What am I thinking?

Guilty Secret #1

Or Roadhouse, how I love thee.

Of course, if you look at my list of favorite movies, you won't find it mentioned. That's because I never think about it until my old friend TBS or a movie channel like Encore decides to serve it up for my viewing pleasure.

But once I see it, like a plane hitting a train wreck, I can't look away. Sure, it has more cheese in it than the state of Wisconsin. Don't bother telling me that the characters are more thin than the toilet paper at a state park. I already know all that. If it only had a robot in it, it would be perfect MSTK3 fodder. But how I love it so.

Truly, this is a movie astronomically above the sum of its parts. You add one part bad dialogue, one part over-the-top acting, one part far too much melodrama in the directing, and you have a soup-de-jour of cinematic greatness.

If you can't stomach the whole thing, at least treat yourself to the few minutes surrounding the scene where Dalton rips out the guy's throat. The part where the guy stops his dirt bike to laugh at all the destruction he's caused is cinematic gold. As his his line "Prepare to die." when Dalton catches him. Did Patrick Swayze kill this guy's father and I missed it?

School's Out for Summer!

Most people take an inventory of their life on New Years but I find myself usually doing it at the beginning of summer. The school year has a way of creeping up and wearing you down and, before you know it, you're sort of just sliding along instead of being active. I think I've been sliding along a little bit in my omnipresent quest and not applying myself to breaking in as much as I should have.

It's the same story that's plagued me throughout my writing life. I am very tenacious when it comes to writing. I usually write every day and get really antsy if I miss a day or two in a row. So sitting down and writing isn't the problem. Submitting is. Doing the things needed to get the work in the public eye is. So, I've done some reevaluation and, after I finish this entry, I plan to do some tasks that I've been putting off and get back to working hard on this career.

Cause I'm sure not getting any younger.



That's a good line to close with, isn't it? Succint, has that fatalistic quality you want in a cliffhanger. The only problem is, it's only partially true. I'm also getting busy as a reaction to a glitch in the plan that has me a bit depressed.

An artist friend and I completed an 8 page horror story and submitted it to a horror anthology series. We didn't make it in. Why? Because a similar story was already accepted. Ah, the bitter pill of bad timing. The news has me a little down because I keep thinking another missed opportunity. The best thing to do then is redouble my efforts.

So, if anyone knows of a anthology series needing submissions, drop me a line.

Random Thoughts

Just like the title suggests, there will be absolutely no cohesion or coherence (are they one and the same?) to this entry. There'll be no segues either so you will be getting a brief look into the synaptic misfires that account for 90% of my total thought output.

I'm not a huge American Idol fan. In fact, other than Survivor, there isn't a show that I must watch every week. I spend a lot of my TV time watching reruns--Simpsons, Seinfeld, BTAS. I did get season one of Battlestar Galactica so that might be one I start checking out if I like it. Oh, and Doctor Who. If you don't watch that show, you've got to start. Now, all of that being said, even I, the epitome of the casual viewer, was surprised that Chris Doughtry (is that spelled right?) was voted off. I think he had the most Idol potential of all that was left.

Speaking of Survivor, I don't have anything against Aras, but is there anyone that doesn't think Terri should have won. Other than maybe slighting Dan a little, he played the game with the honesty and integrity that everyone throws around when facing the jury and no one has dominated challenges more. My string of having the person I want to win actually win stops at two seasons.

I believe that I'm going to HeroCon in North Carolina this June. Not as a guest, sadly not yet, but as a rabid fan that will approach his heroes like Warren Ellis and try to act nonchalant and cool only to come off totally inane and geeky. I'm hopefully going to meet Roger there (artist of Off the Grid) and we can shoot the bull. I'm going to read up on my networking notes and how to not to present submissions at cons.

Thanks to Brian K. Vaughn's Myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/briankvaughan), I found this little tidbit (http://comiccreatorservices.blogspot.com/) a resource for beginning and up and coming comic book creators. I've not had the chance to check it all out it but you can rest assured that I will.

Baby Tera is doing great. She's gained 2 inches and weighs a whopping ten pounds now and can eat a little cereal from a spoon. Some would say that that's too soon to introduce cereal but she was still hungry after 4 ounces of milk and she sleeps like a log now at night. Yay!

I almost let the blog go tonight even though it's high time I posted again. I'm tired, the clock won't quit ticking to doom (when I have to go to bed because there's work again tomorrow), and I really don't have anything to say.

Which hasn't stopped in the past, hasn't it?

I find myself really down on my job right now and that leads me, as ever, to thoughts of how great it would be to finally get to write for a living. Continuing on this thought train, I start to think about how many people hate their job (I don't hate mine, by the way, even though I am frustrated with it right now). Think about that for a moment: the thousands (heck this is the world wide web so millions) of people who go to work in a job they hate. Their job is such a major facet of life, one that they have until they're, at least, in their fifties if they're the average American. And they hate every minute of it. They count down the days until Friday and pine away the weekend minutes dreading Monday. They're stuck in a surreal rendition of Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend". It's not easy to get a good job in many places or even to get a job. For so many people, it's not like they can just go "I think I'll try something new". Or maybe they can but contemplating such a jump into the unknown makes them quake. I know it makes me nervous.

The problem: going to work, day after day, hating every minute of it. Wasting your life in a pursuit you could care less about.

The answer? If you know, post it. I haven't got a clue.

These are some depressing thoughts. I think I'll get back to writing and submitting.
___________________________

Issue #4 of Off the Grid is written and I've sent it to Roger for review. I've gotten issue #5 plotted and will start it tomorrow. It's going to be a hard one as it needs to sum up the series without being too wordy or didactic.

I've gotten the finished pages for Magic Bullet and now it's time to put together the submission packet. I think it's turned out really well. I'll try to post the first page here for my non-existent readers to peruse. ;)

It's been a few days from my last post but I have a great excuse this time as I've been settling (a little) into fatherhood. I say a little because I can look at my daughter and it all still seems so surreal that she is mine--that I had anything to do with her creation.

Other parents will tell you that you can't imagine what being a parent is like and that it will change your whole outlook, your whole life. If you're anything like I was, you'll just politely nod your head and then roll your eyes when they're not looking.

Well, they're right.

I don't expect you to believe me either. Really, it's just something you've got to experience. No amount of words can get these feelings across to you. It's impossible to describe the amount of love you have for this little crying, sleeping, crapping, peeing baby. She'll reach up and touch my face and I become every stereotype of the goofy dad that I used to make fun of.

But that's all right. Sometimes, eating crow doesn't taste that bad.

______________________________

Off the Grid is going very well. I'm really excited about the direction the story is going in (even more so now as some questions I had in mind with the story are resolving themselves) and Roger is a dream to work with (and a great artist). I'm busy working on issue #4.

The other projects are coming along as well. It seems to be feast or famine with them. I'll go for days with nothing and then, boom, several emails coming in with some good news. If this doesn't teach me patience, nothing will.

Okay, this is a rant. Probably one I'll regret at some point but, right now, I need to vent. Bare in mind that I'm not talking about any of the people that I'm working on projects with now. I'm very lucky in that regard. But I have had problems of this sort in the past and I've gotten myself worked up thinking about them.

I'm talking about the person that says they want to break into comics, may even accept payment for working on a submission and then...nothing. It takes them months to get the work done and only after email after email almost begging for them to send something--anything.

I don't think I'm an unreasonable person. I realize that writing a comic script is, in most cases, the quickest, least-time consuming part of the process. And I realize that these people have lives that sometimes interferes with their dreams. I have a life (and if you follow this at all, you know it just got much more busy). But to wait months for a sample to be finished seems a bit much to me.

This business is in no way easy to break into, even if you have the necessary talent. Tales of people falling into this business are few and far between (there is the current trend to take writers from other mediums such as movies and books but those people have worked hard and been dedicated in some medium or other). Far more the norm are the stories of people that worked, worked, and worked some more and were prepared when that break finally came.

I don't know, maybe I have a different work ethic than some. To me, it seems a good idea to hedge your bets in every way possible and that means to be prompt and act in every way the professional even before you are a professional. You can't expect editors to believe there's some magic switch that will flip once your hired. "Well, it's taken 5 months for these 5 pages but I bet if we hire him he'll deliver on time." If I'm working with someone and it's time for me to deliver a script, a pitch, a dirty limerick, whatever, I try to get it to them in the shortest time possible. To me that's the only way to work, the way to build that all important reputation.


I dunno. Could just be the OCD setting in.

She's here!

I'm going to make this post short and sweet because I've just finished plotting out issue #3 of Off the Grid and I'm running low on sleep anyway because...



Tera Elizabeth Strunk was born Tuesday at 3:50 pm. Even though she was 3 1/2 weeks early, she weighed 8 lbs, 7 oz and was 20 1/2" long. If she had went full term, she would have slapped the doctor back.

Some really exciting events happening with my projects but I'll save that for a better run down next time. Now--Crisman sleepy.