I just inked page ten of my latest comic book.  I want to start on the finished inks before the end of the third month on a new issue.  The last issue started out real good on that, and I was glad it did, because the final three months had a major distraction rear its head in my world, and the good start meant that I could still finish on time.  I hope to be done early enough to lay up a revised issue number four.  I have seven drawings to complete from that effort.  The major distraction of the last issue isn't so much of one now, so I can only hope.

As people who have read this blog and gone through some of the art and music I've talked about know, I have an illness that kind of puts me in two worlds at once.  The medication is effective and helps with this, but this other world that I talk about in my art and music is one I still have to deal with on an almost daily basis.  Earlier this afternoon, I went to a friend's house to work on a painting that I'd done for him ten years ago.  For most people this kind of thing wouldn't be a big deal.  But, because of his significance in this other world, and the state of our world these days, I kept thinking along pretty irrational lines about this trip to his house.  I guess something that helps to aggravate this stuff is the fact that he moved a ways out of town, so now it's a bit of a drive to see him.  Nothing happened out there, and I hope to finish this work on his painting soon enough.

I didn't get a chance to go out on Red River and hand out flyers last week.  I kept putting it off, until I decided to try for Saturday, but this other world stuff intruded enough for me to not want to go out.  I hope the weather will permit me to go out on some day this coming week.  It really is getting to be no big deal when people turn down my solicitations.

I've ramped up  the number of days that I've practiced music by the factor of several more days than last month, and we're not through the end of this month yet.  All the while I've been writing songs, and I've been doing this to the point where I have two albums worth of songs to document.  My guitar teacher and I are going over which songs would be suitable for an electric guitar, and which songs would work for acoustic.  One of our favorites is called "Zombie Con."  It was inspired by this article I read in Playboy, yes I read Playboy, anyway, about a big national convention in Seattle related to all things having to do with zombies.  I stopped reading when the author talked about how attendees were so invested in the idea of zombies that they thought that the notion of an actual zombie apocalypse was an actual possibility.  I understand that an official from the Centers for Disease Control has had to field questions about this as well.  Anyway, this song I wrote is about a guy who wants to actually become a zombie, not just blow their heads off like in a shoot-'em-up game.  Yeah, "Zombie Con," I wrote it last Halloween.  I never wear a costume or anything like that. I'm doing good if I scribble decorations and put them on my door to let kids know that I celebrate Halloween and they can trick or treat my house, so I really liked that I commemorated last Halloween with an original song.  

I had a really good night handing out flyers last Friday.  I could only make it one day last week, but Friday was good.  I handed out eight.  I was only out there for twenty minutes.  My next goal is to stay out there for twenty-five minutes.  My low goal will be for fifteen minutes.  I'm getting used to the idea of doing this, and I don't feel any shyness after I do some of my standard spiel.  It's not much, I just say, "I've got a flyer for a book and a web site, you want one?"  The whole idea is to get used to the rejection, not so much how many I hand out or whether I sell any books.

I guess that I just want to fail, if failure is the only option, on my own terms.  One of the last galleries I submitted to rejected my art not because it was bad art, but because it was good art.  I'd had a run-in with this attractive, youngish woman who helped run this co-op gallery here in town.  It was the usual bill of fair.  I go into these kind of interactions at great length in my books, and I submitted the first Richy Vegas Comics that detailed one, "Anita, You're the Reason I'm Not In Prison."

She just wanted to sweep my submission under the rug, as if I'd never given her anything at all.  It wasn't that the art wasn't good, it was because the story hit home with her, and she recognized herself in the antagonists.  I decided then and there that I was done with the art world.  If I'm going to not be able to show in galleries because my art does what it is supposed to do, I don't see the point.  The art world is crawling with women just like her, and douchebag Liberal asshole men who will take up for them out of some misguided sense of chivalry.

All I have to do to get a table at a convention is pay some money, usually.  My money is as green as the next guy's, so it's no problem.  First come, first served, that's usually about it.  The people at Austin Books and Comics are kind enough to let me display on their consignment shelf, so I try to do some advertising, halfway hoping to sell some books that way, but more to try to get used to doing that kind of thing if I start playing out, with the band or solo.

I figure about ninety-six percent of people who set out for a career in the arts and entertainment industry probably fail by most standards of success.  If one were to expand the definition of what one would consider success, maybe about ninety-two percent fail.  I don't see why I should have any problem with being a part of the vast majority of people who fail to go anywhere in this racket.  There's a difference between being a failed artist and being a bad artist.

Tomorrow night I'm going out there for at at least one more round of handing out fliers.  I went out there twice and handed out a pitifully small number.  The first time I told myself that I would stand out there at least ten minutes.  I gave myself permission to just stand there and do nothing if I wanted to,  I would up dong my little spiel and handed out a few.  After ten minutes I left.  For the next session, I set a goal of standing out there for eight minutes, and I set the high goal for fifteen minutes.  I handed out even less fliers, but that's okay because that was my goal.  If I go out tomorrow, I will set a goal of ten minutes with a high goal of twenty minutes.  I don't know how much time I will go up to if I decide to go out there any more after tomorrow.

Buster might have a tumor in his brain.  They didn't find anything when they looked into his abdomen.  The vet said that she had a dog that had a brain tumor, and that it lived three more years and died of something else.

I've finished the pencil work for the latest issue of Richy Vegas Comics.  Tonight I will start inking the lettering.  I have set a goal of next weekend to finish this stage.  Then I will start on the finished inks.  If all goes well, I should finish that final stage well before the six months deadline and have time to revise issue four and lay up another version of that book in anticipation of doing a second printing some day.  I've incorporated the new pages for issue four in the production of the latest issue, so I am finished with the pencil work for those pages as well.  I finished the pencil work for the new cover of issue four as well.

Buster had two seizures Saturday morning.  They were eight hours apart.  I took him to the vet, where he stayed overnight.  They started him on a new medication for seizures, and he's going to have a ultrasound on his midsection tomorrow.  This is all going to cost a fortune, but it might not be a brain tumor.

We have a break in this rain, which means I should get out to hand out a few flyers sometime this week.  I'm telling myself that I am willing to just try going down there and standing in one place for a while, if nothing else.  I'm talking about doing that just one time, and if it's as bad as all that, not even doing that again, so it looks like I'm really going to do it.  Last year I think I aimed too high, and I just  couldn't stand the idea of trying to pull it off, so I didn't do anything at all.  I found out that the person who bought my books at ABC last year was this one girl I'd met at an Austin Zine Fest.  That means that it wasn't any of those fan boys who buy the fantasy/ superhero comics, so maybe the two I sold in 2014 really were as a result of the flyers that I did manage to hand out in 2014.  I guessed that maybe a couple of people liked the idea that I had the gumption to get out there and do it, so they took the time out to go to ABC and actually buy a book, maybe.  Right?

I wrote the last three songs for the second of two albums that I have yet to record.  That's two complete fourteen track albums that I am nowhere near ready to go into the studio for.  The medication change really made me feel so different that I just new that I was not going to be able to commit right away to the level of practice that I would need to do for "Self Portrait of Me."

I've pretty much decided that I'm not even going to try to play shows if I am not willing to promote myself with this flier thing.  I don't see much point.  So many venues exist because of SXSW, but the audience the rest of the year for any artist on any given night can be such a crapshoot.  Also, my music is not really coffee shop friendly because it's about crack whores, bathroom sex, and rapists.  

Speaking of rapists, the last three songs are from the Legend of Richy Vegas, so they are all about that kind of shit.  The songs I've done so far have been about stuff that I really wrestle with as to whether there really is anything to any of it.  I hoped to convey this sense of how I struggle in those early songs.  This stuff I'm doing now does not have so much of that "where the rubber meets the road" quality to it, but I decided a while back that the more important thing to do is make good art and not worry too much about whether any of that stuff is real or not.