Looking for the Silver Lining!

I said I was going to cut the negative stuff, but man, today was hard to ignore it!

I'm not going to dwell on it, but I am going to make it be known. Today I had a couple of problems I won't go into, but there are two that I will.

First off, as you all know I've been lettering comics for several months now. I just got paid in advance for a few pages, and I got a couple of those pages today. Then it happened. For some unknown reason Illustrator just quit on me. I have uninstalled/reinstalled, downloaded updates, deleted stuff to free up memory, you name it. Still won't work. I'm waiting to hear back from tech support, so hopefully I'll get this resolved soon. It's just frustrating as all get out. Not to mention I'm up for about three other lettering jobs and if this doesn't get fixed promptly I'm going to have a bigger problem.

In addition to that I had some good news, then better news, then bad news all on the same subject.

I don't know if I mentioned it here yet, but I am lettering an entry in the Small Press Idol contest sponsored by the SPA and Dimestore Productions called The Kansas Hit, written by Cary Kelley and illustrated by Jerry Loomis. I found out recently, after days of suspense, that since I am only lettering this entry I am allowed to enter a project of my own! That's the good news.

The better news came when out of the blue an artist I've worked with on a couple of other things emails me and asks me if I want to enter the same contest with him! So I'm stoked thinking this is like fate or something, right? Wrong.

The bad news is after showing the artist three story ideas, two of which he liked, he informs me that a buddy that helps him print his comics asked him to enter with him, so I'm out. I'm not mad at the guy. I can even kind of understand. It's just frustrating and a bit of a let down.


Aside from all that drama, I am looking for the silver lining, and I'm finding it here and there. The aforementioned lettering gigs are part of the silver lining if I can fix the Illustrator problem. The fact I can enter the SPA contest and think I have some good concepts for it are part of the silver lining. And the fact that I recently got some beautiful colors back for my story in an upcoming fantasy anthology from Ronin Studios that I mentioned a few posts back is part of that silver lining.

So it's not that I'm being all negative, and it's not so much that these negatives I listed are outweighing the good (the unmentioned problems aside). It was just a frustrating day that has really ticked me off. Ah well. I'm sure I'll find a good artist to work on this with especially since I'm considering sharing the rights. I just hope the Illustrator problem gets fixed so I can continue lettering, which is something I really enjoy.

Some other stuff going on...

Speakeasy closed, and that's a sad thing. Not at all unexpected though. I didn't personally like their deal and thought, like most, that they were expanding way too fast. It's a shame everybody's books can't get published, but unless you're Image or Dark Horse you have to be really picky about what to spend the cash on until you're more established. I just hope the best books Speakeasy had find homes.

Speaking of which, this week a title that was supposed to come out from Speakeasy this month (March), The Black Coat, will be featured in my column Sunday and in an interview on the same site sometime this week. I have seen the art and I was blown away. It's really spectacular looking.

Just so I can tease you a bit, in a couple of weeks in my other column, Myth Conceptions, Jay Faerber gives a few comments on the subject at hand!

So yeah, there's silver lining here and there. ;)

B-Out