Strangely Good
on July 15th, 2009I’m not just talking about the unseasonably cool weather which has set the harvests back more than a month. I am dying for heirloom tomatoes, and all we have at this point are Romas, which I will never grow again. Everyone recommended them as the best tomato for making sauce because of the low seed count and thick pulp, but they just don’t have the summery smell and strong flavor of my beloved heirlooms. And they are nothing on a BLT. Then again, if you are used to store bought tomatoes, you will probably find them more than adequate.
The root veggies are divine. You know those baby cut carrots you get in the store? Fakes. Those are old, woody carrots cut down to baby size. We pick ours at no more than about two inches long.
I love the smell of the root veggies when they just come out of the ground. I am glad no one is around to see me huffing the turnips.
Since I am not used to gardening in cool weather, I am struggling a bit. In the long run, we will have a more interesting harvest, since this is the first year I have gotten good results from some plants. Others have been eaten to nubs by savage, voracious bunnies. I wonder if our soy beans will recover.
Otherwise, all is uncommonly well and happy here, with a run of good luck on many things personal and professional.
If the credit card monsters were not jacking interest rates into the stratosphere, I wouldn’t have any concerns. Despite not having a single late payment in more years than I can remember, I woke up one day to find my 6.9% interest rate jacked up to nearly 30%. Shouldn’t this be illegal? It’s now a lot harder to pay off bills, because monthly payments get eaten by interest.
Our good friend Ken Talton has more pressing concerns: he had his home broken into and viciously vandalized. You can read about it on his blog. His books were dragged out to a grill (he doesn’t own one, where did that come from?) and burned. Ken says these attacks have happened around the neighborhood.
Ken had been living with his family temporarily while his mother endured cancer surgery, so this happened while he was of of town. The good news is her most recent biopsy came back negative. However, Ken has had a lot more to deal with than any person should have to handle. Let’s all send him our good wishes.
I am glad to not be going to San Diego, especially since I dropped a big log on my foot this weekend while working in the yard. Ow. I am lucky not to have broken something. My toes are vile, and I gimp a bit. My fault for not wearing my steel-toed boots.
My dear Mum had brutal oral surgery this week. Years ago, she fell down a flight of stairs and landed flat on her face. Many ensuing surgeries and teeth replacement shenanigans resulted. I expected to be waiting on her hand and foot after the surgery, but she’s a tank. She walked out of that whole thing this week barely swollen.
I’m going to try to ratchet up my work output. I am inspired and energetic. It took me quite a long time to get comfortable with the content of Gone to Amerikay before I could draw it without picking up 20 pages of reference every time I sat down, but now it is smooth. I like the inking style, too. You’ll see.
I did an interview for a law journal about my delightful, adorable lawyer Mike Lovitz, who specializes in art and entertainment law for comics creators. No link yet.
Huge traffic continues to come here to the Very Bad Publisher posts. Several freelancers have contacted me to let me know they have rethought contracts they were about to sign:
I just got done reading your “bad publisher” series of posts, and that was the final nail in the coffin for a contract I almost signed–the typical “work now and get a cut later” deal.
I’ve been putting off signing that contract for months now, even though I knew I’d enjoy the work. But now it’s obvious to me that I’d be drilling holes in my boat while trying to enjoy the sailing at the same time.
Thank you for posting that. My humble comic-makin’ career and I sure as hell appreciate it.
–Adam Black
Good on ya.
I have many tales of industry odd, most I don’t think I will ever relate because I don’t like being tainted with the former association of people with whom I would not willingly share air. Some cultish 1980′s science fiction/comics social circles ought to be studied under a microscope, but you shouldn’t touch them.
That said, I have nothing to compare to Florence King’s “Do-Right, The Practice” featured in the collection Lump It or Leave It. Florence King is a brilliant essayist and satirist. My fervent hope is that she reads this blog, and never reads this blog. If she reads it, I will probably get an editing I could use. If she reads it, I may never recover from the scathing analysis. Can’t/Must.
In the 1960′s, Miss King encountered a slimy female agent intent on swindling an elderly courtesan who hoped to publish her life story. The courtesan had been the favored lady of Balkan princes, but she suffered from what appears to be dyslexia; this made her manuscript near-indecipherable. Miss King was hired to edit and ghost write the epic biography.
For one of publishing’s more bizarre adventures, add a strangely polite little girl in pedal pushers, a nude exercise session (at least my pervy editors spared me that), and the death of Marat.
Out of print, but available dead cheap:
All things Florence King get my highest recommendation. There is no writer more skilled at portraying the essence of the schizophrenia of the modern, unreconstructed Southerner. This is not an insult. It’s one of the finer qualities of being Southern: the ability to hold two diametrically opposed views at once. The Southern mind is sweet cole slaw on top of sour vinegar-based pulled pork. Some essays are available online here.
And speaking of slimy tales, please do pop over to Mark Evanier’s blog. He said some very nice things about my writing here, for which I am appreciative. He also wrote an important series of posts about the scourge of Unfinanced Entrepreneurs, which should be read by everyone in this business.
I am embarrassed to admit I spent years being friends with – and dealing with – one of those Unfinanced Entrepreneurs, whose projects fell through more often than not. When they did go through, he was the only person who made money on them, and that money was almost always chump change, with those of us who had been suckered into dealing with the guy being the biggest chumps of all. Please read the entire series of posts.
These UE’s are more difficult to spot when they are friends, because no one wants to attribute bad motives to people with whom you share coffee, invite to birthday parties, or trade movies.
None of these people think they are doing anything wrong. They think everyone is on the make, and that success is made of proximity, not accomplishment. So, they spend all of their time trying to get close to money people and talent people.
Their intent is not the issue. So what if this goober isn’t Teh Evil? So what if he didn’t mean to rip you off? The reality is, there’s no financing, no gallery exhibit, no book deal, no back-end money for YOU. You have the absolute right to say NO to anyone who cannot deliver results. Their intent DOESN’T MATTER. The only thing that matters is you have the right do with your work what is in the best interest of your work. You have no obligation to prop up every small business, publishing company, gallery exhibit, aspiring best seller, or J.K. Rowling remora who comes your way.
Just say no.
Freelancer doesn’t mean free.
James Owen has the tale of a very bad freelancer. I know who he’s talking about, and I think I dodged a bullet. It’s one of those behind the scenes stories I won’t tell, but I almost worked with somebody on something which would have been a big best-selling, cluster you-know-what. While I wailed and gnashed teeth at not getting that gig after having been told I had it (and cleared my schedule for it, and thanks to the blow to my wallet, grrr,) instead I got what is a better gig, and am not working on the deadline from hell.
Good news: our pal Rus Wornom has a new newspaper job. Congratulations!
Strange days: looking at these A Distant Soil pages as they go up on the website, comparing them to pages drawn ten years later, dropped in to fill out scenes. Scott McCloud once told me he thought my art on the work was remarkably consistent, but I don’t see it. Maybe I am too sensitive.
OK, back to work.
c
