A lovely shot of Mount Fuji at Dusk from my building. What’s new here? I am hip deep into Uglies 2, which I think it is safe to say is kicking my ass. With big pointy shoes. It is going to be along remaining 124 pages, and May can’t come soon enough. But that is the price you pay for filling up each page with kick ass art.
My attempts at enticing people to work with me here is slowing down due to Uglies, a sucky situation but a worthy trade off. The same goes for writing short stories; several are either plotted out or are being written, but once again I need to prioritize Uglies so everything is on hold.
In case anyone is interested out there, I have some cool news about Uglies 1. The release date has been moved forward to the end of February 2012, so please go out and pick up a couple dozen copies and tell a couple million of your friends about it.
Back to art for me.
It has been a busy couple of weeks lately. Uglies 1 is done, Uglies 2 is well underway, for some reason I am in the sad position to turn down work offers (they only come in waves when I am unable to take them…) and I am getting over last week’s string of meetings for Udon. The weather has turned south and things are getting cold and leaves are falling.
In my spare time I am still writing and looking forward to getting back to some original work once U2 is completed. SF action is one of my favorites and I have been laying out a short story for a while now and I hope to go back and rework a stalled pitch to take to new publishers. Busy busy busy. I am thinking about maybe finding an art assistant to help get some of these things off the ground. But in the meantime, I must draw!!!
Just got back from a week long (or so) trip to Kyoto to relax and unwind from Uglies volume 1 and try and mentally prepare for Uglies volume 2 (yes, Uglies fans, you heard me right!). Managed to see some castles, some temples, even some churches. Saw the ocean, saw lots of rice fields, managed to run into one of the guys who normally delivers stuff to my home while in Osaka. Oh, and a monkey sat on my head.
With the little down time I have I have been working on a new short story to hopefully pitch someone here and trying to get as much done on the story before I get into Uglies 2 full time. It’s fun to lay stories out, to see them come to life, 1 panel at a time. And tomorrow, the last day off I have before starting back in on Scott Westerfeld’s world, I am off to another editorial meeting. Fingers are crossed and prayers are on my lips, ready to go. But as I prepared to type this I looked up at the calendar on the wall and realized, holy crap, it’s already October…?!? Never enough time to get everything done that has to be done.
See you all in May when Uglies 1 comes out.
I finished Uglies last week, got it all scanned and off to the relevant people. It felt good to be done; like I had run a marathon with Ankle weights on. And to celebrate the end of such a major chunk of work and the beginning of the second Uglies book I went to Sumo. Nothing like seeing fat men beat the poo out of each other to really put you in the mood to draw. And yes, I did say that, there is a second volume of Uglies on the drawing board (literally in this case).
I also finished some writing that has been hanging over my head for 5 or 6 weeks now last weekend as well. I can’t tell you how good it feels to be done with all of that. But no more sumo for while, so I will have to find another way to celebrate that victory.
The other day I was walking around with my family in Yokohama when I came across a store selling all kinds of card and roleplaying games. Basically, it was the same as an American comic book store with only the non comic book parts. Really cool. I went in an poked around a while, ignoring the rude glances from the guy behind the counter and eventually my eyes fell on a bottom shelf. On it was the original D&D boxed set from the mid 70′s in all of its glory. I have never actually seen that before, only having heard of its supposed nerdy awesomeness, so I picked it up and asked the guy behind the counter if I could take a picture to show to some friends back stateside. He immediately began calling his boss to “ask” if that was ok, but in reality he was asking for help as another employee suddenly appeared to hang around and also shoot nasty glances my way. It was about that point that I figured out why. The price tag on the item was something that when put into dollars would have been over $600. I think they thought I was planning on coming back and stealing the item or whatever. I played the part of the dumb foreigner and quietly left.
It’s 9/12 so I can give my thoughts on 9/11. When the terror attacks happened I was living in Japan, a grad student at Daito Bunka Daigaku, and it was late at night when my phone started ringing. More importantly it was already 9/12 for me. The call was from my family back in America and I decided to ignore it and go to sleep, being around midnight or maybe 1 or 2. My family was calling and in the three or four years I had been living in Japan they had yet to figure out the time difference. So I ignored the call and tried to go back to sleep, but the phone kept ringing and ringing. When I finally answered it was my brother calling to tell me that America was under attack and I should turn on the TV. I didn’t know what to believe so I did expecting some natural disaster and instead saw the towers going down. Or maybe it was one of the jumpers falling, and then the towers going down. I don’t remember exactly, but it was a disturbing series of images.
I woke up my girlfriend (now my lovely wife) and my friend Egg who was staying with me at the time and we all watched the news for hours before trying to go back to sleep. After seeing all the terrible news on TV I half expected to have trouble going back to sleep but once my head hit the pillow I was out. No dreams, thankfully. Just sleep. My friend Egg left Japan a few days later but the groundings were still in place and he got stuff in Canada for a few days.
I decided to quit school soon after that. Some of the commie professors (I know people joke about academics being huge lefties, but in Japan it is truly the case) were laughing about all the Americans who died, that they deserved it and now that America was taken down a few pegs the world would be a better place. A better place because Islamic extremists were hellbent on killing the peace loving world? In their minds that logic made scene only because they were the kind of people that actually believed stupid stuff like “North Korea actually IS a worker’s paradise…”.
And now that 10 years have passed I have had ample time to sit in Church and be exhorted to forgive and love. I try, but honestly it is hard at times when I see footage of the towers going down and the aftermath. I hope and pray that the healing will come for all of us and the world can get back to a happier place. No more fighting, no more bombs. Just people getting about their lives. I am off to get about mine. Go be about yours and try and forgive the hate that hit NYC this day 10 years ago.
I was out all day at publishing meetings yesterday and now I am nothing but tired. In order to be able to get out and have time to talk yesterday I had a get up super early to draw my page for the day, meaning I was up and working hours before I normally would. Not fun, but successful meetings are always awesome, like rolling a nat 20 at the last moment and saving the party( you need to be REALLY nerdy to get that last line…). Here are some photos of yesterday along with some from a trip to the Tokyo Edo Museum where we got to enjoy really nice exhibits of Japan’s past and ice cream. Really really big ice cream.
So my Del Rey book is approaching the end and I am thinking of what is next. The subject of another book has come up once or twice and I can’t say that I am opposed to the idea of doing another volume. But that will only take a couple of months to do, so what is next… that is what I keep returning to in my head. I have been laying out short stories lately for fun, but I think maybe I should just do some of them when the whole Uglies series is over. If I can work out the details I will mention it here so all of you (and by all of you I mean the two or three people who read this regularly) can get your hands on it.
Other than that, it is summer, it is hot, and we seem to be having a lot of earthquakes again. Yesterday shook for what seemed like the entire day leaving with a weird floating sensation.
More random Tokyo pictures:
San Diego is come and gone. By the power of Grayskull I will be there next year!
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