Smudge Marks & Engel Werks

Been fighting some pretty bad depression this last couple of months. A lot of it revolves around stress over money, or lack there of. But no small part is also due to my allergies and this past winter flu season. The flu shot this year did not help. To fight it, I've been nose deep in busy-work.

Currently I'm stalled with SM-EW due to a delay in Sunnyvale sending us our business license. Without that, we can't get the DBA. And without both of them we can't set up the bank account. And everything else revolves around getting the bank account. GRRRR! Maybe complaining about it here will mean it'll show up in the mail today.

I've also been busy coloring an older, unpublished project for a new outlet. It'll be a 4 issue, roughly 12 pages, bi-monthly comic called "To Kill a Dragon" (working title, org. "Hand of the Dragon"). Right now, I'm coloring page 13 of the first issue. Will post some sample pages once I get the re-lettering in. While I still need to rewrite the ending (was unhappy with the first version), all the other art and writing is done. It just needs a little more polishing and some color. Only problem with this is that it's really beating on my hand. After about an hour, I am really feeling it. This is all being done digitally. I guess me and pure digital art just don't mix. But I will see this through, one page at a time. I have no idea how good, bad, or indifferent this will do. But if I don't try something new I can't move forward. After all, all the old ways and channels are no-longer working. Adapted or die time.

I'm also deep in getting the illos done for the novella I'll be PODing soon. Hopefully, I'll have a couple I can post online soon for all to see. I'm nervous and excited about it all at the same time. Nervous mostly because it's had very few beta readers, and as par typical, they were good with basic edits, but not much useful criticism. I miss Gerald. He'd rip my stories to shreds, making the paper bleed red. I have yet to find a beta reader who would do the same. So, I'm sending this off into the wilds hoping I've prepared it for the best that any one person can, praying that others like it as well. After all, I'm pretty fond of Warrior and Keeper at this point.

So where does this leave Ebin & May? Kind of up in the air actually. I need to focus on stuff that has the possibility of making some income. At this point Ebin & May has no chance of ever doing that. I do want to finish it, but if I have to make the choice of working on a project that can bring some much needed income in vs. one that has none, guess which gets pushed tot he bottom of the "to do" pile. There's a lot more here than I can really go into nor talk about. For now, Ebin & May has to be squeezed in around the edges and that's the best it's going to get unless something radically changes.

One of the other 'projects' I've been trying to work on is getting my bicycle repaired. It seriously needs some TLC, but the money has been lacking and this whole house (including myself) suffers from "we'll get to it later" syndrome. Today, I finally got off my butt and went down to the hardware store and bought a single inner-tube and a bike pump. It was all I could afford atm. But it will allow me to check that I have the wheel size correct. Maybe next month I'll have enough to buy a second tube. After that, new road tires (the ones currently on the bike are permanently pancaked on one side), a new chain, headlights (they ticket you mightily if you don't have them around here come dusk), and a cheep bike rack so that I can use it instead of the van to get groceries and stuff. Should get the seat and shifter looked at, but those are much more low priority things compared to the wheels and chain.

Anyway, that's all I can really go into at this time. Lots of things happening behind the scene that I can't talk about, unfortunately. But I am trying to forge ahead.