Post Spam 1: TCAF 2007

This last weekend was the Toronto Comic Arts Festival in Toronto and I was vibrating with excitement. I made a list of the artists I wanted to meet and got to them all except Paul Pope:

Becky Cloonan: Uber-brilliant artist of Demo, Jersey Rising and American Virgin was cool but a bit hard to connect with. Maybe I scared her when I told her she makes my world go round?

jimrugg: So sweet and friendly. Talent and humour. I loved his comic Street Angel and hope he goes back to it. He is currently inking Cloonan on American Virgin.

Tom Scioli: insane Kirby-addicted artist of Godland who said he is putting everything he is and has into his art now. He is young, geeky, wildly imaginative.

Carla Speed McNeil: one of my heroes. Her Finder is one of the great works of SF and anthropology around. She and redknot ended up talking evolution theory for an hour on Saturday night.

Adrian Alphona: Shy and cute. Penciller of the first 20 issues of Runaways. He bailed before Joss Whedon started writing? What's with that? He basically hid behind the girls at his table the whole time.

Also awesome to meet were Zach Worton from whom I bought lots of mini-comics, Claudia Davilla, whose Spoiled is all pretty-like, Steve MacIsaac who does autobiographical queer musclebear comics and Scott Chantler, whose Northwest Passage I will have to buy.

I bought lots of comics, but really blew my wad on two pages from American Virgin #15. Those on my non-anonymous list will see a pic.

Post Spam 2: Devil in My Patch!

Eeeeeeevilllllllllll is resident in our garden!

Look at this tomato we grew! We are possessed by SATAN!



It was very tasty served with olive oil, black pepper and goat's blood.

Post Spam #3: India Prep

We're leaving for India in a month. We busted our humps getting the visa documents together (photos, forms, return mail envelopes) on the weekend. The ridiculous thing is that the consulate is a bike ride away but you're not allowed to drop off the forms in person. You have to use an $8.39 ExpressPost envelope.

Furthermore, you have to put a return $8.39 ExpressPost envelope inside. Both are elaborately filled in with "to" and "from" fields. Hey! We fucked one up and put the inside envelope on the outside! I sent my whole visa package to myself for $8.39!! Yaaaayyyyy!!

Meanwhile, we still don't know where we're going. The list of unmissable places is getting longer and we're currently considering buying a 15 day airpass for the country which would change our itinerary in many ways.

Post Spam #4: DOB Updates

Chapter 15 will mark the end of Book 1 of Days of Becoming. I desperately wanted to post that before I left for India but I strongly (STRONGLY!) doubt that will happen.

Chapter 14 is with the beta readers and, I hope, will be posted next week unless they really send me back to the drawing board.

I doubt I can write much in the next few weeks. There's a lot of planning to do for our trip, work is busy and I took on a big freelance job which will pay for the trip but make my life hell until we go.

Chapter 15 is actually begun because I moved one of my scenes from 14 forward. I am taking my PDA and portable keyboard to India so I think I will do some writing there while waiting in airport lounges.

Following thes posting of 15, I want to take stock of what's been written and figure out some of my writerly goals for Book 2. I'm trying to learn to write through this process and so I want to see what bad habits I am getting into and where I need to push myself harder.

Input will be welcome in this process. In fact, those who are waiting for me to finish the novel before they read it might do me a favour and read Book 1 on its completion so as to be part of the feedback mechanism. Or not. Up to you.

Post Spam #5: Formmail

I've had a fun day at work learning formmail. To be specific, I downloaded an awesome php script called FormMail by Tectite software.

I'm so impressed with these people! The download wizard actually pre-configured the php script before downloading. Furthermore, the code is brilliantly clear and is peppered with specific html help links for each section.

What's really cool is that I needed to learn this stuff for a freelance job I'm doing now and then my boss happened to come up to me and ask me to learn it for work. Thank you, serendipity.