Some background on my influences is called for I believe.  Let us start with how The Lord of the Rings effected me.

Like many, I had read The Lord of the Rings as a child.  One of my earliest memories of reading is snuggling into a cubby in third grade and reading The Two Towers all by myself.  Reading was an escape for me, an escape from my classmates and the uncomfortable reality of the public school system.  Which isn’t to say I didn’t have any friends… in fact, it’s difficult to look back on my childhood with an objective eye.  My feelings clearly altered my memories of that time, injecting feelings of persecution and otherness that I’m sure now were unwarranted.

Reading took all that away.  I wasn’t ME anymore.  I was Frodo, or Peter in the Chronicles of Narnia, or a Martian walking the rusty landscape of Bradbury’s mind.  Fantasy and SciFi helped me learn what Truth was, at a time when everyone else seemed to lie to me.  A lot of things I imagined were true were crumbling around me.  I was dealing with being my own person, with becoming a teen and eventually a man, and my relationship to God.  But nobody around me seemed willing or able to give me any help in that regard.  Instead my life was a shuffle from one standardized test to another, the focus on becoming a functioning member of society overwhelming any drive to become an individual human being.  With the real world crushing who I was becoming, is it any wonder I turned to fiction?

But the fiction I sought was hardly an escape.  I looked for the dark places, I learned of suffering.  I NEEDED to find a way to explain why people feel pain, why love goes unrequited, why a just and loving God would allow evil to exist.  Of course my obsessive search for those answers in Worlds-Not-Our-Own labeled me as something Other once I got older… “Don’t worry,” I was told, “You’ll really get to enjoy yourself and become your own person in college.”  The insinuation being you aren’t ALLOWED to become your own person before then because nobody is ready to deal with a teen who demands answers.

It would be inaccurate to say I put aside those childish things in high school – more like traded them in for more socially acceptable fixations like video games and popular music.  These things were fun, but they weren’t a search for any kind of truth (not that my teen brain could wrap itself around this concept).  That I might have abandoned something honest in order to become a mindless processor of what my demographic consumed never occurred to me, although looking back it really explains the bizarre feelings I was losing myself despite my attempts to prove I was unique by listening to the same gritty rock song as everyone else.

So it was with great excitement I embarked on my college career.  Surely, HERE things would be different!  Now I could join the ranks of adults who MAKE the world, not just inhabit it.  Now I could exert some control over my own destiny.

It was not to be.  My first semester of freshmen year was in the Fall of 2001.  I learned just how little control anyone has over anything in the world, and my beliefs about Good, Evil, God and Humanity weren’t just shaken to their core, they were shattered.

But Tolkien picked up the pieces.  You see, I’d forgotten about those books completely by now.  It had been so long since I’d read them, and I’d “learned” so much since then that they were fuzzy and gray in my mind, no longer relevant.  They described Things That Didn’t Matter, right?  And yet, as I rediscovered those books, I remembered why I loved them as a boy.  I remembered feeling strange and alone for loving a world that wasn’t my own.  And in my freshman year, as I once more walked the paths from Hobbiton to Imladris, to Moria, Cirith Ungol and Mount Doom itself… I discovered I wasn’t alone.  They, like me, demanded answers through their fiction, sought to understand the real by immersing themselves in the unreal just as I did.  That there were others who see the World That Is through the lens of the World That Might Be.

And that we were Legion.

- Thomas Jefferson 1786.

An Ewok for the 4th of July.  Ewoks are a lot like the first Americans, I think.  They’re superstitious, friendly, they can be bribed with food, they hate the Empire, they think God told them to fight, and most people seem to dislike them for some reason.  They’re also brave and bloodthirsty, and they never stop trying to kill something that’s stomping all over them.

We took an Amtrak train from Boston to NYC, and met my brother and his fiancee at their lovely abode.  We gladly took the shelter they offered, and broke bread with them… in this case, pizza crust with onions and sausage!

Traveling is hungry work!  Dani and I shuttled across Massachusetts and ate at every stop!  A coffee here, a sandwich there, splitting a turkey flatbread melt.  Our fellow travelers whisk by, contained in electronic bubbles – phones, laptops, e-readers and headphones close them off from us the way newspapers and novels used to.  Not Dani and I.  For once, neither of us is driving.  Danielle points windows and shows me people playing with dogs.

After crashing at Kevin’s, we set off at 9 AM for our Big New York Tourist Thing:  The American Museum of Natural History!

I realize too late I look very different from the ID taken four years ago.  My hair is cropped, I’m clean shaven.  Thankfully, nothing comes of it.

The museum is awesome in the true definition of the word.  It inspires awe that people created such a large monument to knowledge and history!  Seeing it for the first time since I was a child was transporting.  I thought it was my childhood memory exaggerating the size of the place, but it’s enormous! (TWSS)  As Danielle and I enter the third floor Allosaur and Apatosaur diorama, she sighs heavily and turns to me with sparkling, grateful but tired eyes.

“That was really fun!  I’m glad we made it all the way to the dinosaurs!”

I nod in agreement.  “Of course, most of the fossils are above us, on the fourth floor.”

Her mouth hangs open for a moment.  “There’s a FOURTH FLOOR?”

I guess the Museum of Science in Boston doesn’t compare.

By now a dull burn had soaked into my legs, up through the street and feet and creeping its way to my knees.  Throbbing aches remind me I’m way out of shape, that carrying four days’ worth of clothing and gear is not something I often do.  My eyelids are heavy, my ears are clogged and sinus pressure grows in my skull.  I hurt.  I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Danielle and I were besieged by ants.  We keep a clean kitchen, but they were all over the slightest crumbs.  So we got some diatomaceous earth to wipe the filthy buggers out.

You know what I was busy with for the past few weeks.  Lyndsey, back from Anime Boston, approved the image!

I’ve set my alarm clocks a half hour earlier so we have more time in the morning.  The goal is to have more time and become more productive.  I’m in the gross twilight zone of sleep deprivation that happens 48 hours after I change my schedule.  I’ve always been a person who appreciates my unconscious life as much as (and sometimes more than) my waking life.  Messing with the balance really throws me off.

Danielle is starting a brave new project.  She blogging the process of working through a craft book – Crafter’s Devotional – as well as workbook assignments from Wreck This Journal and The Artist’s Way.  It’s a lot to take on, and I’m proud of her ambition.  Daily blogging sure puts my once-a-week routine to shame.

Back?  Good.  Later on, I had an interesting conversation with another lovely friend Stephanie in which we discussed the forced digital evolution of the written word.  I didn’t bring up Dionaea House at the time, and I think Steph ended up winning in the end.

I’m still on the fence.  Forms of communication never really go extinct, just out of style.  People still know how to make smoke signals, chisel words in rock, press papyrus, and write in cursive.  They just don’t do it so much anymore.

I made the comparison to the 3D phenomenon in cinema today.  3D is new technology that we aren’t sure how to use yet.  It works best when used to shock and surprise the audience.  Therefore, the best 3D movies are scary ones, like Coraline or My Bloody Valentine.  Perhaps more artistic uses of 3D will be developed in time.

So it is with digital storytelling.  I, a lover of webcomics, was quick to point out I’ve enjoyed reading and subscribing to webcomics for almost ten years now.  Traditional, printed comics have lost the attraction.  No more am I subjected to advertisements that border on insulting and obscene, or shameless self promotion of a product (because that’s what a superhero has become).  I can instead have updates emailed to me.

E-readers and unforeseen future-tech will never force print into extinction, but it will purge it of all but the most stubborn survivors.

* * * * * * *

Lyndsey and I also worked on outlining more of the Tales of Auli: Book 1 rewrite.  Once more solid storylines are in place I’ll be able to draft up storyboards for the comic version.

Here’s the color test for the background, tweaked slightly for visibility on this blog.

DANIELLE:  *blank stare*

ME:  The rooster.

DANIELLE:  Oh yay!

I sometimes like to whistle the theme from Disney’s Robin Hood and see whose ears perk up.  Those people tend to be on our side.

Been working a lot this weekend, as you can see from the blog.  Here’s the state of the Zorbius/Riikos illustration:

That’s coming along nicely.  Lyndsey and I had some phone conversations ironing more details out.  I spent most of Saturday in or preparing to go to a birthday party for a relative.  It was a cookout and the weather was nice.  Ugh.  I’m allergic to sunlight and fresh air, in case I haven’t made that clear.

While I’m very proud of the progress I’ve made, I’m frustrated by how much time the actual drawing is taking.  I used to be a lot faster!

Also in-progress: Alucard from Hellsing versus Edward Cullen from Twilight.  Guess who’s winning.  Go on.

"C'mon Edward! Unleash your powers! Read my mind! Predict my attacks! C'MON! C'MON!! C'MON!!!!"

I think this article sums up how I feel about vampire mania as it exists in pop culture today.

The music is from ocremix.org

Final Fantasy VII No Such Thing as the Promised Land by Sephire/SGX

The music is now Superbeast and How to Make a Monster by Rob Zombie.

Doing a timed run for the bus company, we found ourselves in Rowley, where the farms and houses are awesome and expensive. The midday sun was gorgeous and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky… and to top it all off we saw a duplex built like a castle, with two towers and everything.

Today is Saint Patrick’s Day. I made my hat festive.

This has been the first St. Pat’s day I actively celebrated in a while, mostly because I didn’t think it was fair the native pagan religions were subverted by Christianity (for the record, I am a Catholic.) Then I realized I can’t really change the past by being bored and unhappy in the present. The best course of action would be to celebrate the heck out of Halloween this year, which I plan to do. Since Halloween is on a weekend this year, I think I might head to Salem. I hear they throw a great spooky shindig.

This week was awesome for many reasons, and crappy for a few. I suppose that evens it out? I choose to focus on the good right now.

Shortly after updating my blog last week I started work on an illustration for my friend Lyndsey:

In the process I ran the events of the book (I co-authored) through my head. We’re in the middle of a rewrite as it is, but it never hurts to think over the story and find holes or new ideas and insights to add. It was Thursday, I was in the kitchen doing the dishes when all of a sudden the THING happened.

You know the THING if you ever were truly inspired. Like lightning struck the top of my head, popping my eyes open wide, sticking my tongue to the roof of my mouth, freezing my arms in place and causing my toes to lift off the ground. The THING is a new idea, and it feels like falling in love with your own brain (or wherever it is ideas come from. I heard there’s a place in Schenectady that delivers them.) I hustled to the computer and tapped out some notes in an email, sent them speeding down the wires to Lyndsey, and let the momentum carry me. I wrote a new poem:

L is for Luck
The Bad and the Good
and all Little People who live in the wood.
Under stones, under hills, in the basements of homes,
Trolls, Leprechauns, Brownies and Gnomes.

… inspired partly by Saint Patrick’s Day, naturally. I sketched and I cleaned and I drew. I clean when I can’t draw and I draw when I don’t have anything left to clean. I sketch whenever I feel like it.

I also watched a lot of documentaries this week, and realized what it was I was missing before. The THING, and the joy of having real ideas that belong to me, and just plain LEARNING something new. We’re bombarded by information every day, all the time, and it’s gotten to be so much that I forgot what it felt like to seek information and learn it. You have an answer as soon as you can type the question these days, and I’m not saying that’s wrong (in fact I think it’s awesome) just that I became numbed to the feeling of learning something new.

Didn’t mean for this to become such a novel! As I said, a lot of stuff happened.