What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway.)

So I have spent a considerable amount of this Sunday working on my current comic book assignment, which is shaping up to be the best mini-series of my career.

Things are going really good with the writing and the creative team behind this and the support staff is unbelievable. This could be the book that really cements my status.

I believe that everyone who chooses a difficult and unconventional career path faces moments of doubt and uncertainty. I think this is the case for anyone that chose a creative path be it writing, singing, performing, etc. It is hard for people to see the massive breadth of your work because people don’t see all of your failures. I’ve got (Marvel’s E-I-C) Joe Quesada’s autograph dozens of times on rejection letters. Because those failures don’t see the light of day, people don’t see all those hours spent working.

There was a friend of mine back in high school and my early days of college and we use to have strange conversations. I knew the exact destination I wanted to be at. I knew I wanted to write comic books. However, there is no set of classes and seminars you can take and be guaranteed employment.
My friend was attending college but she had no clue what her destination was. She was on the road to somewhere great with scholarships and a good school but she didn’t know where she was going.
So you have one person on a golden road but doesn’t know where she is going to end up and a person armed with a machete hacking his own path through the jungle towards a shining city somewhere in the distance (with no guarantee that he will even make it to the city). Who is better off?

Through a lot of hard work (and a considerable amount of luck), I have arrived at my shining city. I don’t have a monthly assignment yet and I am still hustling for my next assignment. I’m not living in the castle yet but I am inside the perimeter wall.

So I was talking about doubt and uncertainty earlier. Every time I step into a new project I get butterflies. I wonder, “Will they like it?” “Am I good enough to do this?” “Can I do it?” But then I start to work and the more pages I get into a script, the more my confidence builds. And that is when I realize that I was born to do this. This is my calling in life.
But when you are walking that path, until you arrive at a destination, you constantly are plagued with self-doubt. For years, really ever since I left High School, I have been chasing a dream. I have turned my back on opportunities and money. Times have been tough. (In many ways, times are still tough…) And after I had kids, I realized that I was not only jeopardizing my future if I took my shot and failed… I was jeopardizing theirs as well.
But things are finally starting to turn around for me. I cannot tell you how powerful that is. You rarely hear about guys who take a shot and miss. But you also never read stories about people who take the safe path and live their lives working at a job they hate, wishing they had done something else with their life.
I like to think that I am following a similar path as my idol Todd McFarlane. And if I could build an empire a tenth the size that he has, I will die a happy man and my family will be well compensated financially.
But moreover, by pursuing this dream, I believe that it has made me a better person. It is times like this that I look back on quotable quotes I have on my web page. Now, more than ever, I take great solace in a quote from the man whom inspired my second son’s middle name…

"I am turning my back on a sure thing for some, perhaps, unattainable goal.
My wife and I have a new daughter and I know that because I am following my heart I will be a better husband and father.
No amount of money could by me that."
Todd McFarlane—1992
On leaving Spider-Man to form Image Comics

Life is… Okay

To quote the late, great Rodney Dangerfield, “I tell ya, I’m okay now but last week I was in rough shape, rough shape…” [You have to imagine me straightening my tie just then.]
First, I’m sick and I lost my voice due to congestion. I’m getting better. My voice is still bad and I hack up things during the morning shower that you could use as mortar to build a castle.
Jason, our middle child, contracted salmonella poisoning from Peter Pan peanut butter and was taking all sorts of antibiotics. The doctors were treating him like he had salmonella. To positively confirm it, we would have had to given a stool sample and I’m not making an eight-year-old with the dia-rears poop in a cup. I tossed out two half eaten jars of the 2111 code peanut butter (one crunchy, one creamy).
The day after being diagnosed with the gut ache, our oldest son, Alex, ate something that gave him the hives and he had to go to the emergency room for shots. (He recovered quickly.)
Amy had a touch of something. Thank God Lauren stayed healthy. But it was just like a one-two-one-two-onetwoone punch that I couldn’t get away from.

There is good news to go with this… and some insignificant, childish news too. C’mon would it be an RMF Blog without it?
My dad has made the move to California (not that that is good news but it is newsworthy). He’s teaching kids how to fly in a giant video game simulator for Boeing. I often wonder how many of his former students are over in Iraq. He is doing the same thing he did in Altus but at a different Air Force base. But he is living near a lot of his siblings, which I think will be good for him. We had a visit last week (just as everyone was getting sick). This was the first visit I could remember where both of us talked about Mom without shedding any tears. After a year and two months, I think that is a sign that the healing process is finally starting to work. God, I hate Cancer. Is there a single more vile word in the English language?

Works sucks but it is paying the bills for now. On the other hand, the new comic book assignment is great. I haven’t had this much fun in a long time. [More on that next blog.]

Marvel Civil War just came to its epic conclusion. If you are lurking about on Amazon.com and the trade paperback becomes available, I would definitely pick that up whether you are a comic fan or not.
Skip the Nicolas Cage movie Ghost Rider. Visually it was stunning but I think a twelve-year-old wrote the script. But I did see a new trailer for Spider-Man 3 which looks awesome! Can’t wait.

Lost keeps getting stranger and they aren’t answering questions fast enough for me so Prison Break is now the best show on TV in my humble opinion. Buy Season 1 on DVD and watch it straight through. You won’t regret it.

I still can’t find a Marvel Legends black suit “Julia Carpenter” Spider-Woman variant from the M.O.D.O.K. series and I keep getting outbid on eBay. Stupid Marvel Legends and my hopeless addiction. I swear this addiction is my cocaine…

So that’s about it. Digest all that information. More soon…

Life is Good!

So after taking a few baby steps over the last several months, my career as a professional comic book writer just took a huge leap forward. I have been hired by Arcana Studios (my publisher for my last three comic book projects) for an original mini-series that is scheduled for four issues, bringing my total from 13 issues to 17.

I don’t want to disclose too much information (because I’m not certain if I should) but I am tremendously excited about this project. I’m hoping that it is the kick-start I need to get even more projects in development. I am still paying my dues and grinding it out between assignments but this could be a big project that gets me noticed.

I am writing this as I am submitting the first draft of Issue #1 to my publisher. (Hey, I would have blogged about this sooner but I had a comic to write!) I’m going to move on to Issue #2 tomorrow while my publisher handles getting an art team together.

So for the last several days, I have been in a state of painful bliss. When I get done really working hard on a script, I felt like I just came out of the ACTs. My mind has turned to mush from all those creative neurons firing and you are just exhausted but I could not be happier. While I suspected all along, I now know that writing comic books is not just something I want to do but something I have to do.

Still, there is no rest for the weary because I still have three more issues to write. More soon.

Quote of the Week

We sit outside and argue all night long

About a God we've never seen

But never fails to side with me

Sunday comes and all the papers say

Ma Teresa's joined the mob

And happy with her full time job

Primitive Radio Gods

Standing Outside a Broken Phone

Booth With Money in My Hand

POWER! The sweet smell of power!

202 hours without power. 8+ days. But finally the Foley family and RMF Enterprises are back up and running at full power. I called the house from work and the answering machine picked up to which I proceeded to do a victory lap around the store with my hands raised in victory, screaming, “I have electricity!” And after this last week, no one even looked at me funny.
Finally, the boys can return from the self-imposed exile of living with cousins and all five of us can sleep under one roof. I can wash clothes, store cold food, make food hot with either a stove or a microwave, and run a furnace to heat a pretty good portion of the house. I can shave by electric lights instead of by candlelight and I can know what I look like before I leave the house. I can walk around the house without hearing the chug-chug-chug lawnmower sound of the small generator.
In short, kids, life is good.
Hopefully since NE Oklahoma was declared a federal disaster area we will see some financial assistance down the road for the gas we put in the generator and the massive amount of food we lost.
But, I have discovered a few things about me. I don’t respond well to darkness (meaning my future as a professional vampire might need to be reconsidered). Lauren’s room really needs new windows. We need an emergency response pack stored on the back porch (batteries, candles, aim-n-flame, etc.). And the family’s tension level can survive about one week of disaster before we start to turn on each other.
But maybe now things will return to normal. OK is thawing out rapidly but there is still a few months left to wade through. Some our worst snows have been known to sneak in during the month of March. Hopefully with the blizzard (yes, I said blizzard) of November and this tremendous ice storm, we are through the worst of it.
I’m so excited I can barely talk about the Colts’ unbelievable come-from-behind victory.

More soon, peoples. It’s good to be back…

No Hope On The Horizon but That's Better Than False Hope...

So after a small mental break yesterday, I have decided that no hope is better than false hope. If my power company would have come to me and said, “It’s going to take two more weeks to get your power on,” I would have preferred that to hoping for the power to come back on. But when you see the neighbors across the street with power, you think that surely you will have yours back.

I have given up that hope and have resigned myself to thinking that it is going to take another two weeks for us to get power back. So if it comes back in a week I will be pleasantly surprised.

It could be worse. I have hot water. We are running off a generator so we do have some electricity and we installed a propane heater to give us some heat. So I keep telling myself… It could be worse. At least I will be able to watch the playoffs this weekend.

I just wish that the governor would come on the TV and give everyone an official update to let everyone know what is going on and know where we are. I think the lack of knowledge is one of the most frustrating things…

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here…

As I type this at a little bit after 3:00 p.m., my household has passed 111 hours without electricity. What is more, my neighbor and all those down the rural road have power. It is as if our house is the only house in the area without power. While we have not received any sort of official statement from our electric company, it is as if our house has been deliberately disconnected because of tree limbs so close to the power lines.

I guess in theory if the limbs snap, everyone on the grid goes dark so it is better to just leave our house dark rather than risk 20 other houses. This leads me to believe that we now move down to the bottom of the priority list. Which means this could go on for another week. Maybe two. Because chances are the crews have already moved on to other areas and would have to work backwards to get to us.

When this all occurred last night, I told myself that I had a small window of opportunity. Either they get it turned on by 5:00 p.m. or we will be out of power for at least another week.

I’m writing this at 3:31. We still have no power. Which means… I’m fucked.
And while we now have a generator to power the house, I cannot afford the fifteen gallons of gas required to power this thing for a 24 hour period.

I want to shut off the water to the house at the meter, leave the faucets all wide open to bleed off water and pressure in the lines and just move out of the house for a week. I would rather refugee in a family member’s house because I ran out of money last week and I don’t get paid until Monday. So unless the gas stations start taking blood or kidneys, I’m screwed six ways from Sunday.

I knew that if we got power on today, I would be able to look back on the situation, see that we survived it, and laugh about it. Now, I’m ready to snap mentally and go on a killing spree.
It’s funny how your priorities change when your life gets fouled up. Right now, all I want is to sit down from a hot, illuminated shower to have a hot dinner made from real food, drink ice cold water, in the glow of an overhead light, with my TV on, and an Internet connection humming away. I want all of those things happening at the same time. Give me that for one night and I think I could manage.

But until then, I’m ready to start slitting my wrists…

Bending But Not Breaking – Tuesday, January 16th

84 Hours. 84 hours without electricity. And counting… With no real hope on the horizon, I’ve given up on the electricity being restored. Hopefully, when it gets turned on today, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. But it is realistic to think that it might not happen until this weekend… and today is only Tuesday.

We did receive a flicker of hope in the form of a welder/generator that gives us one surge protector to use for electricity. It was delivered yesterday thanks to my father-in-law. Getting up at 5:00 a.m. to go out into the single digit temperatures to fill it back up with gasoline is not an inviting prospect but it is running the furnace and for the first time, we were able to have one light, the TV, and the Dish Network box up and running.

The kids got to watch Spongebob Squarepants. I watched The Sopranos. We ran the computer for about half an hour and I was able to log on and check my email (thankfully nothing critical came during that time). And life went back to being a little more bearable.

Still, I have been working a lot despite a 50 mile round trip commute. A grocery store does not close for anything. So I have been here tending to fruits and vegetables and also taking care of my department. Zing! See what I did there? I eluded to… customers being… fruits. (Yeah, when you have to explain a joke it loses its appeal.)

Anyway, one of the other employees made a pretty good comment about how the employees that made the long and dangerous trips into work have been taking care of other people in the area that need water, food, batteries, candles, things of that nature but we do this at the expense of our own families. It sure would be nice to have some time to take care of our homes and our families.

But when you get dressed by the dawn’s early light and then make it home as the sun is going down, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for working around the house.
Right now, Amy’s biggest complaint is the condition of the house. Furniture is rearranged, extension cords are strung everywhere, and the place is in shambles. My hope is that power will get turned back on and things will get back to normal on either Thursday or Sunday (my two days off).

The Miracle of Correspondence – Monday, January 15th

One of my favorite movies is The Patriot starring Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, and Jason Isaacs. In one of the early scenes in the movie, we see a post rider arrive with mail and the family treats it with a tremendous excitement.

Back in the days when I was in college down in Dallas, it was always a big deal to get a letter from friends. And keep in mind that was not too long ago (the fall of ’94). As a broke college student, I couldn’t afford things like long distance service… or new clothes… or name brand food… So when a letter would come in the mail, it was a pretty exciting deal.

Now, admittedly, I’m not real good on the phone. So I don’t make a lot of calls to my friends. 90% of my communication is done via email. All of my comic book assignments have been transferred via the Internet.

Isn’t it amazing how far we have come in just a few short years? Only a decade ago, an average letter would take days to travel across the country and by the time it arrived, the information was often obsolete. Now, a few clicks on the keyboard and pressing the “send” button and information is relayed in an instant. I am a bit of a tech geek so I am no longer mystified by the Internet. It took a massive storm and power outage to make me appreciate the speed in which we communicate with each other these days. Going off the grid and being cut off from the news and other people really make me appreciate it.

Living in the War Zone – Monday, January 15th

If you note the exact time that these blog entries are posted, you will see a bit of a time discrepancy from when they are written to when they are posted. The reason is simple and I can’t believe I’m about to type this… (and I hope I never have to type this again…)
I’m living in a Federal Disaster Area.
Because of the intense amount of ice, sleet, freezing rain, and whatever other meteorological junk you want to label it, Northeastern Oklahoma is living in a realm of nightmares. The entire area is coated with ice. Travel is treacherous to say the least. At the time that I am writing this (from work) we are into 62+ hours without electricity. Estimates say that 120,000 households are without power. In our region alone, REC was reporting 20,000 homes without power. That is a lot of angry people out there, folks.
Any person who longs for the days of the frontier or Little House on the Prairie should have come and stayed with me for the last week. Reading by candlelight is next to impossible. If you keep the door shut, you have about 24 hours in your refrigerator… After 60, things start to get really gross. So we don’t have cold food and no heat on the electric stove and oven to cook with.
I’m doing some pretty white trash things to survive. It is like something out of a My Name is Earl episode. I heated up a chicken strip with the house’s propane heater and a fork, I’m keeping my water tank outside to keep it cold (that actually works pretty good!), and I made chili on our grill outside. I wish my camera wouldn’t have run out of batteries because it made for a pretty funny sight to see me in a hooded coat, gloves, and three layers of sweat pants cooking a pot of beef on the side burner.
Still, it could be worse. We have water. We have never lost that but certain places have lost power at their pumping stations. No water is getting pumped into the towers, hence… No water.
Last night, I took a shower by candlelight. Now, I’ve done this before but there was someone in the shower with me! Zing! But last night sucked. I wasn’t even going to dare to try to shave by candlelight, so the guys at work are starting to look like a bunch of hillbillies. I don’t want to even imagine what’s going on with the ladies…
Bedtime comes about 8:00 and wake up calls hit about 5:30. And after several days of this, I’m afraid my body is going to get used to it! Damn that!
So, if I have learned anything from this experience, it is to sympathize a little bit more with people like the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Still, this is weather that can kill people so I don’t want to make light of the situation.
Fingers crossed, the power gets turned back on today. But with high winds and bitter cold temperatures in the forecast, I’m thinking this could go on for days still…
Talking with some people at the power company, realistic estimates say that it could take three weeks to get everyone powered back up.Wish me luck. More updates later…