Essays |

Protected: PATREON EXCLUSIVE: The Point of Origin of a Certain Aesthetic

Colleen Doran — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:38:00 +0000

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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Protected: Patreon Exclusive” Millais sells out, or maybe he just did what he wanted to do.

Colleen Doran — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:19:31 +0000

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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Memories of Stan Lee

Colleen Doran — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 19:39:53 +0000

At Stan Lee’s official website, memories of Stan. The nice people at POW Entertainment kindly invited me to add my thoughts.

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Why I don’t blog anymore

Colleen Doran — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 22:04:28 +0000

EDIT: I go into details about time investment in the comments below. Dear Colleen, I bookmarked many posts on your site for information about self publishing and contracts, but when I came back to read the posts later everything was gone. Now I get page after page of broken links and comments without posts. Did you know that most of your website is completely broken? Kelly Dear Kelly, I stopped blogging in public regularly almost 8 years ago, (UPDATE: I now blog on my Patreon behind a paywall, so the 15 million hits this blog once got will now pay me directly instead of an advertising service that pays me almost nothing). While I think it served a purpose at the time, now it is holding me back as an artist. Between social media and blogging, I am investing hours every week into activism that is costing me on a personal and professional level, and I am no longer willing to pay the price. When I started blogging, there weren’t very many websites that covered the same things I was writing about. Now there are, and you have many other resources to choose from. As for where the posts went, I loaded a blog security update that broke the site. The home page looked fine, and I didn’t look any further. So, when the site backups updated, they updated to a broken version of the site. This included both the blog and the comic inventory portions of the site. Many of my old posts were locked into a system that required each post be reformatted and imported one at a time. I don’t have the resources to do that. You will find that some of the material has been restored, but I will not make further efforts and am letting the rest go. It’s for the best. I’ve written of how expensive it is to work on my A DISTANT SOIL comic, and how I can’t carve out the time for it among all my other assignments. But after giving everything a really hard look, I come to the conclusion that if I’d invested just a fraction of the hours I’ve put into blogging over the years, I’d be completely finished with A DISTANT SOIL by now, and it wouldn’t have cost me a penny out of pocket to do that. There are 24 hours in the day, and if only 1 hour per day goes into blogging (and I used to blog daily,) then that is an hour I’m not drawing and writing stories. I’ve had a blog and/or message board for 15 years. Even half of that investment would have finished A DISTANT SOIL by now. A brutally realistic estimate shows me that my blogging and social media use is the time investment equivalent of three 200 page graphic novels. I’d rather make the graphic novels. Since 2010, my online presence has been great for sales and visibility, but that is something that must be carefully balanced with the art. For several years, when I was unwell and spending a lot of time in bed propped up on my pillows with a laptop, blogging was the easy alternative to drawing. But making comics is far more labor intensive than blogging. As I am getting more and more publishing work, and believe my best work is yet to come, I can’t justify blogging anymore. It is time-consuming, and it is often stressful as well as ephemeral. I don’t think I realized just how anxious and stressed online activity made me until recently. I am making the choice to self care, and spend less time engaging with things that don’t promote my well-being and the well-being of my art. Of course, I am posting on my blog to announce this, and I do intend to update periodically. I’m more than happy to post art on my Twitter and Facebook accounts. But I will no longer engage in activism of any kind, and will no longer blog about professional issues in publishing and fandom (my own business being the notable exception, of course). I will continue to maintain and update the A Distant Soil website, but my priority is finishing the final graphic novel which I fund at my Patreon. Thank you for your kind understanding, and I am truly flattered that you considered my postings helpful in the past. I am moving on, and I hope that your future will be filled with the great art and writing you will do. Family. Friends. Art. Nothing Else. My mantra.

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In Loving Memory of Mary Gray

Colleen Doran — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 02:43:24 +0000

Mary Gray was an early editor/proofreader of A Distant Soil, and a major reason I didn’t give up on the project early when circumstances made it seem as if going on would not be worthwhile. She worked very briefly as an assistant editor at The Donning Company publishers, where, when the executive editor was let go, Donning passed her over and hired someone else to take the job I was sure she deserved. Mary did not like the pressure of the regular gig, and decided to leave the company. I asked Donning to keep her on a freelance basis as she asked, but Donning refused. She did most of the editing/proofreading on the first A Distant Soil story arc, and when I moved into self publishing in 1991, I hired her. I don’t believe she did any other work in publishing. When last we spoke, I recall she was working as a temp. As A Distant Soil began coming out more and more sporadically, I began to lose touch with her, and deeply regret gradually losing contact. You always think there’ll be another day to dig up that phone number. Mary was far more talented than people gave her credit for, because she was shy and didn’t have the ability to promote herself, which is essential in publishing. She just could not push, but that was one of the things that made her so wonderful to be around. She was calm and gentle. I was gun shy about editors for a long time, and it was Mary who went over my work with her feather-light touch, made careful notes on a separate sheet of paper, and presented her suggestions. Prior to her, editing usually meant turning in a manuscript, never seeing it again, and getting something back completely rewritten that you barely recognized. And getting yelled at a lot, and told you were stupid, and your work was shit. I literally did not know, until Mary, that there was another way to edit. Mary was, despite her gentle nature, also quite brave. She stood up for people when someone did them wrong. Quietly, as always. But she practiced do-right. After self publishing, I kept her on for most of my time at Image Comics. For the last couple of issues, I moved on, and decided to go with someone else who promised to be a one-stop design, proofing-shop, and archivist. I ended up getting none of those, which was a lesson to me about moving from the true path I’m still flagellating myself over. Mary was the real deal. Earthy, grounded, quiet, humble, capable. And she was easy to overshadow. She was no-drama, no-stress. She was reliable, true, decent, rock-solid. So unassuming, she was eclipsed by many who were far less capable. With A Distant Soil back in the pipeline after six year’s hiatus, I was just thinking: I should have Mary proof it again. Where’s that phone number? I even went rooting around on the net for her. I truly believe I would have given up on A Distant Soil many years ago had I not had a kind word from Mary at the right time. Mary was also kind to me in my early days in fandom. She was one of the first people I met at a science fiction convention when I was just fifteen-years-old, and later in the local science fiction club. She encouraged me in every way, was always helpful, and always sincere. I am not writing empty flattery to the dead. I am writing this because every word of praise to the inherent goodness of this woman is absolutely true. She had some very hard times. Life was not nearly as good to her as she deserved. She had a brilliant mind, and never got to use it to its potential. She was the wallflower; few would ever know how beautifully she could dance. After a sudden collapse about 24 hours ago, she was pronounced brain dead, and her devoted husband Terry faced the hard choice to remove her from life support. She passed away, quietly, this afternoon. Mary Gray was the soul of kindness. I will never forget her.

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10 things to do with those pesky green tomatoes

Colleen Doran — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:58:33 +0000

It’s the end of the growing season, and perverse wench that she is, Mother Nature sent a cold blast last week which gave the garden a big bite of frost. And this week it’s a beautiful 70 degrees. I picked as many green tomatoes before the frost as I could. If tomatoes are hit by air colder than 40 degrees, they will have no flavor, and even our row covers did not save them this time. (By the way, never store your fresh tomatoes in the fridge.) This sad situation resulted in a post so popular, even the Executive Office of the President popped in for advice. No, really. Here’s just a few suggestions for what to do with your green tomatoes. Store them, ripen them, cook them! 1) Pull up entire plant from root and bring it indoors. Do this before it gets below 60 degrees. Hang in partial light and the fruit will continue to ripen on the vine, which will give you better taste. 2) Ripen the picked fruits indoors. Not my favorite solution, because tomatoes don’t taste as good when ripened off the vine. If they are close to ripeness, just stick them in a sunny window. Some people swear against this method, but the next method works for almost everybody. If not an option, Carefully clean the fruits, wrap in newspaper and store in a cool dry place. Check every week for rot. Place apple in with the fruit. Apples produce ehtylene gas, which forces the tomatoes to ripen. Also a good tip if you are trying to chit potatoes. 3) If you have a favorite tomato sauce recipe and only a few red fruits, no worries. Throw those green tomatoes in that sauce. Add a 6 ounce can of tomato paste and a couple of tablespoons of sugar to cut the acid. I’ve used 10% red fruit to 90 % green fruit in sauce recipes and have had no loss of flavor. BTW, I never remove the skins or seeds. Run the final sauce through a blender to smooth it. I often make my sauce with at least one cup Merlot. 4) Fried green tomatoes: A Southern speciality, people act like it’s some kind of big secret to make. Fie. Just slice tomatoes, dip in scrambled raw egg. Then dip in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. I often add spices like rosemary as well. Some folks like cayenne pepper. Fry in olive oil for best health and flavor, until brown and soft. Yum! Other folks use corn meal instead of flour, but their mothers didn’t raise them right. 5) Green tomato saute: Chop tomatoes, saute in olive oil with chopped onion and a few tablespoons finely chopped garlic. Save yourself some grief and buy chopped garlic in a jar. Cook in pan until soft. Serve as a side dish. 6) Green tomato bread: The recipe I like is here. Surprisingly good, major winner as a tea bread. Easy to make and VERY tasty. Sounds absolutely ghastly, but you will be surprised. There is no tomato flavor. The fruit adds moisture to this recipe. Serve hot with butter, or cold alone. Sprinkle with white icing, or serve with cream cheese. 7) Easy green tomato pickles: Simplest recipe ever! If you like dill pickles, then you will have jars with juice left over. Don’t throw that dill juice away! Take your clean green tomatoes and put them in the dill juice. Put the covered jar in the fridge for two weeks. Eat! Very clean green flavor! You may plop those tomatoes in the jar whole, or cut them up. This is the best use of those little green cherry tomatoes. Keep stored in fridge. Will last a few weeks. 8) Green eggs and ham: Take green tomato saute and roll into scrambled egg with ham chunks. Very nice breakfast dish. 9) Green tomato pie: YUM! Great recipes here! 10) Green tomato saute a la Mexican: Use green tomato saute to cover a burrito like salsa. Add a little hot sauce. Top with sour cream. Or stir sour cream into saute (after pulling out of pan with slotted spoon to remove as much olive oil as possible.) Add crumbled bacon, lettuce and whatever else you like and stuff in pita pocket. Also tastes good with a dash of cilantro. Basically, the green tomato is a good substitute in any Mexican recipe for tomatillo. Check out SUBVERSIVE URBAN VEGETABLE GARDENING for tips on growing veggies where city planners don’t want you to. I garden, and I draw comic books for publishers like Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Image Comics, Disney, Lucasfilm, Harper Collins, and more. Check out my work HERE and my portfolio website HERE. Thanks!

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