Depression Event Horizon

I really do hating starting off these posts with why I haven’t written.  The answer is almost always the same Depression.  Over the last few months I feel like most of my energy has been to struggle to keep myself from falling into the black hole that is crippling depression.  I've been right at the edge of the event horizon, right before where I would be stretched into pieces, what is called Spaghettification.

I have tried to write blog posts.  I have a least a half dozen half written one still on my computer.  Each time I get part way thought and voice that says, this is boring, no good and no one cares shouts me down.  The post gets saved away with the promises that I'll come back to it and fix it.  A promise as you can tell I rarely keep.

And it doesn't matter that good things have happened.  It doesn't really need a reason.  I can be having a nice day, things going smoothly, and then out of the blue, I'm gripped with this general melancholy.  This sadness with latch on any kernel of worry or anxiety I have and grow.  It becomes an anchor around my soul.

I have finally decided that I needed to call in for backup.  As much as I love and need the support of my friends, who are wonderful, I needed and still need a professional.  For the last couple of months once a week I talk things out with a therapist.  I was reluctant to go to one, because I have tried to enlist professional help before, with mostly limited results.

Over the last 10 years, this is the third time I have sought professional help.  I never really clicked with the first guy I saw.  I soon realized that the stress of coming up with the co-pay was more stressful and a more of a hardship than the depression I was fighting.  A few years later I tried again.  Again I found I didn't have3 a great rapport with the therapist.  Worse than just not clicking with her, she was very forgetful.  Every visit I spend haft the time repeating what I had told her in past visits.  The final straw was when she double booked me.

Luckily it seems that the cliché is correct this time and the third time really is a charm.  My current therapist Heather is much more attentive and remembers what I have told her.  While I find the hour to be a little tough at time and draining, its been very productive.  I think we have found the root of some of my issues and anxiety.  It's going to be long slog to get a handle on these thing, but I think in time, I will be happier and healthier.

I'm also learning to focus on the positive things in my life.  Here are some highlights since the last time I posted:

• I have started dating a good friend of mine and things are going great on that front.  I Have never dated someone whom I was really good friends with first.  We had been friends for almost a decade before we got together, so all of the getting to know you stuff is out of the way already.  The best way to describe it is to use a drinking metaphor, odd for a teetotaler I know.  My past relationships were like doing shots of Jagermeister.  It was all good times and excitement, woo-who, Spring Break!! Than out of nowhere you find yourself feeling awful and there are some fussy bits about how the night ended, but you know it didn't end well.  What I have now is more like a nice glass of wine you drink with a fine meal.  You feel a little bit of a buzz and just sort of warm inside.  It's nice.
• I've been going to the gym lately.  In fact i have gone every week day for the last three weeks.  now it's just been 25-30 min on the bike so far, but I'm hoping to start lifting again soon.  Getting these workouts have been a big help to my mood.  Now if I can just start eating right.
• To bury the lead, I published my 8 page comic!!!  You can buy it here or here or on freaking amazon for your kindle.  Of course as soon as I released it I was caught in a powerful wave of depression and did little to no real marketing.  But it is awesome that it is one the shelf at my local comic shop, Comics and More
• But this does not mean it was a failure as it has gotten me a bunch of lettering jobs.  Including a story featured in an anthology coming out later this year.  Once it's out I'll share more details.  I also have set up a page full of samples of my work.  Please take a look and I'm open to feed back as to things I could do to improve my technique.  I'm still learning as a letterer.

I learned a lot doing the comic and these lettering projects.  I hoping to take that knowledge and applying it to a continuing bi-monthly series that is a follow up to Dangers of The Road.

OK I think that's enough blogging for now.  I hope to have some more post for you soon.

T.

Closing out 2013

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, I know I did.  This year has brought on a lot of changes to my life.  Some good, some not as positive, but have seemed to lead to positive things for the most part.  Two of the biggest changes to happen this year happened in the last week.  I finally published my 8 page mini-comic, Dangers of the Road.  It was delivered last Friday and I must say they look gorgeous.  I used a service called Ready Comics to print them.  I'm doing a bit of soft launch on these and mainly using them a resume piece.  I plan on setting up an Esty store during my New Year.  Till then if you want a physical copy just shoot me an email or comment below.  If you want a digital copy you can buy one for $1.99 at Amazon, Click Here.  I wanted to charge less but that’s as low I Amazon would let me go.  It make up for the high price I add some concept art to the Kindle version.

The other big change that just happen with I bought an NEW CAR!!!!! Well, not bought, but leased a new car.  Hey it's the first time I have ever driven a brand new car that no one else has ever owned.  While the end of the year may be the best time to buy a car in terms of getting a good price, but it really it the worse time to shop for one.  Trying the find the time to do all of the Christmas stuff and finding time to go to the different dealerships was a real challenge.  Also it seemed like every time I was free to go to a dealership the sky would open up and pour snow everywhere, or it was Sunday.  In Pennsylvania you can't sell cars on a Sunday.

The impetus to buy a car wasn't just because I had a little bit of money from finally settling with the insurance company after my car accident from last august.  It was because Goldie, my old 2001 Honda civic was once more acting up.  First the muffler separated from the exhausted pipe.  I was able to fix it with a clamp, some muffler tape and YouTube video.  Then it started to overheat again.  I found out the radiator reservoir was empty.  Once I filled it up with coolant and water, it seemed fine and I don't know why it was empty.  After that I started looking in earnest and borrowed my mom's car.  Having literally been burned by this sort of issue this summer, I wasn't going to take chance.

My original plan was to wait till my tax return came in and I had a big chunk of money to put down to find a car.  With that out the window, I started looking at used cars.  I went to one dealership to look at a used 2009 Civic.  I figured I'd stick with Honda, because despite the issues I had with it, I loved Goldie and she had given me 140,000+ good miles.  She only had 23,000 when I bought her, for a really good price.  That car didn't owe me a thing.

From the moment I went to the dealership red flags started going off.  First even though I had made an appointment, the car was not ready when I got there.  Turned out the battery was dead and they had to jump it before I could give it a test drive.  Then I saw it didn't have a sunroof, which it was listed as having on their website.  The test drive went well enough and I would have been fine with the car.  Red flags started again once we brought the car back and they started in with a really push soft sell, that nearly spilled over to a hard sell.  Even after I told them I, would need to think about it and that I don't make any time of big decisions after a long day of work.  Then they brought over a super sleaze manager.  I felt like I need to check that I still had all my fingers after shaking his hand.  Sufficed to say, I didn't leave wanting to buy that car, even though I kind of liked it.

This led me to dread going to look at any more cars.  I also was worried about my credit score and what kind of loan I could get.  I imagined finding a car I loved and thought I could afford, only to have them tell me that they couldn't sell me a car.  Of course my depression got a hold of this notion and multiplied 1000 times, where I almost had a panic attack at the thought of looking at another car.

I had just read the Nerdist Way by Chris Hardwick a nerd self-help sort of book.  In the book he talks about how knowledge is the key to conquering fear.  Taking that advice I called the bank where I had gotten the loan for Goldie all those years ago.  The woman I talked to was great.  We ran some numbers and I was pre-approved for a loan.  I now knew exactly how much I could spend and that if one dealer couldn't make it happen with those numbers another one would.

When I went to the dealership the next day, I made sure to tell them that it was just a fact finding mission and that I kind of shut down when people are pushy even in a passive aggressive way.  Mike Winter over at the Kia in Limerick took that to heart and showed me a bunch of cars without being push or making me feel like I had to decide on one then and there. 

I ended up leasing a 2014 Kia Forte for him a few days later.  On the way home I was trying to decide what to call my new car.  The name Shadow just popped right into my head.  Over the next few days of driving the car I knew I made the right decision.  It's a really nice car and because it only had 47 miles on it I'm not worried about anything going wrong with it and getting stuck some place.

As I write this I also realize that it was good for me to get out of Goldie.  She was filled with the ghost of the past.  I was trapped a bit in her with memories both good and bad. With Shadow, I have but a weeks' worth of memories, all good, and nothing holding me back from moving forward.

New Year's Eve is tomorrow and I can't help but think about the past year.  To be honest a lot of it is blur of depression.  It was such a tough year, as I outlined in this post, but I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the people who were there for me this year.  Without the love and support of my friends this year, I really don't know how far in a hole I would have fallen.  I most certainty would not have been in a place where I could have not only written a comic book, but gotten it printed and used it to get more lettering.  I was incredibly fortunate to have such kind and support of friends.  To everyone who help me, both year and years past, thank you. 

May you, dear reader, be as lucky as I am and may we all have a wonderful 2014.