This last week has been a week of ups and down. I started by receiving news that a children’s story I wrote did not win a contest. Water off a duck’s back, right? I wish. This was a piece that I loved and it absolutely crushed me. I wish I didn’t, but I am human after all…..By far, this is not the end for my piece ( I plan on querying  agents and publishing house this weekend).

This was followed by very exciting news, I can’t wait to share. Speak Easy Art center has hired me to teach creative play writing. This is still in the works, but I will fill you in more when the details come in.

And then another low. One of my favorite journals, I fear has become pay to publish. I won’t call them out. But they started an “editing”  company and well…you get the picture…..

And then on the heals of that sorrow,  word of my two guest posts being accepted reached me.

As you can imagine, I left Illinois then for Indiana and the promise of giant Garfield statues and comic convention fun emotionally exhausted.

My trip to the Garfield statues, only made the situation worse.

It was an amazing trip, really neat and informative, but Erika and I  in our horrible planning, had only though the trail would take an hour or two. Four hours later and nine Garfield statues later, Erika and I were exhausted and frankly not really looking forward to spending all day tomorrow at a comic book convention.

Begrudgingly in the morning, both of us, exhausted and weary-eyed prepared our costumes for Kokomo Con.

It was a disaster of sorts. I had originally planned to wear a wig for my costume, but the 10 dollar Walmart wig failed miserably. So Erika and I resorted to using spray-in hair spay

By the end, it looked as though we had murdered someone in our hotel room my hair was a giant rock of red, but with a little engineering of a shower cap, we were able to shape and make the hair work.  Still, the frustration added to my apprehension.

But once I reached the Kokomo Convention all the troubles of the week quickly melted away.The convention was amazing. But what inspired me the most was the amount of independent writers and cartoonists there.

As many of you may know, I once had a graphic novel planned. However, after I took the time to write out the story, my partner bailed because he wanted more out of our partnership than I was giving to give.

This had soured me on the experience of working with other artists to complete the project or start on the new ones that I have been plotting.

But, after talking with all of my fellow artist, I am re inspired. Soon I will be launching another WordPress page (ok a few months) to announce one of the projects.

But I have a few more in mind. And if you know any visual artist who would like to be part of a fun project send them my way! I hope that by this time next year, Ill have a  tiny booth at Kokomo Con!

Thank you Kokomo Con! It was a great chance to meet with other artist and lovers of comics.

cutest costume ever

snack attack

The capts….