...skip a few, ninety-nine, etc. So here we are again, on to another pathetic, let's-see-what's-actually-going-on-in-the-Monk's-life stretch. Well, one bit of good news is that I'm reviewing comics over at Papaerback Reader, and seem to be getting rather along with it. Started that gig in the same month as my last entry here, missed a few weeks last month when Internet connection was temporarily severed, and with my usual gusto, proceeded to suggest to myself in particular that the sky was falling. I'm quite good at that. But reviewing comics is good, and so far I've been able to be quite deceptive as to my reading habits, which almost invariably lead, as long-term readers here (if such a concept exists) would know, to DC, being that I've also done words for Marvel (for the very first!), Image, Dark Horse, IDW, and...I think that covers it. Funny thing about Dark Horse. The material I've been covering there is ArchEnemies, the book by unsuspecting rival Drew Melbourne, who by my own accounts has now set me back about two and a half years thanks to his smiting of me, among other maggots, in Image's contest of early 2004, already noted on here. Lovely chap, though. Good sense of humor. He's a real comic. I'm won't go much further in that wordplay...
At any rate, that's been a chief source of keeping-me-busy material, which has also been not getting Ex Patriot published, though I've finally read Jude the Obscure and so now can write the response to one of the poems therein contained. Also a bit muddled is the publication of Cotton Colinaude, by means of faultering on the indie publisher (so much more dignified a term than "self-publishing"!), a struggle also remarked on previously. Loss of the Internet facilitated this waffling, as much as generous tax returns would have at last funded the enterprise. Now as I reconsider, I've also got packages to choose from. Happily, I solved one dilemma and chose, assuming the actual feasibility, to put in print both extant stories in one volume, to be entitled Two of Three Escapades, with perhaps a main title as well (come November, all three "escapades" will be known, collectively, as The Heroic Ideal).
As for my efforts at "Breaking Into Comics," those seem to have stalled once again, both because I continue to have no luck at Digital Webbing, in a variety of forms, and because I lose faith fairly easily in my own abilities. That's set me back in the job market already, and as if I don't have issues enough, my current situation only becomes more and more complicated, and frustrating/maddening/apalling/frenetic by the day, both in efforts to remove myself from it and in romantic concerns, which have only continued to blow up in my face. Some jerk recently suggested, right out of the blue, Neil Strauss's The Game as a cure for my perceived ailments, but a little research only proved what a jerky jerk he really was. But he was all friendly, all confidential about it. Must have been Mystery in the flesh. Imagine my honor...
I guess that's all I'll write for now...
