Truly, I could smooch WorkPalNick for letting me know about this:

(Yes, this picture is way too big but at the moment I’m too lazy to fix it!)

Free open houses are Wednesdays at 4. Whaddaya know, it’s Wednesday! It’s just crazy, these coincidences.

Finished pass 1 of the mad dash FRANKENSTEIN thing I’ve been working on. Handed off to the artist (who is awesome; I would say who he is but I haven’t asked). He really dug it except for a few shots that were “too Berni.” He is, of course, absolutely right. The stuff just got burned into my eyeballs, is all. Next up: settling in for the dialogue. Early 19th century, something I never do. To get in the spirit, I ordered that really bad Kenneth Branagh remake from a dozen years back. I remember going to see this in the theater with my crazy roommate. I haven’t seen it since then, yet I still see images of Branagh flouncing around the laboratory; shirt off, chest heaving and muscles rippling. Burned into my eyeballs.

(As a side note, thank goodness my crazy roommate phase didn’t last very long. Only two years and I was out on my own.)

I received a ping yesterday from an editor about a very cool recurring gig. Not comics, in case you’re wondering, but just as cool. Looks like it’s a go. Want to yell from the rooftops. Darn, I wish I didn’t have to be so oblique.

After various folks mumbling-not-articulating about this over the past couple of weeks, finally I have a link:

Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.

(Thank you, Steven and Lieber.)

I had such a crush on Joshua Bell when I was in college, it’s so not funny. The cool thing is, he’s about 6 years older than me, I think… which means that he’ll probably be around for as long as I will be. The cooler thing is, musicians like that guy just keep on playing and playing. Kind of like Irish traditional guys.

Oh, geez… see, now an incomplete memory is starting to creep in and it’s gonna drive me nuts. Around 1991 or so I read something somewhere about a hot shit violinist who was totally messing with the classical music establishment by showing up for gigs in things like, say, vampire outfits. When they whined, he’d say, “Look, I didn’t spend my entire life mastering this instrument for you people to bitch and moan about a cape and little fake blood.” Or something. Dang, that was charming.

Was it Bell? Dang, I am an old lady with this memory. Though, in fairness, I haven’t thought about that in years.

Oh my goodness…. no, it was Nigel Kennedy, another hot shit violinist I had a crush on. He’s a little more bad boy, that one. Leather jackets and motorcycles and all that. Which reminds me of the hot shit bad boy violinist (first chair, Nashville Symphony or whatever, kid’s 18 years old) who was going to Trinity College with me at the time, my year, who also wore leather and rode a bike and looked like Elvis, swear to God. Elvis with five o’clock shadow and a perpetual cigarette dangling. I don’t understand those folks who can make with the dangling and play at the same time.

He was always sweet to me, that guy. Would come by the practice room and smile the Elvis grin/sneer and ask me how it went. And I’d always tell him it was going fine, meanwhile thinking, “it’d be even better if you’d put that cigarette out and come over here.”

I haven’t played my own violin in well over a year either, by the way. This sometimes happens. I always worry that my fingers are going to stop working, but they never do, thank God. Leland often asks me to get the girl out of the case and play him something (gently, of course), “but I know you’re avoiding it ’cause the fiddle’s going to attack you.” No, actually, I’ve just been preoccupied, with my writing and quitting my job and all the rest. When I get the violin out of the case, then she’ll attack me.

S’alright. We bite, then we move on. It’s like this thing between us.

It’s also kind of tough to fit it into 28 pages. Let’s hope it’s not all for naught.

And now, Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 tips for writing a story, courtesy of Dean:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things ­ reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them ­ in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I find myself having to write a short(ish, let’s not kid ourselves) comics adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN in, like, zero time at all. (Long story, will explain later.)

So Leland starts pulling books off the shelf:

And, of course:

I had no idea that this stuff was even in the house. Wellokay, except for that last one.

It’s Friday night. Leland is at the board making dreamy watercolor pictures for this thing I wrote. You’ll see ‘em next month.

I’m about to take these yummy books here and get belly-down with the cats.

Life is good.

Kevin Colden’s FISHTOWN debuts on ACT-I-VATE today!

Kevin is a fellow ChemSetter and also worked with me on this little thing called RED last year.

I want to work with him again, real bad.

I need to get in line.

Okay, that’s it on today’s announcements!

Cecil Castellucci takes a seat in the comfy chair!

From The Library is a series of mini-interviews with some of the downright coolest people in storytelling (comics, YA, specfic, art). Read ‘em all! They’re fun!

Was going through some old crap and found this thing that Culver did for me:

Of course, that was ages ago and now Culver’s a kickass freelance comics artist/illustrator/funwrecker (okay, so he always was a funwrecker).

More old crap here.

Next SCHEHERAZADE page is up:

I think this is my favorite page so far.