Lions and tigers and wookies, oh my!

So, here arrives March like a lion (a wintery one here in the Northeast), and with it another monthly entry.

Late, to be sure, but here.

A lot has happened in the intervening six-ish weeks since I last talked to you, dear people of the internet. Most of it is good news.

First, the biggest news: after a little over a year of waiting, I can now say I have officially signed a contract with comic book publisher Archaia to put out my series Critical Millennium (they put out a little book called Mouse Guard). The series is co-created with my friend and BLAM! Ventures CEO Andrew Gaska and spans seven time periods over a thousand years of humankind’s foray into interstellar travel, their domination of what they find and their eventual downfall.

Critical Millennium is a huge undertaking, and has been in the works for many years. Much more will be written about it in the months to come, but here’s a tease on the first story arc: it’s set during the Dark Frontier period (the second major period we’ll be chronicling) and focuses on the efforts, effects and intrigue intertwined to bring humanity into space. This is a desperate attempt to save a decadent and dying race, many of which do not want to be saved, or indeed see nothing wrong with the world as it is. With art by the fantastic Dan Dussault, we’re extremely excited to launch in November as a part of Archaia’s new publishing line up. So keep an eye on our MySpace page for updates, and to our website for the eventual revamp (which should hopefully happen by the summer).

My other big writing project, which I scribbled about last time but was unable to elaborate on; well, it must remain un-elaborated on. At least until April, which is when we are officially announcing it. The first draft is done and approved by the licensor (big step, yay for making it!), waiting on readers and should go to the next and possibly final draft soon. So, stay tuned for details.

Elsewhere in my world I was also sick, but got better (finally) by mid-February. It was a rather miserable month and a half of coughing and being unable to use my newly acquired C-Pap machine (for my recently diagnosed, but probably not recently acquired sleep apnea). Now I don’t cough and can sleep well (yay again!).

One other recent highlight was receiving the drawing of Chewbacca I commissioned from Colleen Doran. She did an awesome job, and I am pleased that she will be the first in what I hope will be a long line of artists I love doing pictures of one of my favorite characters. I’ve posted the picture below, which I hope is cool as she already posted it on her blog (which, by the way, you should read if you are an aspiring artist, she gives lots of excellent advice. You should also read if you are not an artist, as she also maintains an excellent blog in general and is an extraordinarily talented artist. While I’m at it, you should also buy and read her series, A Distant Soil, seriously - NOTE: I'm not an amazon affiliate, so I make no money from the links I just provided).

My girlfriend Catherine and I are currently in the process of redoing our home office. A couple of weeks ago it was an overcrowded mess, and we had been planning on tackling it toward the end of March, but things were so bad that I was having trouble working. She suggested we do it early, having a window of opportunity where I had completed the first draft of the unnamed novel and the first script for the second Critical Millennium story arc (set during The Gilded Life period, out in 2010! Whoop!). I was reluctant at first, but soon agreed because I couldn’t stand it anymore.

So now we’re freshly painted, with new shelving installed, new recessed lighting in the ceiling and shortly a spanking new work table will be erected across from our desks. We still have some organizing to do, which has dragged a bit longer than necessary, but the vibe is much better, and I think work will flow easier and more evenly after the final touches are done this weekend.

OK, I think I’ve rambled enough; the internet doesn’t need to be bored any further by me (I’ll spare you the sad story of my car not passing inspection). See you in April with a book title in hand and some art from Critical Millennium on display.

Oh, sorry, there weren't any tigers in this post. Maybe next time.

The Under-the-wire Birthday Post

It has been a long, long month. I’ve been sick for the majority of it with a nasty cough that still hasn’t totally gone away (there were two doctors trips and a round of antibiotics, along with codeine laced cough medicine – as prescribed by my doctor, of course). I also missed three days of Day Job due to it. I feel better now, and continue to get better with each day, which I suppose is all I can ask for at this point.

I also spent the past month wrestling with my first novel, as noted in my first post of the year. No, still can’t let the cat out of the bag as to what it is, as my publisher still hasn’t formally announced the property we’ve licensed. But with a few bits on my part to finish up tonight, and a few bits for one of my co-writers to finish up for his part tomorrow, we should be turning in the first draft to our licensor on Tuesday, and I should be able to announce it here by my next monthly posting, if not sooner.

While there is a sense of accomplishment in reaching this hurdle and making it past, it was a hard one to jump (more so than I had anticipated). I had trouble at times finding my way into the story, that door I need to open behind which the words are waiting for me to plunk them down and make sure they are properly ordered. Usually this happens and the whole thing comes freely. For this project it was more a series of doors I had to find, some of which lead to nothing more than the janitor’s closet, if you catch what I mean.

On one level, I think it’s because, while the property we are writing for is spun from a movie I have watched many times and enjoy, it’s not a world which I am uber-passionate about, so I had a more difficult time generating the spark I needed (or finding the key, to continue the metaphor above) than I have with my own stories. It wasn’t that I thought the property not worth doing or that I couldn’t contribute to it, I wouldn’t have agreed to work on it if I thought that (and I have passed on participating in other licensed projects for one or both of those reasons). Indeed, I think there are only a few things I could say I have that kind of passion for where I would be able to slip into the story with any ease.

That was the hard part of the month, and while I await the response back from the licensor and our various readers in the coming weeks, I look forward to round two of the process to work out all the rough spots I know are there, excise the bad, and make the next incarnation as kick ass as it can be.

The best part of January was Catherine and I getting to see Jason Webley perform in New York City on the 6th. He played the Zipper Factory with guests Sxip Shirey and Corn Mo (who has an awesome voice). Jason and Sxip have an album coming out in March, the fifth in a series of eleven collaborations that Mr. Webley is producing with friends over the next few years. It was an awesome show overall, and one of the cooler parts was the fact that they shot a video for the title track, staging a faux New Years Eve celebration on stage before Jason played his set. Catherine and I jumped onstage to join for the filming (something I never do, but I am such a fan I was actually happy to be a part of it – we hung out in the back of the crowd, but you may be able to see my sequined top hat) and danced around, sang along (another thing I don’t really do), and generally had a good, silly time of it.

All right, I’ve got some writing to do, and some sleep to get. Next time on the Manifesto I should have a couple of announcements to make, a few discoveries to share, and hopefully a better month to report on.

Be well.

The Inaugural Sunrise

This was the scene this morning behind my house:

It is indeed a shiny new day.

We now have a new president. Let's hope the sun shines on us every morning, and that each day is better than the last.

2009, the year of the frog...

I wasn’t going to post, didn’t feel the need to mark the New Year in that way, but with less than 2 hours left to the first day, I got the urge and decided not to fight it.

I’ve taken down the previous posts and archived them in my personal files. Version three of this blog was not the charm I had hoped. It wasn’t a dud either, it just hasn’t morphed into something I’m compelled to do on any type of regular basis.

So, attempt number four. On a New Year.

We all know that there was little to celebrate in 2008. We have a grand new president waiting in the wings, which I hope will bring our nation to a more even keel. He has ego (I think you have to even to simply run for president), but I think it is tempered by a lot more reality than our current commander-in-chief.

Look at the economy for other reasons why 2008 was a period in time I am more than happy to say goodbye to.

Personally, 2008 held good things as well. Early December marked one year of living with my girlfriend Catherine, and that has been awesome (and I look forward to all the rest). My sister and her husband celebrated their one-year wedding anniversary. I am working on my first novel, a licensed project which I will get into at a later date. I also should finally be signing a deal for my first comic in collaboration with my friend Andrew, we are just waiting on the publisher to look at our proposed contract changes. Another friend, Paul, and I decided to go forward with a small project which you will hear more about later in the year. Other highlights include: Ray LaMontagne delivering another great album; My acquisition of a small, but very cool painting from Bob Eggleton; John Scalzi giving us another Old Man’s War universe book; and my coming to a few decisions about 2009, which I hope will make for a better year.

The first of these decisions was to be more proactive about my future career options, so I have enrolled in a web design course for the next year and a half. It’s online (and accredited) so I can do it on my time, not struggle to drive somewhere and hope to be on time, in a class with people who don’t want to be there.

The second was to decide to cut back on what I want to get done writing. I tend to cast big plans out there for what I want to write. I then tend to not get any or much of it done (at least in a presentable form). So, for 2009, all I plan to do is finish the earlier noted novel, write the scripts for the comics mentioned after earlier noted novel, and maybe a few short stories and poems (maybe). I had a couple of great big schedules worked up for this year, and decided to scrap them all. They give me too much stress as I come up on them, and cause some guilt when they pass unfinished/not started.

The next decision was to read more. I am woefully lacking in my reading. These days books get started but often go unfinished. To solve my dilemma, I decided to read a book a week (and a comic a week as well) in the hopes of fostering a better reading habit. I mapped them out last night before and after the ball dropped in NYC – my time zone for such an event – and finished typing the list up this evening. I put no absolutes on the list as far as get it done or else (I have back up books in case of emergencies). I did pick books I have either started and then stopped, for whatever reason, or have been waiting a long time to be read. First up for books is Clive Barker’s Mister B. Gone, a book I started last fall and intend to finish this coming week (I start this process on January 5th). And in comics, I will read the first volume of Y: The Last Man.

Obviously I won’t be idle, with the web design classes, I hope to have my own site up by Winter 2010, along with a handful of project to promote on them. I’m going to take the blog slow at this point, not get myself worked up about it. For now, I’ll deliver a monthly dose of pontification, likely on the first of each month. As I get more organized, I’m sure I will reach out to the internet more.

Before I go, Catherine just read to me a bit of wisdom from one of her 2009 books to read books (she’s doing it,too!): There are five frogs on a log, one of them decides to jump off, how many are left?

The answer is five. The frog only decided to jump, he hasn’t yet.

I’ve made a lot of decisions for 2009.

Now it’s time to jump.

See you in February. Ribbit!