Another lettered state edition drawing in colored pencil, this one for Sue McLoughlin.

Things went very well at NYCC. I did better than last year with A Distant Soil graphic novel sales up a bit, which was heartening. Up by a third, I think. But it was nerve wracking, as most buyers were waiting for last minute Sunday bargains, so for awhile I thought I was going to get stuck shipping home boxes of stuff (nope.)

Here’s a con overview from The Beat.

I didn’t bring much to sell at the show anyway, since I knew I would have a very bad location (great for enjoying the show with friends and doing deals, bad for sales.) I also shipped the wrong box of art, the one with the Captain Atom pages and like works which don’t have much of a market, so comic pages didn’t move.

Still I had completed a number of advance commissions and everyone who ordered their drawings picked them up at the show, so lots of art sold in the end. I have never been asked for so many commissions before. I have raised my prices, but that didn’t slow down requests. I was unable to do them, alas, unless people asked in advance of the show.

I skipped most parties, but for the first time in my life, someone tried to hit on me AND a male companion simultaneously at the CBLDF gathering, which was quite a shock.

Rantz Hosely (who is attractive, yet married, I must conclude we looked decorative together) and I were talking quietly with one another at the bar when two very aggressive men approached us and asked, “Do you swing?”

While I stood there and blinked at them trying to process what had just transpired, Rantz quipped, “Sure, I like ’50′s music.”

Good times, good times.

At the DC party, I arrived very late and two men came to my table to sit with me.

Party crashers.

In short order, their ignorance of the event and what we were doing there became apparent as I tried to explain to them that yes, people really do draw comics with their own hands. Freelancers couldn’t get into that party, but by golly, these two dopes claimed their cousin got them in. They didn’t even look like they were the same species, much less cousins.

They asked “What’s this party for?” so that was a clue they had crashed it, see. It’s pretty bad when you don’t have market penetration at your own party. I got up to go to the banquet to get some food and they quickly gathered their things and left, but not before they had scarfed down some free eats.

Yes, I got sick again. I left the show early, and would have left even earlier had I not had a commission to deliver. The customer didn’t show until late on Sunday, and then I was out of there. Nothing major and horrible like last year’s bout with whooping cough, just annoying. And I sound like a frog.

There was one retailer selling buy one get TWO FREE graphic novels, and I did just that. I also bought an Aquaman doll from Tonner and I await delivery as they had sold out at the show. It was on sale 2/3 off.

Oh my God, it’s gorgeous. I’ll post a pic as soon as I have it.

Looks like conventions are the way to get uber-bargains. I am very much looking forward to Charlotte Heroes Con, because if the sales are anything like last year, I am going to have to back up a truck to the door to haul goodies away.

Bad news: very few vendors selling art supplies. Blue Line, where were you??????

c

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.

c

Another bit of ruminatin’, written for me pal Danny Donovan. Part I was here. Modified for clarity from my original note to Danny.

An odd bit of something none of us quite expected when we went pro was the lack of support from people in our peer groups. This isn’t a universal problem, but it is a shocking one when you come up from fandom. Fandom can be a source of unreasoning support when you are of the body, but will dole out hideous heaps of abuse when you turn pro.

When I went from fan to pro while still in high school, kids my own age in the science fiction group I belonged to were incredibly cool to me. I will never forget their kindness and support. I can’t think of one in the group who wasn’t a mensch.

Older fans in their 30′s and 40′s: not so much. My pro ambitions must have galled them no end. Few of them went on to realize their own dreams and aspirations. They could be cruel. Bullying is not too strong a word for their behavior. One flatly stated, “We didn’t think you were going anywhere. We just thought you were going to be a little fan artist.” They seemed to hope so.

Another, author Bud Webster (who was always unfailingly kind), was a little more revealing. He said, “You were the kind of person we were trying to get away from.” I was too mundane in appearance and temperament for the SF fandom set, yet I was the one who went on to have the career I hoped for. This was extremely irritating to many. The bullying, which at the time seemed horrible, I now realize was a manifestation of the social dynamics of insecure people. And it’s not something unique to fandom.

This kind of “putting you in your place” is a form of leveling. When you are in a social group or relationship, and ANYONE moves or grows, or stretches the boundaries of that social dynamic, there will ALWAYS be a resistance to that change. ANY change, and the better that change is, the harder the resistance because a group dynamic mood will drop faster than it will rise.

Good friends who are secure in themselves will NOT resist this change, they will be happy to let you grow in the direction you wish to grow.

Fandom comes with a unique set of problems forged from the twin terrors of a tendency toward hero worship while simultaneously deploring the mundane trappings of status and success.

If you enter a fan group as a pro, fine. You are always a pro. If you enter a fan group as a fan and then emerge a pro, there are those who will hate you with the fiery hate of a thousand suns. These foul weather friends are 1,000 times worse than fair weather friends.

Fair weather friends ditch as soon as you are not a sparkling diamond. OK, I get it, my stock dropped, you want to be with the cool kids. Bye!

But foul weather friends? The worst! Because fair weather friends will merely leave you behind, and foul weather friends will hamstring you to force you to stay behind.

Wherever your misery level was, that’s where they want to keep you. It gives them a sense of power to be the emotionally strong party in a relationship. As soon as your mountaintop basks in sun, they will call for rain and they will revel in the mudslide.

There are a lot of people in and around the art and entertainment field who use their careers to prop up their lousy self esteem. That is understandable. When they see someone in their social circle achieving what they have not yet achieved or can’t achieve, or would prefer to achieve in their own unique way (which requires the exclusion of the success of everyone else they know) then they will do everything in their power to destroy your happiness. They may not even do it consciously. They can’t help themselves.

And you are NOT doing yourself or them any favors at all by sticking around.

When you try to reason with them, or assuage their feelings, you are enabling them. You are feeding their delusion that they have been harmed by your success or accomplishment. Your accomplishments have nothing to do with them.

Repeat after me:

Their jealousy is a sign of your success.

If they can’t be happy for you, they are not the kind of friends you want.

Emotional blackmail and sabotage are not the acts of friends.

Sometimes your kindest act of friendship is walking away and letting go.

If things turn toxic, leave. The longer you stay, the more poisonous it will get.

And if it makes them feel so horrible that you are doing well, then leaving their sight is doing them a favor.

If they ever come around and learn to appreciate the new life you have made for yourself, then you may welcome them back. But subjecting yourself to emotional abuse is not an act of compassion either toward them or toward you.

“I’m sorry you feel that way. Goodbye.”

There, wasn’t that simple?