Eleanor

And here ends Chapter 2. I’d like to thank everybody who has been reading Eleanor faithfully, whether you’ve just discovered the comic or you’ve been around since the start. And a big grateful thanks to everyone who has supported the comic by downloading it onto your iPad or Kindle.

I’ve been dreading today’s update, because I’ve got to tell you this: Chapter 3 isn’t ready for you yet. It’s written, and so is Chapter 4, but nobody’s interested in a comic book without art, and the art isn’t ready yet. So here’s the hated, awful, smelly word I didn’t want to say: hiatus. Trust me, I’m probably more unhappy about this than you may be.

Some explanation might help:

How much is done? Well, very nearly half of Chapter 3 is finished so far, but that leaves a good bit still to go.

Why isn’t it ready yet? The last few months have been hell on free time. I don’t make a living making this comic, so I squeeze it into whatever free moments I can grasp. And those moments have been extremely hard to come by for the past two months, maybe three.

What’s keeping you so busy? Nothing dramatic. I’m not rescuing kittens or saving the world. Lately my day job is a little more involved, and there was that whole snafu recently that involved our landlord selling our home from under us, and the stressful move that followed. Meanwhile, our little girl is growing up very fast — can you believe she’s seven-and-a-half months already? — and it’s very hard to pull away from her to work on new pages.

Why not just share what’s ready so far? Well, I had considered that. There’s enough of Chapter 3 ready to keep you happy and fat on Eleanor for several weeks to come… but I don’t anticipate that life will become less demanding between now and then, which means you’d read and read and read and read and then… you wouldn’t be reading anymore. You’d probably be writing angry emails to me, or worse, forgetting that Eleanor even existed. I’d rather be certain that you’ll have plenty of Eleanor coming your way, so for now, the end of Chapter 2 seems like a reasonable place to pause for a moment.

I’ll probably forget about your comic anyway. Well, yeah. I know. That’s actually more than likely. It’s probably a given, actually. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that. I don’t want to see a single reader go away unfulfilled or unsatisfied by this story. And I certainly don’t want you to think that Eleanor will go away… and then just never come back. That won’t happen. I’ve lived with this story for nearly a dozen years now. I’m not going to quit until it’s done, or I’m dead.

You’re a (jerk/loser/asshole/failure). Well, I’m none of those things, yet. But if you think that I am, then I’m going to hope that feeling is coming from a place of sadness that there won’t be a new page for you next week, instead of from a place of derision and hatred. I’ve told people I love that I hate them, too. But I didn’t really, and I’m sure you love me that much, too. Eleanor will come back, and if she doesn’t, then I’ll accept whatever label you’d like to bestow upon me.

Can you at least give us some teasers in the meantime? Hmm. Well, I am kind of shitty at keeping secrets, so okay, I can do that. Here’s what you can look forward to in the next two chapters: Paul’s father stirs up some serious shit. We discover that Eleanor’s fall isn’t her first accident, and might not even be the first time she met you-know-who. We find that Agnes’s dreamworld might have some ties to Eleanor’s nightmares of falling. Reality might start pulling a bit at the seams, but really, with reality, it’s hard to tell when that’s what’s going on.

So that’s that, I guess. I hope to bring Eleanor back very soon. And I hope that you’ve enjoyed the three chapters I’ve written and drawn for you so far. It’s my first comic, after all. It’s enough that anybody is reading at all, but it’s pretty wonderful that some of you keep coming back. I won’t let you down. (For long, anyway.)

Happy new week!