Holy crap I just read the whole damn thing in one hour. I sorta feel like nearly two years of my life should take longer to read? Ffff.
Anyway, I know what needs doing to the next page now. Pretty much what I thought needed doing. Maybe there will be a NEW PAGE OF RITA soon! That’d be nice.
There’s art I should be working on, there’s cleaning I should be doing, but I think right now what I’m going to do is sit down with my iPad and a cbz of the entirety of Decrypting Rita so far. I’ve been looking at the next page in progress and can’t get going on it for the past couple of days. I’m not sure if this means I’m just tired and can’t really focus on anything, or that there is something wrong with the page – sometimes my inner critic will make it known that This Page Is Not Ready Yet, and I just can’t make myself finish the drawing until I fix whatever’s wrong with the narrative.
I figure that reading the whole thing will give me ideas. And help swap it all back into my head; I’ve been away from it longer than I’d like.
(and to be honest I kinda know where the trouble spot is, I really think I just need to refine two dialogue balloons in the middle of the page. But I want to read the whole thing and see just what my brain says needs to happen when I get there.)
There are times I really wish I could treat this like I treated chapter one of Absinthe and skip around when I’m a little stuck on one page. But the multiple-narratives nature of this beast means that I really just have to take it one page at a time, as the overall timing of stuff is really, really based on exactly how things play out when I sketch out the pages. And some important ideas seem to only occur to me as I’m actually doing that – R1 getting stuck in Megaera’s head as a passenger, instead of simply taking over R4 to save her, for instance, happened entirely due to a sudden whim while I was putting together the page where it happens.
I don’t know if someone who was better at Writing Comic Books could actually put together a usable script for this beforehand. I’m the one telling this story, and this is the only way I’ve figured out how to tell it, so I have to wrestle with it sometimes. At best sometimes I have like three pages roughly scripted at any point in time! I have looser plans for the whole thing; I pretty much know what’s going to happen in the rest of Book 2 and 3. But the details… those don’t seem to come until I’m hip-deep in a section of the story.
Also my next couple of comics are probably going to be told VERY NORMALLY because holy shit doing this kind of trick on an extended basis is a lot of work. I’ve definitely learnt a lot about page layout and how to write a story on this project, and I’ll certainly be deploying the parallel narratives trick again in future stuff, but I won’t be building the whole thing around it!
(Tangentially, if you’re hungry for other stories that do this, I’d suggest picking up Matt Kindt’s “Mind Mgmt” – he mostly tells the story straight ahead, but there’s all these… things… in the margins that contribute to the overall gestalt.)
Have you ever wondered what happens when you’re the only link in a lengthy article on Kotaku? Sure you have!
My stats pages. The day of the article is highlighted; click for full size.
I’m especially pleased with the fact that the traffic for Rita stayed at almost the same level for the next day; that tells me that a lot of people came back and kept reading the story! I dunno what percentage of the people who made it to the bottom of the article and noticed the link to my site were furries versus gamers; I didn’t get any comments. I figure that being at the end of the article probably weeded out the people whose kneejerk reaction was UGH FURRIES, at least.
Back to trying to make some progress on the next page of Rita. I’m not sure if my inability to get into the groove on it means I’m out of practice attaining that groove, or that something’s not quite right in the page layout/script as is. Being a sole creator is hard sometimes.
I’m putting stuff from the con away. I went out there with, um, 24 copies of the deck, and 20 copies of the Rita book. I shipped home nine decks and seven books.
I left six copies of the deck at home. I’ve got fifteen of ’em left now.
I just ordered about eighty more from Llewellyn at the artist price, so I’ll have some at ECCC, as well as at AC and probably Rainfurrest. Llewellyn tells me they’re down to about 250 decks in the warehouse, including what I’ve ordered, so if you’ve been wanting one and haven’t gotten one yet, you might want to order one as I think it’ll be out of print soon. I should poke Lo Scarabeo to see what kind of stock they have on their end, and if they’re thinking of doing a second printing.
Had I mentioned Further Confusion was really good? Because Further Confusion was really good.
Foolscap is next week; I’ll probably be spending some time there but I’m not planning to be dealing or putting stuff in the art show.
So. One thing that happened at Further Confusion this weekend was that I got interviewed. Anna Anthropy‘s girlfriend was at the con, and I ran into her. She had a friend in tow who works for Kotaku, and was doing an article on the con. I was expecting to see Daphny, but not to get INTERVIEWED!
But I think I managed to acquit myself pretty well. Here’s the article; my part is at the bottom. I kinda feel like I ended up being the WISE OLD DRAGON LADY who sums it all up. How the hell did I end up becoming a dispenser of wisdom?
I guess now I should get dressed and mail off these two orders for Rita books that came in while I was at the con.
Oh also, amusingly enough? Looking at the stats on my site, it seems like about half the people who clicked through from the link in that article wandered around my gallery, and half of them went to Absinthe. Because NSFW. Absolutely no bump in traffic to Rita, even though it’s the first link. Wait, I thought it was the furries who were the horny freaks?
I was puttering around the apartment when my eyes stopped working, and kept holding the last thing I’d seen – or rather what I’d see when I’d open my eyes while still lying there in bed. And in the dream I was completely convinced that this was reality, and hoping it’d go away but getting scared because it was staying longer than I’d ever had it before.
You would think that the near-complete emptiness of my studio would have been a tip-off; it’s been kind of messy for several months, but here it was beautifully pristine.
I tried using Siri to call Nick for help. It said it was dialing Rik, which I figured was close enough, but I got a complete stranger instead. Then I somehow got in contact with Tugrik, and started to ask him for help; this soon turned into an outpouring of the fear I hadn’t quite been expressing of being blind for life or something, and then suddenly I was sitting up in the hotel bed shouting “WHEW!”.
Shower now, I guess, then I start packing my crap up so I can go home tonight.
Things that happened around the Dead Dog dance:
– I arrived near the end of the closing ceremonies. I ended up having the concom recognize my contribution to the con in the form of art, and got a second lunchbox with my art on it in thanks.
– Inaki came up and asked me if he could use me for practice: he wants to start making latex/rubber costumes, and wondered if I’d like a Rita costume. My response was yes! I’ll have to lose those twenty pounds and start running, so I’ll be ready to zip around at high speed whenever possible – its just not Rita if I walk everywhere!
– I danced for like 3 of the 4 hours the dance ran. It would have been a bit more but halfway through I trekked across the convention center to change my dress, as it was just too damn warm for all that exertion. I came back wearing nothing but a black slip that’s slit all the way up the sides, with bands of lace keeping it together around all that bare skin, and some tape to keep my junk from ruining the line of the dress.
– On my way back from the end of the dance, I was stopped by a fursuiter who wanted to have his photograph taken with me. A red gryphon, if anyone knows who it was I’d love to get the photos. He had a leash dangling, and you can bet I picked it up and posed all dominantly! Despite the fact that the tape on my loins was coming off, and at any second would let go, letting my junk flop out and make an obvious bulge in my dress. Not that anyone would really care at a furry con, but still. I have an image to maintain, and would prefer to only have my dick be visible in my dress when I WANT it to.
I was tempted to take the gryphon home – after all, I already had his leash – but I’m just too damn tired to flirt right now.
This con is over. And it was a damn fine con. I’ll sleep until I wake up tomorrow, then pack, maybe ship my half-full box of books, maybe fill it with some of my other table stuff and stick it on the plane, I really don’t know. Hmm. Or maybe I’ll go buy a new rolling suitcase and fill it with my second pile of table stuff, as the pull-out handle on the one I brought got jammed in place on the plane – good thing I had a little folding cart in there to haul crap to the table!
Sleep!
I’m sitting in the lobby of the Mariott with the iPad. Last day; I’m sticking around for the dead dog dance tonight, then it’s off to the airport tomorrow evening. I’ll pack everything in the morning.
Overall this con was A TOTAL SUCCESS. My gross revenues were in the low four figures; I’ll be turning a profit after taking out all my expenses – which include $128 for a cancelled room when I couldn’t get roomies, and a full day alone of the room I ended up sharing. So that’s good. Anoles my art was on the con shirt, and I’ll be seeing that at furry cons for years to come, which will be PRETTY AWESOME. Especially if I can snag some new regular customers by saying “oh hey I drew that shirt, want it signed?” when they pass my tables.
I roomed with Jace, which was a lot of fun. I got to be a hell of a flirt and be in a bed full of three people. (And then today I ran into a friend whose con was basically entirely UNPLANNED GROUP SEX, they showed me a few of their bite marks and told stories. They won their con more than I did.)
I think I’ve figured out that my limit for at-con commissions is about four pieces a day. Maybe a little more if I don’t get any multi commissions. I didn’t work hard at doing my homework each night, and I now have one last drawing that I’ll probably deliver today. Plus three color Illustrator pieces to do at home. So that’s pretty good. I might go looking for a minion for the next con; pay someone’s membership in exchange for them spending most of the con behind my table, talking to people and taking money while I draw! Maybe even a bit more. Dunno. What’s the going rate for minions you’re not married to?
My wings were admired a lot; I ended up standing up with my arms spread a lot.
My dancing was the one disappointment. I couldn’t summon Anathema, I’m too out of practice. I must do something about this soon. But I had a good time dancing for an hour or two both nights anyway, and will do more tonight!
Anyway. Good con, and I am now feeling pretty damn confident that Anthrocon will be profitable! Maybe even ECCC. Which is in like a month and a half oh god I need to get my big banner happening…
I’m nearly ready to go to Further Confusion! I just have to run out and get a few more sheet protectors so I can put the rest of my new prints in the print binders, and stick my shampoo and makeup in my duffel bag. Then I am ready!
It’s a good thing my flight is tomorrow evening; this will let me do these things without much pressure. I’m glad I shipped the bulk of my merch ahead of me, as otherwise I’d be hauling two suitcases, a duffel bag, AND my computer bag to the airport. Too damn much stuff.
Last night and today I read The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaneimi. It was… how can I say this.
I’ve been reading science fiction for a long time. I started reading it somewhere in the single-digit ages, when I began raiding my parents’ shelves for things that looked interesting. I read my way through the entire SF section of the local library. I accumulated several hundred books of my own over the years. Why? I was a junkie, looking for a fix. Looking for the authentic taste of The Future. For that weird crystalline rightness that comes in a rush of new ideas packed densely into each others’ implications. Not that I think any of these books are prophecy about what technology will bring, but there’s some kind of truth about how we’ll use what we invent that’s lurking there under the surface.
When I was young, it was easy to get that rush. Everything was new to me, including all the cliches. But over the years I got jaded. I’d read enough that I’d seen it all; I could see the bones of other books poking up awkwardly through the skin of newer ones I read. Even in new authors that arrived with effusive, luminous praise as Something New.
When Katrina took my whole library away, it was easy to stop reading. I didn’t want to try and build up a new pile of tree-pulp and ink. Over the past few years I’ve started reading e-books again, still hoping for the occasional dose of The Future but knowing I’d probably never find more than tiny fleeting tastes sandwiched in the middle of heavier tomes that went through the same familiar places.
Quantum Thief gave me a massive taste of that. A strong, dense, black liquid dose of The Future. I don’t think I’ve had a taste this strong since… oh, let’s say 1991, when Swanwyck’s “Stations of the Tide” came out. There were things in that book that dug deep under the bottom of my conscious mind and rearranged something essential in me. And I think Rajaniemi’s book may have done the same. Time will tell. I think I’ll have to read it again soon.
Highly recommended.
and if you haven’t read any Swanwyck he’s eminently worth reading; he was one of the last people to regularly provide THAT FIX. Suggestions: Stations of the Tide, Vaccum Flowers, Iron Dragon’s Daughter and its semi-sequel Dragons of Babylon.)