Category Archives: Musings

Christmas and Not Dead Yet

26 Sunday Dec 2021

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Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge

I can’t believe it’s Christmas, 2021. So much has happened this year. I can’t believe it’s been more than a year since my last blog post. All right, I can believe the last part. It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve been busy doing all sorts of things. There are certain years in one’s life that are transformative. Almost alchemical. You know as you’re passing through them that they are shaping you, and you’ll be very different when you come out the other side. “Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed….”

What is different? Well, I’m further in my Creative Writing MFA at UBC. I only have one semester of classes left, though my thesis is certainly going to take longer. The classes have been intriguing. A fiction class that has helped crystallize the parts of my writing that need more work, a graphic novel class that has inspired me to try creating a collage comic strip entirely myself instead of relying on someone else to draw it, a teaching creative writing class that has shown me how I can be a better teacher, and a writing for children class that has shown me that the Welsh King Arthur story I want to write would work very well as a YA book.

In addition, I got married to the love of my life, published my anthology on mental health with Cloudscape Comics, and have continued to teach at Langara (and been developing my teaching techniques there). Also the stress of work, school, and the global pandemic have forced me to lose myself in new interests. I’ve gotten very engaged in the various elaborate and creative fashion choices of haute couture (especially the mythology-inspired stuff of Thierry Mugler and Guo Pei), and I’ve finally got involved in social media.

It’s a weird moment to basically sit up and say “Are you telling me that there are people on the Internet interested in talking about 1980s role-playing games, 1990s Marvel trading cards, 1930s horror movies, and general factoids of superhero comics and mythology?” Of course intellectually I knew that to be true, though it took this year to emotionally realize it. I’m actually retweeting people, engaging in twitter discussions, following podcasts (especially the erudite yet hilarious Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow! podcast for the Excalibur comic), that sort of thing. In particular, I’ve gotten engaged in the network of folklore-related hashtags (#MythologyMonday, #FairyTaleTuesday, #WyrdWednesday, #FolkloreThursday, #FaustianFriday, etc.), in which every week on the day of the relevant hashtag, you post factoids relevant to their current theme. It’s bizarre how marvelous it has felt to post folklore factoids and read what others have posted – quick consumption of obscure mythic facts is certainly my biggest addiction. It’s such a soothing experience to be in communication with so many people deeply nostalgic about the same things I am. It seems like a weird thing to fixate on, but considering how important nostalgia and pop culture factoids are in my life — there it is. The world is a frightening and chaotic place.

I am expanding my interests to new areas, perfecting my writing prowess, and moving forward with my life. Right now I’m still overwhelmed with MFA-related stuff, so I’m certainly not relaxed. But it is nice to know that through all this I am becoming a more engaged person. I am building a community of associates, getting more involved in more interests, and of course soon I’ll have a nice MFA degree to be proud of. I am being changed, and it is nice.

Happy holidays!

10 Greatest Horror Comics

18 Sunday Dec 2016

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My 10 greatest horror comics (in no real order):
  1. MW by Osamu Tezuka
  2. From Hell by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell
  3. Uzumaki by Junji Ito
  4. Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoet
  5. Black Hole by Charles Burns
  6. Through the Woods by Emily Carroll
  7. The Sleep of Reason by various artists
  8. Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits by Garth Ennis & Will Simpson
  9. Hellboy by Mike Mignola
  10. Swamp Thing: American Gothic by Alan Moore & Steve Bissette.

As with previous lists, I’ve generally tried to avoid a series that runs on for a long time, as that’s hard to properly judge (Hellboy being the one exception). Which is why I specifically picked the best Hellblazer and Swamp Thing story. As much I was tempted to, I didn’t include Warren’s Creepy and Eerie, because, though they had many awesome stories, they also featured many that weren’t so great.

Writing my current novel

01 Thursday Dec 2016

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So here I am plugging away at my current novel — an occult mystery set in Victoria, BC, exploring a lot of the city’s urban legends. It’s one I’ve been involved with, on and off, for a year. Sadly, various things keep coming up to distract me from it: work, the regular chores of life, other writing projects that seem a little more time sensitive.

I just finished editing a fantasy novella (in the process changing the place from being Italian Renaissance-inspired to Ancient Egypt-inspired), and rather than patting myself on the back and giving myself some time off to celebrate, I leaped back into Guardian of the Garden City. Because I need to get that done. I’m in a place where I feel I can’t rest on my laurels. I can’t enjoy my successes but have to push forward to the next success. I have to keep going.

In the last year, I have:

  1. Won the Gene Day award for an anthology I edited, planned, and co-wrote: Epic Canadiana #2. 
  2. Finished the aforementioned Egyptian novella.
  3. Got a comic about sasquatches (drawn by the amazing Eric Johnson) published in Pulp Literature. 
  4. Seen Cloudscape’s latest anthology, Bones of the Coast, do phenomenally well in Kickstarter. Oh, and I have a story published in that too!
  5. Oh, and I have been running Unknown Armies, my favourite rpg of all time, and the players seem to be really enjoying that.

So, most people have been telling me that creatively I seem to be having a decent amount of success. It’s not like I’m in a rut or anything. And when I see that list, it looks pretty good. The whole world seems to be going to Hell (Trump, Brexit, the death of Umberto Eco), but I seem to be doing okay for myself.

And yet… emotionally I still do feel like I’m in a rut. That I can’t accomplished what I need. I still focus on what I didn’t do, not what I did do. I don’t focus on the fact that I got “Curse of the Woods” published in Pulp Literature, but on the fact that it’s the only thing I got published in a magazine this year. I don’t focus on the fact that I finished editing Servant of the People, but that I have not yet finished writing Guardian of the Garden City. It’s not that everyone seems to have a good time at my Unknown Armies games, but that I often feel the adventures do not have as good an arc as they’re supposed to. I can recognize what I’m doing intellectually, but it’s hard to respond to that emotionally.

I read a really interesting interview on the Mental Illness Happy Hour, where the comedian Paul F. Tompkins was interviewed about his depression. He pointed out that it’s impossible for all our wishes to be granted, and if somehow they were, we’d go insane and just demand further and further things. We’d become Howard Hughes walking around with boxes for shoes, Salvador Dali demanding giraffes, all the rock stars filling their mansions with drugs. All their sane wishes came true, so they had to start focusing on insane ones. The key to happiness to learn how to be satisfied with what we have rather than always wanting everything to be perfect. Because if somehow things became perfect, our brains would break.

It’s something that’s much easier to accept intellectually than emotionally.

Importance of Balance

16 Wednesday Oct 2013

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One of the constant things in my life, in the lives of many freelancers, is the constant quest for balance. I, of course, have a lot of work I need to do for my clients, but I also have work I need to do branding and networking my own business, work I need to do for Cloudscape Comics, personal writing projects, an d networking with other creative individuals. That’s a lot of stuff on my plate and it’s hard to feel happy about accomplishing any one of them when there’s always so much more on the list yet to do. I may have finished a website for a client but my blog is out of date, I have five business contacts to reconnect with, I haven’t looked at my novel in a month, and I need to read a book before I return it to a friend. How does one deal with all that?

The most common recommendation people give is setting aside particular times or days for particular activities. Most of my networking and personal branding is done the morning. That’s when I like to meet with clients, attend events, answer my emails, work on my blog. Of course, sometimes that’s not possible and the afternoon or evening will have to do, but whenever possible I choose the morning.

Then I have lunch and after lunch, that’s when I do work for clients. I write their websites, plan their commercials, edit their brochures, and what have you. If I’m lucky, all of that will be done by dinnertime and after dinner I’ll be able to work on my more interesting creative projects – comics, my novel, scripts or what have you. And then if I’m really really lucky, I get to read for an hour or two before bed.

Then Friday evenings and most of Saturday or gently put aside for spending quality time with my girlfriend while all of Sunday (and sometimes Saturday evenings) are once again put aside for creative projects.

This isn’t a perfect system and various times I’ve had to switch things around but as a whole it’s working out okay.

I’ve found the most useful part is giving myself particular blocks of time in which I need to be working on particular tasks. For example, requiring me to devote four hours that afternoon to a person’s website or three hours to a brochure. I find my intention is much more focused on an assignment when it’s within these proscribed hours and I’m also less distracted by other stuff. And then when I’m finished, I can turn to something else with a much clearer mind. It’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned when figuring-out how to best develop myself as a freelance writer.

That and to treat myself as a client who deserves as much attention and effort as my other clients. Sadly, scheduling time to work on my own business and making sure I’m not sacrificing that to meet my other demands is something I still need to work on.

Old Clients

09 Wednesday Oct 2013

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So a client that I did work for more than a year and a half ago recently contacted me to ask if I was interested in doing some work for one of her clients, a web developer who is, not surprisingly, working with people who need websites done. Website writing is certainly something I’ve done a lot and as I had enjoyed working with her on the first project, I was excited to be working with her again. An interesting experience that reminded me you never know where connections can go or when someone you met decides they want to see you strut your stuff.

I probably have an edge in all this because I’ve noticed that copywriting is not the most common profession in the city. Anyone who’s involved with any busy networking in Vancouver is going to know plenty of accountants, web designers, lawyers, etc. But I rarely bump into another copywriter and so there’s a decent chance that I’m the only copywriter a particular person will know and thus the first on their mind if they hear someone needs some good writing done. Maybe something for themselves or for a friend of friend or maybe many moons down the line they notice my business card crumpled in the back of their wallet and decide to give me a call. Networking is often a long game. You have to be patient because you never know what will happen and you never know when it’ll happen. Dedication and diligence are probably the two most important traits for freelancers but patience is pretty high up there too.

Cloudscape & Me

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

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Cloudscape Comics
If you know almost anything about me, you probably know that I’m part of Cloudscape Comics, a local group of comic book creators that publishes a yearly anthology of our work, has regular Wednesday meetings, and engages in a lot of different events throughout the city. There’s a lot going on there. Just last month, we had the launch of our seventh graphic novel anthology, Waterlogged, at the Maritime Museum and a great crowd of people showed up. This week we’re also putting the finishing touches on Epic Canadiana, an anthology of Canadian superhero stories edited entirely by me, and we’re already planning our next anthology, Mega Fauna. That’s not counting the Halloween party we’re preparing, the events we’re doing, the classes we’re teaching, the conventions we’re attending.

In the last year or so, Cloudscape has become a juggernaut, expanding far beyond the original confines of the group. When I first became a member, it was often hard to engage enough people to push forward any project that fell outside the yearly anthology while now we have a host of members who aren’t just interested in the organization as a venue for publishing their stories but are actually interested in the organization for itself. Thanks to their investment, Cloudscape has grown on numerous levels.

Few things make me as proud as being part of Cloudscape. My life would be very different and much less rich today if it wasn’t for the organization. Most of my best artist collaborations have come from people I’ve connected to through Cloudscape, many of my own stories that I’m most proud of have been published through Cloudscape’s anthologies, I count many of my closest friends as Cloudscape members, and of course I met my girlfriend, the multitalented Reetta Linjama, through the organization. Cloudscape has given me so much and I like to think that I’m doing my part to give back to it in return. There’s numerous other things happening on the horizon with Cloudscape and I look forward to being a part of them.

The Excitement of Editing English

27 Monday Aug 2012

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The owner of AGEA Bookkeeping and Accounting Services hired me to edit her website. As English is her second language, she wanted to bring in an outside adviser to make certain that her grammar and vocab were correct and effective and that everything flowed together. I spent many years teaching people essay-writing and ESL, and so have a lot of experience assisting people in expressing their ideas when they lack a perfect understanding of the language. It’s a very positive experience to help people reorganize their ideas and say what they want to say.

I help people to communicate and communication is such a powerful gift.

My Batman Movie

30 Monday Jul 2012

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Well, I saw Dark Knight Rises, and I didn’t like it. Dull, convoluted, numerous plot holes, and a very uninteresting villain. After Dark Knight came out, I spent a lot of time thinking about what the third Batman movie should be like, and honestly, all the ideas I had would have made better movies than what we were given:

1. Mad Hatter. The first idea I had was the Mad Hatter, always one of my favourite Batman villains (as long as they make his obsession Lewis Carroll instead of hats). In the comics, he’s a master of mind-control computer technology, but my Mad Hatter is a former chemist who became homeless after he got fired, becoming a mad vagrant in a battered top-hat talking to his invisible friends. He gets his hands on some of the Scarecrow’s fear gas and reverse engineers it, modifying it so it creates hallucinations of happiness and joy instead of fear. The Mad Hatter decides to improve everyone’s life by turning Gotham into a lovely wonderland, filling the city with his chemicals so that everyone becomes trapped in the same euphoric dream world that has become the Mad Hatter’s existence. Batman must separate fact from fiction as he fights his way through this mad wonderland.

2. Batman R.I.P. Grant Morrison is my favourite comic writer and he had a brilliant run on Batman that includes “Batman R.I.P.”, in which our dark knight confronted perhaps the greatest Batman villain created in the last two decades. Dr. Hurt knows Batman’s secret identity, he knows most of Batman’s secrets, and he decides to take Batman’s soul apart piece by piece. He makes people believe that Bruce Wayne’s parents and Alfred participated in demonic rituals invoking a demon-bat, then takes on Thomas Wayne’s identity. He tries to make Batman believe that his father faked his death and is now the leader of a criminal Satanic cult which has been manipulating Batman over his entire career. He shatters Bruce’s reputation and faith in himself, seeking to crush his spirit before he crushes Batman’s body. It’s a brilliant piece, and would fit so perfectly into Nolan’s “Bat-Verse.” Bruce’s involvement with a shadow cult, the increased importance of Thomas Wayne to Gotham, Bruce’s phobia of bats, and the fact that the Waynes were murdered after watching a an opera featuring people dressed as bat-demons makes this story be the perfect climax of Nolan’s series. Besides which, “Batman R.I.P.” is a far better name for the movie concluding the franchise than “Dark Knight Rises” is.

3. Bane. I’m not a fan of Bane. I find him to be overrated, annoying, and uninteresting. But if I had to use him, if someone told me “make me a Batman movie with Bane,” then I’d up the crazy and the venom, and move him away from the whole “I’ll break the Bat” shtick, because we’ve really seen it before. I’d focus on use of “Venom,” an addictive drug that gives people superhuman strength, and have Bane selling it on the black market. Numerous gang-members and other criminals start shooting-up with Venom in order to try and take down Batman. Gotham explodes with drug-addicted costumed supervillains, a bunch of weirdos high on Venom, wearing whatever bizarre costumes match their own obsession. Pandemonium ensues.

In all humbleness, any of these would make a really sweet movie.