A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

Allan Harvey’s blog discovers the secret identity of Laurie Sutton’s one true love. AQUAMAN!!!

Ancient history: for those with an interest in the self publishing movement, give this article from the September 1997 issue of Reason magazine a read. Oh look, I’m in it!

Colleen Doran, creator of the formerly self-published comic book A Distant Soil, learned this lesson the hard way. Although she had publicly celebrated her independence from corporate paymasters, she relented last year, moving her comic book over to Image. Self-publishing, despite the freedom, has its downside, Doran explained to The Comics Journal: “You just don’t have any clout when you’re all by yourself….You can’t negotiate, you can’t get the best prices on printing…because you’re just a single person. Your printer knows it, your distributor knows it….You just don’t have any power.”

And over at BookSpot Central SYNERGY as authors, artists, actors and me talk about our beloved children’s books (link fixed):

Today, I still love gardening and live on the family farm, which is heaven to me. My goal was always to grow up and be like Tasha Tudor, and while I am not willing to give up all my modern conveniences as she did, I admired her independent spirit and simple way of living, which I emulate to the extent that I prefer a world which has computers in it!

JRR Tolkien’s son and keeper of the flame Christopher Tolkien gives a rare interview.

Christopher Tolkien, who as a child was paid two pence by his father for every mistake he could find in The Hobbit, and as an RAF pilot during the war contributed suggestions to the progress of The Lord of the Rings, worked from a manuscript which he believes his father wrote in the early 1930s. JRR Tolkien taught Old Norse alongside Anglo-Saxon at Oxford university, giving lectures and classes on Norse language and literature for at least 13 years.

At the Atlantic, scientists study a group of men for decades to study the nature of happiness. VERY interesting reading. Highly recommended.

Bock assembled a team that spanned medicine, physiology, anthropology, psychiatry, psychology, and social work, and was advised by such luminaries as the psychiatrist Adolf Meyer and the psychologist Henry Murray. Combing through health data, academic records, and recommendations from the Harvard dean, they chose 268 students—mostly from the classes of 1942, ’43, and ’44—and measured them from every conceivable angle and with every available scientific tool…Most psychology preoccupies itself with mapping the heavens of health in sharp contrast to the underworld of illness. “Social anxiety disorder” is distinguished from shyness. Depression is defined as errors in cognition. Vaillant’s work, in contrast, creates a refreshing conversation about health and illness as weather patterns in a common space. “Much of what is labeled mental illness,” Vaillant writes, “simply reflects our ‘unwise’ deployment of defense mechanisms. If we use defenses well, we are deemed mentally healthy, conscientious, funny, creative, and altruistic. If we use them badly, the psychiatrist diagnoses us ill, our neighbors label us unpleasant, and society brands us immoral.”

Scientists believe they have found a “creativity chemical” which appears to have the opposite effect on people with low and high IQ’s.

Jung speculates that if there is less NAA to regulate frontal cortex activity in “average” brains, they are freer to roam and find new ideas. In highly intelligent people, however, tighter control over the frontal cortex seems to enhance creativity. Perhaps this is because they are more likely to come up with new ideas anyway, and the tighter control allows them to “fine-tune” that ability.

Author Kristine Kathryn Rusch is posting the contents of her very useful book The Freelancer’s Survival Guide online. Here’s a sample – Staying Positive:

The daily goals must be realistic. They can’t be too easy or you’ll finish in an hour and feel like you haven’t worked. On the other hand, they can’t be too hard or you’ll never achieve them and will always feel discouraged. You must set a goal that makes you put in some effort and gives you a good result at the same time.

Writers generally set a word limit—writing so many words of new material each and every day. Musicians often set a time limit—practicing for so many hours each and every day. EBay sellers will often set a goal of making a certain number of listings each and every day.

The type of goal will vary from business to business, but it must be something that you can achieve daily. I also set weekly goals and monthly goals. Even though I’m very structured, I usually miss my monthly goals—something gets in the way or goes long or (as in this week) life intrudes a bit and puts me behind.

Here is the direct link, with posts in order.

Julie Ditrich is a comics writer.

She’s a hypnotherapist!

She’s a comics writer!

She’s a hypnotherapist!

She’s a comics writer AND a hypnotherapist!!!

She’s now posting her advice and tips at the Black Mermaid blog, Self Help for Comics Creators. The first installment is overcoming resistance, which is good advice for all you procrastinators out there.

Well, there are differences in the feeling energy depending on where the emotional resistance originates from in the mind body spirit. I endow each variation of resistance with its rightful name. For example, it can be “laziness”, “tiredness”, “mind space switch” [from one project to another]; or the fear-based “self doubt”. Once named, that variant of resistance loses much of its potency and that is when I take action and start working on the very thing I was resisting.

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