I’ve been meaning to upgrade my sign for a while. I really felt the lack of my awesome quotes on the sign while I was at Worldcon. So instead of lying in the living room playing video games all day, I fixed this.

I mean, those are some pretty good quotes right there. I’d be a fool to not use them. I’d put them on revised price signs for the books, but they’re kind of tiny and won’t pull you in from the aisle.

And while I was at it I decided to put together a second sign for me. Having two signs will mean I can hide more of whatever’s behind me at an artist alley table.

These should both be very useful next month, when I have two or three cons coming up. (APE, SPX, and maybe sharing a table at Geek Girl Con.) I’m going to actually order them tomorrow; Nick is here and we’re going to watch some video and get me properly petted.

I’ve been spending this weekend sharing a Worldcon table with Dana, selling our stuff. At one point she mentioned that there is a character in the strip who is a disheveled unicorn who sneezes spiders. And I was all like “oh I have to draw her”. So I did.

The spider is probably named something like Cleopatra Golden Spinner.

Dana and I were talking about acquaintances who have big plans for their art and never really get around to, well, actually drawing on a regular basis, and getting better, and getting somewhere on those big plans.

Dana: “…they’d think about drawing, and think that was making progress.”
Me: “Sometimes thinking about an idea IS progress when you’ve got a knotty concept to untangle! But then you’ve gotta put pencil to paper and draw it, instead of, you know, sitting back and playing Bloodborne for three days.”
Dana: “That’s not speaking from personal experience, of course.”
Me: “Oh, no. Never. Not at all.”

This has been a weird weekend.

Also holy shit I am mind-numbingly terrible at figuring out how to do much of anything else at a con besides sit at a dealer table if I don’t know people to trail after. Someday I must try to remedy this.

Every now and then I think about how far my digital art setup has come since the days when I was a kid with a Commodore 64 and a Koalapad and I’m just amazed. Every bit of pasteup lore I learnt in college is superseded by throwing stuff together in InDesign and sending a PDF off to the printer. I can throw together a reference model in a 3D package and pose it over my roughs in Photoshop, then dump that into Illustrator to draw over. And I can take the computer off to the park to work.

I’m fuckin’ spoiled.

So yeah me and my buddy Dana are driving out to Spokane tomorrow for this year’s Worldcon. We’re sharing a booth and selling our comics – I’ll have both volumes of “Decrypting Rita” as well as the Tarot of the Silicon Dawn, and she’ll have the collections of “Phoebe and her Unicorn” and probably “Ozy and Millie” as well.

This morning’s half-awake thoughts:

I feel like there are several friends in my life who could turn into friends-with-benefits. And that’s on top of a pretty good ex-with-benefits relationship. Which is interesting. I don’t know that I’ll pursue any of them as any kind of Serious Secondary Thing (but I’ll sure keep being flirty with them, and if we end up together near a bedroom then well yes) but it’s a really nice feelling to have what with growing up as a depressed mopey hatepile who was pretty sure he would never, ever, ever find anyone to have sex with, much less love.

I’m not sure I have a point here. If you’re young and hatefully alone, be aware that this can change, I guess. Though you have to work for it; I spent a lot of time trying to make myself less of a bitter piece of shit, and I still expend a certain amount of effort to make sure that when the XWB visits it’s always pretty laid-back and chill.

edit: of course there is also the elephant in the room that I’m pretty financially comfortable now, and that also makes me a hell of a lot less stressed out and thus more fun to be around!