As I push on with Ace Tripwire, I’ll continue moving my efforts off to AceTripwire.com, and I’ll be closing down Moon-Town.com in about a month.
Not long ago, I took the Moon Town archives offline, and many people registered their frustration with that decision. So, for you, the loyal, the hardworking, the frustrated, I present the original Moon Town online over at AceTripwire…live, uncut, and free! More info here.
Overheard at Barnes & Noble today. Two teenage boys, probably 15 years old:
BOY 1:
When I can get a car, I wanna get a Porsche.
BOY 2:
Yeah, I wanna Porsche, too.
BOY 1:
Cuz they’re reasonably priced, you know…
BOY 2:
Yeah, like only $90,000 or something.
BOY 1:
Yeah…
Aaaaand… Scene.
Reminded me of the old days when I was 15 and hoped to one day own a Lamborghini Countach, as if only just wanting the thing made it inevitable I’d have it. You know, along with a zillion dollars and a lingerie supermodel. Turns out they don’t just go around giving away that stuff, though at 15 – who knew?
At long last, I have completed Sequitur. I have a good, solid 2nd draft of the thing, and it came in at just under 8000 words (around 30 pages). It’s an interesting story dealing with a troubled man, his obsession with Gettysburg, and a woman he met at a Civil War battlefield.
Here’s an excerpt from the final installment:
The sky darkened and the street lights flickered on in fluorescent tones, flattening out all other colors and washing the world monochrome. Paul thought the tree-lined street could have been a photograph from before there was color. If he really strained, he could imagine he was looking into a living black and white picture, seeing a portion of Pennsylvania the way it was before TV and smart phones and the internet. If you took away the cars and imagined the lights in the townhouse windows were candlelight, you could almost believe you were seeing back in time to a moment from the Civil War.
With that thought in mind, Paul saw a figure moving down the sidewalk in front of the row of modest town homes. It was a tall man, and he was dressed in the unmistakable garb of a Confederate Officer. The figure stopped in front of Sarah’s house, and lingered there.
The man looked odd, uncomfortable, out of place. Out of time. And looking at him made Paul extremely uneasy.
I’m anxious for you to read it. I think this will be a lot of people’s favorite in the series.
Til next time!
Thirty-One for October: 12 of 33 chapters written. Wordcount: 27,780.
So, I married a lawyer, once upon a time. It wasn’t because I, in the words of her father, “wanted to be supported in the manner in which I’d become accustomed”. It was because she was 6 feet tall, thin, beautiful, smart, funny, talented, and because she could support me in the manner in which I’d become accustomed, if it came to that.
Joke was on me. After a few years of lawyering, my lawyer wife Barbara became an artist. She is now a better artist than I am. She has a better color sense. She is a better photographer. She is more successful at selling her art than I have ever been. Check out her Etsy shop for more.
One of the neat things about being married to another artist is that occasionally we get to go on Art Project Outings with each other. The other day, Barbara and I went on a photo expedition to the local Sunflower patch. We got to play Children of the Corn, dragging our camera, a tripod, an easel and an antique frame into the middle of the field. We got some neat pics. We’ll be doing something with them, soon, through her Etsy site – stay tuned.
The pic above, I snapped in mid-stride. We were desperately trying to get set up for a shot, and the sun kept coming in and out of the clouds, making the difference between great shots and average, when I saw this bee on a sunflower ahead of me. Screw setting up for the actual shot, I thought to myself. So, balancing the tripod and easel in one hand, I got Barbara to hand the camera up to me and I snapped that shot. That’s a rare Steve Ogden original photo, mind you. Most of my shots don’t come out. But I really like this one.
That night, I had a fire down at the edge of the property. Dragged a nice chair and a little table and a drink down there with me, took my laptop and worked on Sequitur, a story for the Thirty-One for October collection. A nice day, all in all.
One of the guys at work pointed me at Creaturebox yesterday, and I spent a pleasant, inspired and pretty jealous half hour browsing through their site. Creaturebox is the home of two fantastic artists, Dave Guertin and Greg Baldwin. They are really great character artists, and their designs are just pure fun to look at. They are the guys behind Ratchet and Clank, which I’ve always enjoyed.
Go check ‘em out when you have a small chunk of time to spend:
I also have a little comics section which is an embarrassment of riches of Creaturebox style and artistic flair. My favorite, I guess predictably, is Morton the Bad Luck Bot. How much do I love that!?
This afternoon I finished Smells of October, a fun little poem about the… well, you get it. Here’s your snippet:
Orange
Lying against green
Twice a skull
Firm, hollow
To be cut and carved
Lit from within
To be warmed
And to smell of October
Thirty-One for October: 3 of 33 chapters written. Wordcount: 4037.
Despite my insane schedule, I was able to pull off a pretty solid first draft for the second story for my Thirty-One for October project. I’ve decided to call it “Backward Masking” (not “Backward People” as I previously reported).
It’s another story based on something I experienced as a little kid. I think the first 6 or 7 stories in this book are going to be based on those experiences, because I saw some strange stuff as a little boy in Pennsylvania and Virginia, and I have never completely come to understand them.
Here is a short sample:
I was about five years old when it first occurred to me that the little boy looking back at me from the mirror in the upstairs bathroom in our Pennsylvania house was a stranger. I distrusted him immediately. I didn’t know who he was or where he’d come from, but I knew he wasn’t me.
The story is around 1700 words, and has some really nice layers to it.
Thirty-One for October: 2 of 33 chapters written. Wordcount: 3678.
New running goal: 46 miles by 46 years
(From 8/15 – 8/31 (my 46th birthday))
Today: 3mi (4.8km)
Total: 48.1mi (76.9km)
Well, that’s it, and then some. 48 miles for my 46th birthday. Almost 50 miles in a half a month. Hmm… maybe my next goal? 
If you have a webcomic and are trying to get more of the right kinds of readers (you know, people who actually come to your comic to read it, instead of the kinds of readers who are trolling the internet hoping for images of teh nakeds) or if you are a comics fan looking for the best webcomics (with or without images of teh nakeds) then you owe it to yourself to visit InkOutbreak. Join up, and if you have a comic, submit it. Join hundreds, if not thousands. Heck, even Moon Town is there!
Brian King and his Merry Band of Comics Addicted Wizards have created a portal that serves up your favorite comics with all the mind-reading magic of Pandora, and it can serve your comic up to a ton of fans, too.
…
Are you still here?
Author Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Watchmen, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and my personal favorite, The Ballad of Halo Jones) was recently interviewed by Wired as part of their ComicCon 2011 coverage. The interview is of the incredibly in-depth variety for which I so love Wired, and it is of course laced with the profanity and genius for which I so love Alan Moore. You can read the article here.
The subject of most of the article is Moore’s forthcoming new episodes of League, one set in 1969 (above) and one set in 2009. Since the last time we saw the League in all their Victorian finery, I would love to see what adventures await them in the next century, but of course Moore gives us a glimpse into what he’s writing in the graphic novel he’s building toward, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century.
By the time you get to 2009, I think there will be little disguising of the fact that [artist Kevin O'Neill] and I are perhaps not that fond of the current era and its culture. We’re informed about it, so yes there are tons of references as you might expect. But in looking over the three books, readers are going to see a contraction of culture into a much more mean, starved and possibly diminished state than when we started Century in a great blaze of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. I think that will be one of the most striking things about Century, once you can read it straight through.
One of the best things about Moore is that he has a point of view, and a sense of humor, and both come through his writing (though not always at the same time, which may be the worst thing about his writing).
Still, I’m a fan, and I will eagerly devour Century as it comes out.
