Let’s kick the week off with a relatively manageable meal amongst the grown-ups while Eleanor sleeps in her crib. I can’t predict how long things will remain this civil.

Probably not for much longer than this page, though.

Hey, in other exciting news, I’ve released a (long) short story from my upcoming book, The Settlers. The story is called “Onyx”, and it’s available for 99 cents at Amazon, iBooks and Barnes & Noble. I hope you’ll check it out! Here’s what it’s about:

The last thing that Micah Sparrow wanted was to give up his grandfather’s beach house. The happiest years of his life — from his childhood to his marriage — have been spent right here beside the Pacific ocean. But when Micah’s wife dies unexpectedly, she leaves behind a dream. And as much as Micah loves that beach house, he loved his wife more. So he picks up the dream she never fulfilled.
 

And he moves to space.
 

Man has brought Earth to the brink of ruin. Humanity has taken its first baby step into the cosmos, building a fleet of space stations in high Earth orbit. When Micah joins the millions of people who have already stepped off-world, he discovers that the rules have changed, and so has mankind itself.
 

Onyx is a short story excerpted from the upcoming novel The Settlers: Book 1 of the Movement Series. This trilogy follows humanity as they journey into the depths of space, seeking a future that is anything but certain.

That beautiful artwork on the cover is by Greg Martin, who makes me look like I know what I’m doing.

Happy Monday!

Looking at this page, you’d almost be convinced that these are the sweetest grandparents in the history of the world. Eleanor’s so cute she almost makes them so, I know. And to be fair, her grandmother is a very kind woman.

Grandpa’s a different story. But we’ll get into that in a few pages.

In other news, The Man Who Ended the World, my novel, is now available on iBooks as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble! Please check it out, and if you like it, share!

My new book!

Well, as much as I’d like to talk about this page, I think I’ll let it speak for itself today. I’m much more excited to share with you the novel I’ve just published on Amazon. I hope you’ll check it out, read it, love it, tell all of your friends, read it to your grandchildren, mail your Kindle to me so I can inscribe it, and ask your loved ones to bury you with it.

You might recall that I was writing a very fast novel to enter in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel competition this year. In fact, I’d be submitting it to the contest today if I hadn’t decided to skip the competition and go straight to publishing the book. The odds were pretty long — five or six winners of several thousand entries — and I was fairly impatient to share the book I’d just finished so rapidly.

So here we go: The Man Who Ended the World, my second attempt at independent publishing. Eleanor is, of course, the first attempt, and has so far gone alright. This comic isn’t setting the world on fire or anything, but I think it’s an acquired taste, and the story isn’t what your usual comics reader is looking for. Which is more than alright with me. I’m not complaining.

I do hope, however, that this novel is just the first of many. I’m turning over some ideas for the next book already, and anticipating writing it quickly as well. I’ve been pleased with how many lovely people have already bought it, and have even devoured it so quickly that they’re already leaving very kind reviews on Amazon’s site for me.

So if you’ve enjoyed this comic I’m writing, I hope you’ll give some of my other writing projects a chance as well. If you do purchase the book, you’ll happily discover that it’s very reasonably-priced (just $2.99) and that it’s available for your Kindle device or app (and will shortly be available in iBooks and on the Nook and Kobo readers).

Happy Monday!

The past four weeks have been perhaps some of the most creative and busy of my life. In early December, I discovered that Amazon holds an annual novel competition. I haven’t written a novel in completion since 2000, just before I started working on Eleanor (which remains unfinished, both in novel and graphic novel form). The last novel I finished was, I think, fairly good — good enough to secure me a literary agent for a short period of time — but since then, Eleanor has become my great white whale.

In any case, the Amazon competition sparked a little something in me. There were few requirements, but one of them was word count. Any novel submitted had to be at least fifty thousand words, and the entry deadline was mid-January. Now, I’d written fifty thousand words in a week before… but that was during a particularly prolific week that I spent in a cabin, focused on absolutely nothing else except for Eleanor. And it was draining, and exhausting, though in a very good way.

Writing fifty thousand words now, as a happily married new father with a new job that’s in the middle of a project crunch, seemed like it might be a different thing altogether. But three weeks after starting, on the evening of December 31st, just fifteen minutes before the new year began, I finished writing this new novel. It barely cracks the word count requirement, but it meets it, and I’m both surprised and very proud to have pulled this off.

One great aspect of this little effort was that I got to rediscover a love for writing again. Eleanor is a great passion project, but she’s also a terribly long-in-the-making project, and I’ve struggled as much as I’ve thrilled to work on her. I consciously decided to write something less weighty and more genre-splodey for this competition, and the book I’ve come up with stars a billionaire, a double agent, an artificial intelligence, some spunky kids, and is set against the possible end of the world. I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun writing as I have writing this.

I’ve learned how to cope with fewer than five hours of sleep each night. I think most creative people struggle to balance their creative output with the happy obligations of family life, and some probably succeed more spectacularly than I have, and some probably fail miserably and set their children up for decades of resentment. I’ve been reluctant to spend my waking hours on creative projects, because those are hours that I desperately enjoy spending with my wife and daughter. So I’ve committed my sleeping hours to my creative projects, and so far, it’s been okay.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m not a machine, and I’m usually a little tired. But I’m also squeezing a ton of work out of those few hours that I make a grab for, and the work is good, I think.

In any case, this is probably why this week’s Eleanor is a day late. My apologies, and happy new year!

Well, happy new year! With today’s post, Eleanor bids farewell to 2012, and wishes you all the best for ’13!

Each day I use a little iPhone app called Timehop. It tells me what sort of things I was posting on my social networks on this day one, two, three, four, etc., years ago. This year’s a little special, because at this time last year, Felicia and I were bringing home our little Squish from the hospital. Timehop is full of new baby photos. Emma wrapped in this blanket or that blanket. She’s sleeping here, she’s sleeping there. We’re tired but glowy-looking.

Fast-forward a year. Emma’s first birthday party was Saturday (though her birthday was a few days before that, she didn’t notice), and our families came together to celebrate and watch her pound a cupcake into fun, sticky birthday mash. And last night, as her grandma was preparing to fly back home after her week-long visit, Emma decided it was time to stand up on her own.

For more than an hour, she scooted this way and that, dropped into downward-facing dog, then struggled to her feet. Sometimes she’d pitch right back onto her bottom. Sometimes she’d have to catch herself so she didn’t fall on her face. But several times she stood on shaky knees, arms straight up in the air in a classic gymnast’s finish, and for three or four seconds, she stood.

When she dropped back to the floor, the first thing she would do is go Oof. The second thing she would do is applaud herself.

My little girl’s growing up fast! And that makes Chapter 3 even more special to me, because every frame of Eleanor that I’ve drawn is one that reminds me of Emma, and is sometimes even inspired by her.

Happy Monday!

This week’s comic was delayed for a couple of days due to a site outage, but here she is. It’s possible this is one of my favorite pages, for reasons purely my own.

It occurs to me that there are just days I don’t have all that much to write here. I’m doing a lot of writing elsewhere, though, so perhaps that balances things a bit. For example, I’m working on a quick novel submission for Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Contest. I had considered just completing the Eleanor manuscript and submitting that, but generally novels that are difficult to describe aren’t the ones who win these sorts of things.

So I’m trying my hand at popular fiction, which I’ve never really done before. I’ve got to write 50,000 words by January 14, and I’m about ten percent finished. There’s a long way to go, and very little time in which to finish. The top four prizes all involve publication and an advance, but even if my book doesn’t place, I think I’ll see if there are any interested publishers. It’s been years since I sent manuscripts around, but if this one’s good, I think it’ll be fun to do it again.

In any case, happy belated Monday! I hope you like today’s page as much as I do.

One of the more interesting reveals about Agnes’s story is that her valley is so deeply connected to her daughter. Now, with the valley destroyed (see Chapter 2), Agnes must contend with reality on reality’s terms.

Which means that this chapter’s going to get pretty interesting for Agnes (who only occasionally seems equipped for reality’s challenges).

I’m not entirely happy with how this page came out, I must say, but it does lead to next week’s page, which I’m excited to share. I may not be able to wait a week!

Happy Monday!

We’ve certainly been jumping around in Eleanor’s timeline quite a bit, haven’t we? But from here it’s mostly forward until morning, or whatever’s coming her way. I like today’s page quite a bit, if only because Agnes has transformed into an angry sailor.

This weekend I finished coloring and lettering page 76, so the hits keep coming. Lots of arguments in this chapter, and not necessarily always centering around Agnes.

Though she’s certainly got some damage in her future.

Not to spoil anything for you.

Hope everybody had a terrific Thanksgiving! Welcome back, and I hope angry Agnes is a great start to your post-holiday week.

Interestingly enough, each arc of Eleanor’s story has corresponded to some similar event in my own life. I was drawing Agnes’s pregnancy during my wife’s own, for example, or later in this chapter, Eleanor’s adventures as a baby are inspired a bit by my daughter’s own. And while I drew this page back in February, I’m sharing it now while our own Oregon winter is settling in. There’s no snow, just an awful lot of very cold rain, but it’s close enough.

In any case, I’m back up and running! I took about three months off, and in that time, I resigned my job in California, accepted a new one in Oregon, packed up my family and pets, and moved us all a thousand miles north. But it’s nice to be back at the drafting table, pushing out new pages. For the duration of Chapter 3, we’ll be back on schedule, at least.

Happy Monday, everyone!