He Speaks!

Hello, friends and well-wishers. It has been well over five months now since last post--almost half a year. And ever since I left this particular corner of the internet I've wanted to go back, so today is the day I suppose I figured, "why not?" I liked blogging then and I want to maintain it. A lot has happened to me in those five silent months, but I plan to move forward here once more. I've got some fun ideas and changes in the works, so keep those eyes open.


Firstly, Sunday Comics isn't going away, though it will be less frequent (I think I had mentioned that in an earlier post? Forgive me if I repeat myself), and I'll be opening things up to full-on book reviews as well, because hey, I love books of all types, not just ones with pictures. I'll also likely be posting a bit more artwork and writing snippets, partly in an effort to slowly wean myself off of deviantArt.

I only check my inbox there about once a week now, and while I've been able to keep up with some great artists through that site I can't deny that the site itself has been getting steadily less secure over the years, and with my computer running the best it has in almost a year I kind of want to avoid any further malware by whatever means I can. Shame there really isn't anything else truly like it on the web--yet, anyway. It's also too easy to feel pressured to create just for the sake of an audience with a site like that, and while that's not necessarily always a bad thing, I think it's become detrimental to my own creative process. I need to draw because I enjoy it, not because I feel like someone expects me to (unless I get a job that involves it, but that's entirely different!).
The Monthly Magnetic Poem, however, WILL be going away, as the year is over and I wasn't really keeping up with it.

In addition, I'd like to return to the Hundred Faces Blog again as well--that was a great stretching exercise and I won't feel truly comfortable with its name till I hit that triple digit. This place could probably do with yet another name overhaul as well. In relation to Hundred Faces, I might open up still a third blog, a sister project to the sister project, to house a series of suggestion-based drawings I've started called FoodPeople. They are, put simply, personifications of foods and beverages. Not just anthropomorphized pizza slices or something like that, but literally "if this food weren't a food, but a person, what would they look and behave like?" You'll see, maybe. I do worry about having too many blogs. Two seems extravagant already.

As I look at the metaphorical horizon I'm beginning to see a glint of sun, so let's hope it continues to slowly rise.

I'll leave you, in keeping with the "more art/writing" promise, with a snippet from a story I recently began that I'm having a lot of fun with. It kind of popped out of nowhere during a trip to the library. This is all that's been written so far but I've got the skeleton of a plot and know some basic big points to cover, and that's more than I can say for the better chunk of my stories.
The tentative title is "Thoroughly Wretched People."

We were supposed to be doing a research project, but it was hard to focus with Molly Harper's rotten breath puffing in my face. The problem with Molly Harper's breath was that it was never just bad, like she didn't brush her teeth or something, but always seemed instead like it was trying to be something good but got mangled on the way out of her flapping clumsy mouth. Today it was trying to smell like chocolate. Sour, clotted, awful chocolate that had been in a heating duct for a year. But if I hadn't been distracted by her Hershey's-dumpster breath, it would have been something else, because Molly Harper is a distracting person, and almost never in a good way.
Now that I've gotten on the subject of her mouth, for example, I can't look away from it, because I just see her teeth. Her teeth aren't bad or anything--not bright yellow or even orange like some kids I know--they were just huge and awkward, like they weren't really hers or something. They didn't seem to move at the same pace as the rest of her mouth, either. But I'd still rather be there than--great. My eyes are drifting again. To somewhere entirely more pleasant and probably the only reason, sad as it is to say, that some guys even tolerate Molly Harper: the girl's chest is absolutely ridiculous. Ask anyone, regardless of gender, about her three most defining characteristics and every single one of them will list off, without fail: breath like a yak, teeth like a horse, and breasts that will be giving her back problems by the age of twenty-five. I hate mentioning them for two reasons: one, because it's such a stereotypically guy thing to notice like that and makes me sound like I have all the depth of a spoon, and two, she already thinks I have some sort of thing for her, so if she catches my eyes there...
"Hey Meat! I'm up here!"
Wonderful.
"It's Beef." I muttered. "If you're gonna use my dumb nickname, at least use the right one." My name is Angus. So guess what everyone calls me? Yep. Beef. Since like fifth grade. Blame my Mom for giving me such a redneck name. (I walked into the house just yesterday and there was Mom in her Snuggie and curlers, her third Coors Light of the afternoon in her hand, watching NASCAR, and all I could say was, "you're a hick." She didn't miss a beat in snapping back, "yeah, and you're the son of a hick.")
"Whatever. You paying attention, or just drooling over me?"
"Sorry. I was thinking about something."
"I bet."
It's not like she had really been contributing to the project either. Before I had tuned out she was blathering to me about some guy named Jim she knew who had apparently quit school to be a mime or something. She had this fixation with meeting people in strange careers.

That's all I've got for today...but I think I'll definitely be back.
Holden Out.