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I saw a garter snake today on someone's lawn, while I was taking my morning walk around the neighborhood. It's only the second live snake I've seen while I've been in Illinois, and the first time I had a chance to get an up-close look (the other was just slithering across the sidewalk and vanished quickly into the woods). So I followed it for a while, watching it do that amazing cool ripply movement that only snakes can do, until it got tired of being stared at from a distance of about a foot and a half, and stopped moving to wait for me to go away. Which I did, obligingly. I kinda wanted to move it somewhere less urban and safer, but I guess it's happy enough where it is. I hope nobody kills it.
I see so many dead snakes around town, mostly stomped flat on sidewalks. That's incredibly sad to me. I grew up in a state with NO SNAKES and I still know that there are only four kinds of poisonous snakes in the US (copperhead, cottonmouth, coral snake, rattlesnake) and what they look like. It's baffling that people can grow up in a snake-heavy state and not know how to tell the difference between pit vipers and harmless little garter snakes. A squirrel is much more dangerous to a human being than a garter snake.
I'm glad Alaska doesn't have poisonous snakes, but I do kinda wish we had a few snakes. I like them. "Garter snakes" goes on my short list of Illinoisan critters that Alaska, in a perfect universe, would have ("fireflies" and "cardinals" being some of the others.)
......
Today's update status on my workbooks and various projects:
The new issue of RC is all done except the cover. Unfortunately that's turning out to be very time-consuming, because I want it to be another color wraparound cover, like #9, and it's a difficult scene. I may eventually give up on it and do something easier.
I may extent my once-a-week schedule for Kismet out to the end of July. This will give me time to get some pages done in advance, for when I start full-time work in July. I'm still not sure how drastically that's going to impact my comic-making status. I'm frustrated with myself for not being done with the RC story arc by now, because this means I'm going to have to work on both series once I start full-time work, and that is going to be difficult.
When the current RC story arc ends, it's going on hiatus for at least a year. Kismet is going to become my priority until I finish Hunter's Moon, at which time I'm going to start a new project (details to be announced later). I'm not going to start up with RC again until I have the next story arc completely scripted out.
This weekend's project (which I seem to be slowly failing) is to script the rest of Hunter's Moon. I'm starting to think I won't be able to do it, at least not without letting my other projects fall by the wayside, but I at least want to get a good long batch of pages scripted ahead of time. Usually, I script HM in terms of scenes: I have a general idea where it's all going, but in the short term, I work scene-to-scene. However, lately I've been doing so much revision and off-the-cuff scripting that it's getting as time-consuming to write a page as it is to draw it. I need a better framework for it, or I'm never going to be able to get all these pages done in a timely fashion.
Making things more difficult, I've started not one but two new Kismet side stories, the "Good Intentions" piece that has 5 pages up on the site, and another one called "Ma'at" which I will post when I get a couple more pages done on it. The trouble is, when I'm stuck on one project (e.g. having trouble scripting HM or beating my head against a wall on the RC cover), rather than plugging away at it, I want to go off and make something new. Aargh.
I've also become more interested in writing prose lately. Originally, my goal was to finish a novel by the end of this year. I've realized that, what with working full time and being so behind on Raven's Children, this is not even THEORETICALLY possible. However, my prose side went into creative overdrive while I was in Alaska, and I came back with not one or two but FIVE ideas for young-adult novels, which I've been randomly scribbling on. All but one of them are blatantly influenced by Diana Wynne Jones, which is sort of bothersome. I haven't been showing my influences this obviously since I was in grade school.
Oh yeah ... and then there's packing. *Layla stares at the pile of boxes on living-room floor. Boxes stare back*
I see so many dead snakes around town, mostly stomped flat on sidewalks. That's incredibly sad to me. I grew up in a state with NO SNAKES and I still know that there are only four kinds of poisonous snakes in the US (copperhead, cottonmouth, coral snake, rattlesnake) and what they look like. It's baffling that people can grow up in a snake-heavy state and not know how to tell the difference between pit vipers and harmless little garter snakes. A squirrel is much more dangerous to a human being than a garter snake.
I'm glad Alaska doesn't have poisonous snakes, but I do kinda wish we had a few snakes. I like them. "Garter snakes" goes on my short list of Illinoisan critters that Alaska, in a perfect universe, would have ("fireflies" and "cardinals" being some of the others.)
......
Today's update status on my workbooks and various projects:
The new issue of RC is all done except the cover. Unfortunately that's turning out to be very time-consuming, because I want it to be another color wraparound cover, like #9, and it's a difficult scene. I may eventually give up on it and do something easier.
I may extent my once-a-week schedule for Kismet out to the end of July. This will give me time to get some pages done in advance, for when I start full-time work in July. I'm still not sure how drastically that's going to impact my comic-making status. I'm frustrated with myself for not being done with the RC story arc by now, because this means I'm going to have to work on both series once I start full-time work, and that is going to be difficult.
When the current RC story arc ends, it's going on hiatus for at least a year. Kismet is going to become my priority until I finish Hunter's Moon, at which time I'm going to start a new project (details to be announced later). I'm not going to start up with RC again until I have the next story arc completely scripted out.
This weekend's project (which I seem to be slowly failing) is to script the rest of Hunter's Moon. I'm starting to think I won't be able to do it, at least not without letting my other projects fall by the wayside, but I at least want to get a good long batch of pages scripted ahead of time. Usually, I script HM in terms of scenes: I have a general idea where it's all going, but in the short term, I work scene-to-scene. However, lately I've been doing so much revision and off-the-cuff scripting that it's getting as time-consuming to write a page as it is to draw it. I need a better framework for it, or I'm never going to be able to get all these pages done in a timely fashion.
Making things more difficult, I've started not one but two new Kismet side stories, the "Good Intentions" piece that has 5 pages up on the site, and another one called "Ma'at" which I will post when I get a couple more pages done on it. The trouble is, when I'm stuck on one project (e.g. having trouble scripting HM or beating my head against a wall on the RC cover), rather than plugging away at it, I want to go off and make something new. Aargh.
I've also become more interested in writing prose lately. Originally, my goal was to finish a novel by the end of this year. I've realized that, what with working full time and being so behind on Raven's Children, this is not even THEORETICALLY possible. However, my prose side went into creative overdrive while I was in Alaska, and I came back with not one or two but FIVE ideas for young-adult novels, which I've been randomly scribbling on. All but one of them are blatantly influenced by Diana Wynne Jones, which is sort of bothersome. I haven't been showing my influences this obviously since I was in grade school.
Oh yeah ... and then there's packing. *Layla stares at the pile of boxes on living-room floor. Boxes stare back*