A backward poet writes inverse.

I think when dealing with any creative endeavor, there are moments of question and doubt. Sometimes these moments can be fleeting and other times they may seem like an impossible demon to slay. Regardless, I think that you have to face these fears head on with sword in hand. You cannot run from these fears and you cannot let them defeat you.
Back in the day, I began my writing career by publishing fan-fiction stories on the Internet revolving around the video game Tomb Raider. Having completed several comic book assignments and finding some downtime, I was curious if I could “go home again” and go back to writing a Lara Croft story.
Now writing prose in a novel format and writing a comic book script are two very different styles. (I have to admit that because of its speed, I like the comic script format better.) As I began to flesh out this story and started putting the scenes together, I felt those demons of doubt beginning to creep in and look over my shoulder. I began to feel those pangs of uncertainty.
The Internet can be a pretty cruel place. After all, as a writer, you are really nothing more than an email address. I began to wonder if people would even like this story. Would they hate it? Would they find out that I was a hack that had somehow managed to fake his way into the genre?
But as the story began to come together, I began to feel my confidence return. I liked the way the story was flowing and it satisfied me. I once heard a quote from George Lucas where he talked about how he made movies that he would want to see in the theaters and he was just lucky that a lot of people wanted to watch the same movie he did.
I’ve tried to take that attitude with my writing. I write stories that I would want to read. And as I am now definitely over the hump and making my way towards the end of this story, I believe it is a story—as a Tomb Raider fan—that I would want to read.
Of course the question now comes, will the rest of the on-line TR community like it? Hey, you can’t get your feet wet if you never get off the porch. Sometimes it is best to just dive in headfirst. Remember, kids, when in doubt, fortune favors the bold.

You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

Uggg. Insomnia. Normally, insomnia is not exactly a bad thing if I don’t have to work the next day. I sneak into the living room. The house is quiet. The kids are asleep. I know the phone won’t ring. I can write without any sort of interruption. But, admittedly, I’m getting older and I need my sleep, especially if I have to work the next day. Or, in this case, in a few hours.
I’m venting here [hey, what’s a blog for?] but admittedly, on a personal level, my life could be a whole lot better right now. I am taking great strides to make it better but sometimes it feels like trying to ice skate uphill.
I don’t want to sound like a broken record but I think 90% of my problems stem from money. This is typically where the church types begin to warn, “Money is the root of all evil.” This is not true. If you check your scriptures, it warns, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” And while I admit I do love money, I realize that I do not need excessive amounts to be happy, I just want enough to be comfortable.
I just want enough to have adequate health care, plenty of food in the cupboards, and be able to go to the movies without cashing in my change cup.
Right now, I am the sole breadwinner for the family while Amy is in school, which means we are scrimping right now to get by. And it sucks. Right now, Amy is about 90% certain she will begin class to get her RN license in January. But it’s only August still. Which means a long time to go on a crappy salary.
Which means a pretty shallow Christmas. Which means having about 20 bucks left over at the end of the pay period. I just hate it. I mean, thank God we own the house. If it weren’t for that, we would be up crap creek. It is probably one of the few saving graces that I have.
Now, we are making our bills. The kids aren’t starving. We have electricity. We are not close to being homeless. It could be a lot worse but when I want to go out and buy a new DVD, I can’t just go out and pay cash for it. I have to save up for it and I hate that. I have to save up to buy Scrubs on DVD or a new music soundtrack… And if I have to save up to buy a DVD set, how can I go out and buy a new set of beds for my boys or a new couch for Amy? Some people go out and buy new furniture or new clothes because they want them. I don’t have that luxury. I wish I did. And when I think about this kind of thing, it makes me frustrated and adds to my stress.
Despite having over 50 legit “friends” on MySpace, my circle seems to be ever shrinking and I think that adds to the depression. With my mom gone and my Dad in California, it seems like I don’t have a “my side of the family” anymore. Many of my best friends are too far away. The poker games have broken up. And (see above) my amount of money is limited at best. Which means I work, I come home, do my Internet stuff, write a little bit, go to sleep, and then it starts all over again. My amount of contact with a wide variety of people is shrinking by the day.
There are times that I feel like I see the people at work the most. Thank God that my boss, Dave, and I are really cool. Also, I have made a good friend in the meat department named Luke (you can find him on my MySpace page). We have become fast friends. We share the same level of humor and share a lot of interests. But if I talk to Luke at work, we get glares from the management. And this begins to translate into laziness when really it stems from a craving for human contact. I mean people want to spend time with friends.
I am flanked by good news. I don’t want people to think my life is complete s--t storm.
Yes, I am working in comic books instead of just working at a grocery store. But right now, comics don’t pay the bills. There is an enormous amount of time between writing a script and getting a paycheck. This might be different if I had a monthly assignment. [And I am working on that: See my next blog entry.] I am still going to try to B.S. my way into Google but that is a long shot…
It is a tremendous thrill to be working in comics but splitting time between comics and my regular “job” is pretty hard sometimes.
The kids are all back in school which means the food bill drops tremendously.
I still have plenty of creative irons in the fire.
Good news and better times are on the horizon. I can see them. And if not for that horizon, I would probably be in pretty bad shape but as it is, for now, I’m taking it like an alcoholic.
One day at a time, people. One day at a time.

A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

There is that old saying about God not closing a door without opening a window. I know it is cliché but in this case, it counts. Thanks to my publisher Sean O’Reilly, I was introduced to a tremendously talented artist named Giampaolo Frizzi that is based in Lucca, Italy.
We were originally scheduled to work together on a commissioned series. After seeing his samples, I was hollering at Sean saying how much I wanted to work with him. In fact I sent along an email saying how much I wanted Giampaolo to work on a future licensing project. I was crushed when I found out that the money behind the commissioned series wanted to use a different artist.
Such is the nature of the industry and sometimes artists are chosen for different reasons. I saw this as a blessing because it introduced me to a second, incredibly talented penciler that I have had the pleasure of working with. (More on this later.)
Still, Giampaolo and I wanted to work together and Sean asked me to come up with a series for us to develop together. So when Giampaolo sent me a sketch of a Roman gladiator for a painting he was doing, this giant light bulb came on over my head.
I sent a script for a gladiator-themed storyline I had been developing since 2004 and the rest, as they say, is history. It is this storyline that I have started to receive artwork on.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And so on. Artwork is kind of a funny thing. You can look at it and say either, “I like that” or “I don’t like that.”
I look at the art of comic superstars like Jim Lee, Ed Benes, Mike Turner, Al Rio, Emiliano Santalucia, Frank Cho, and Brett Booth and I say, “Wow, I wish I could draw like that.” Giampaolo draws like that. I could not be happier that someone with an art style that I love is working on one of my stories. We have been working on cover designs, discussing novels, and influences. Literally, it is a dream come true. This is what I was put on this earth to do. No doubt.

A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.

It’s ironic that my last blog entry was talking about my mother. Today should have been my mom’s 58th birthday. Having the day off from work and not realizing that it was the 10th, the date might have passed unnoticed until my wife reminded me this morning. I’ll say it again. Cancer sucks kids.
I’ve been away from the blog for a few days because of my work schedule and a number of projects but I am hoping to get on a more regular routine with the kids getting ready to get back in school. I have been working at my 9-to-5 job that is not exactly 9-to-5, I’ve been working on art approvals for my comic book projects, and I have been working on some personal projects to improve my home and family life.
Unfortunately, most of my spare time has returned as my XBox 360 experienced the “Ring of Death,” also known as a general hardware failure. Thank God Microsoft has the problem fixed via warranty but I am without my video games for about two weeks. Microsoft is supposed to be setting up a support group in my area but they haven’t found a building big enough to hold us all.
Of course, with my system down, this puts a definite crimp in my latest personal project. While I tremendously enjoy writing the comic book script, I got my start back around 1998 writing short stories for the on-line Tomb Raider community. (This was long before the Angelina Jolie movies made Lara Croft a household name.)
When I purchased my XBox 360 secondhand cheap, the first game I bought was Tomb Raider Legend bringing me back to the TR franchise after a substantial absence. While playing the game and after defeating the final level, I began to get an itch… The old saying is that you can’t go home again. Well, I’m going to give it a try.
While it still very early and in the first draft planning stages, I’ve been using some of my downtime to write out a Tomb Raider E-Story. I’ve done a few test pages and passed them around to friends and the response has been fairly positive. So this is part of the reason for an absence on the blog but I’m hoping to write here about my creative process.
More Soon.

Thinking About My Mother...

Nine times out of ten, I often curse the length of my commute. On average, the trip takes about 22 minutes. Granted I am only driving from outside Adair to Langley. There is minimal traffic. We don’t really have a rush hour. (It is one of the few advantages of living in the country.)
My dad is currently living in the San Francisco area and his commute is not measure in miles but in time. Chances are he is probably driving the same number of miles but it takes him twice the time because of the traffic.
My main complaint about my commute revolves around the amount I have to spend in gas. Still, I think it is good to have that therapeutic time to myself. When I am on my home from work—especially when I have had a bad day—I enjoy using the time to decompress before I see my family. I use the time to listen to whatever song I want and whatever volume I want. But there are times when I just shut the music off and take some time for my introspective thoughts.
It’s times like this—the quiet times when the outside world doesn’t exist—that I think about my mom. For those new to the blog, my Mom passed away shortly after Christmas in 2005 after experiencing nagging pain in October and officially being diagnosed with cancer in mid-November of the same year. Take a second to think about that timeframe. She went from being healthy as a horse to gone in under six month.
Despite being over a year and a half since her passing, I think about her all the time. The last movie we ever watched together was Batman Begins, so now that I am seeing sneak peek shots of The Dark Knight, I think about her.
I’ve really come to like the music group Breaking Benjamin. I hear some of their songs like Until the End and You. I firmly believe is the saying, “Greater indeed are pleasures that are shared.” There are times when I think about my mom wondering, “Would see like this song?” “Would she have liked this movie?”It is strange but I think about my mom the most when I find things that I like and I can no longer share them with her. My mom was only 56 years old when she died. Don’t smoke, kiddos. Learn from her mistake.