For the last year, I’ve been on a bit of a bit of a journey of self-discovery.

Well, I don’t know how truthful that is. One’s entire life should really be a journey of self-discovery. But it’s been particularly prevalent in the last year.

So to start with, a bit of a story: I am not the most stable person in the world (then, who is really?). I’ve had some very dark times when I wasn’t sure if I was going to emerge out on the other side or be swallowed up by the darkness around me. This lasted for over ten years, dominating my teen years and early twenties.

I finally started to emerge from it around the time I hit twenty-five. Then it became a matter of, now that I’ve gotten out of that darkness, what do I want to do with myself?

The answer has always been there. There has been one thing and one thing only I ever wanted to do with my life. I wanted to write stories. And it’s something I’ve always done. Since I could form words, I’ve been making up fantastical stories. Playing with Barbies or action figures (sometimes at the same time) was always a complex storyline that needed to be played out. When I was able to write, I began to craft stories.

Not many people are gifted with the knowledge of the one thing they were meant to do. I was. And for thirty years, I’ve been honing my craft.

Even during my dark days, I still wrote stories. Yes, they were all fan fiction based on other people’s characters… But I never had a problem with it. I was creating and that was all that mattered to me.

But too much of a good thing eventually turns on itself. I got myself into a comfortable rut where there was no room for advancement. When I decided something needed to change, I went about to change it.

I decided there was one story I really wanted to tell. It was the story of an average, geeky girl who gets thrown into a world of the supernatural. I just need to know how to tell this story.

Being a geek and a life-long comic fan, I went to a convention where the topic of One More Day– the then-current controversial Spider-Man storyline was being discussed. I was bitter about Mary Jane Watson-Parker– a well-rounded and fully formed important female character being relegated to the background of the Spider-Man series by the new change. I was feeling a particular amount of feminist rage at the time, having just read Marvel Divas– a Sex and the City takeoff (several years after Sex and the City had any relevance) meant to try and draw women into comics. Except women were already into comics. They were just systematically being insulted by the removal of established characters and insulting books that were meant to appeal to us, but still being written by men. I got into a rather heated argument with an artist who shall remain nameless and said, very exasperated “What about your female readers?”. He replied tersely, “Girls don’t read comics. We don’t market to them.”

I was angry. When I become angry about something, I become a pitbull. Rather than turn my back on something and say that if they don’t want me, screw em, I’ll go into attack. I have every right to be there and I will be there. I’ll make myself be known.

The story I had been crafting– originally planned as a novel– became a comic book known as The Otherkind. The subject matter suited itself to a comic and I was excited. I was eager.

Not having anyone who was interested in doing it, I decided to do the art for myself. I was decent with a pencil… What could it hurt to try?

It was hard. I poured my blood, sweat and tears into the comic. But eventually I succeeded. When the book was done, I had one hundred and fifty copies printed up and I took it to several conventions. It did okay business, not great. The conventions were stressful for me. After most of them, I ended up in tears due to the stress.

The one convention that was really notable was Small Press Expo down in Bethesda. Nothing incredibly remarkable happened there– aside from guest of honour Gahan Wilson saying my art was beautiful. What made the convention something that would change my life was the people I met. I was alone at the mixer for the artists the night before the convention, a woman around my age approached me and asked me if I wanted to hang out with her and her friends. This was Sarah Martinez of Interrobang Comics. To fans of my collaborator, she is probably better known as Kevin Bolk’s fiancee.

I had an instant kinship with the folks from Interrobang. These were folks who were no different than I was and they were trying to do exactly what I was. We bonded over that weekend. I ended up coming to their Christmas party a few months later and spending a week as the guest of Kevin and Sarah. Wanting to maintain my friendship with them and get me work out there, I scheduled conventions in their area and usually, we had tables next to each other.

I continued to work on The Otherkind and– inspired by Kevin’s I’m My Own Mascot and Erika Moen’s DAR! A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary– I decided to embark upon my own autobiographical comic.

My story was not a gag-a-day quick glimpse of my life but rather a chronicle of my journey into the world of Indie comic creation. Creator Confidential was a meta-analysis of my insecurities and shortcomings. While my elder brother appeared in the comic frequently, he rarely said things my brother actually said. Rather, he was the dark voice inside myself. Why did I use my older brother? Well, what else are elder brothers for other than giving you a good smack of reality when you’re getting too big for your britches?

With two series on the go, you would think I would be satisfied. But I had more ideas I wanted to get out there. Being very into Japanese rock, I decided to write a short comic exploring that world and its fangirls. It was a laugh and something I thought might go over well at anime conventions. Bishounen Boys Who Sing (and the Women Who Love Them) would explore fangirls in a way that always fascinated me.

My biggest break in comics came from idle chatter on the way to a convention. I’d been plotting a comic based on the then-new Star Trek movie. I had wanted to do a story based on taking the cheesy conventions from the original series and putting them in the new, darker universe. One of the plots would see a perfect, idealized girl ending up on the crew and having them not be able to stand her. I became much more interested in writing this story than anything else, so I cut everything else away. I began to write the script and called it Ensign Sue Must Die!. I mentioned it to Kevin through AIM and he thought it sounded hilarious. The next time I saw him, we were driving down to a convention and we discussed my story. He expressed an interest in doing the art.

I can’t tell you what this meant to me. Yes, Kevin was my friend, but he was also someone I admired greatly. I thought his art was amazing and he was really getting out there and trying to get things done. He had a million other projects in the works, but he thought my script was good enough to get his time.

Not to mention, I’d planned on ripping off his art style anyway. Just with a lot less talent behind it.

Having Kevin on Sue elevated the project. He punched up the script and his artwork was genius. I was so proud by how that comic came out. And readers responded to it with as much enthusiasm as we had for it. People loved it. It was written up on Trek sites. Even Simon Pegg Tweeted that it was funny. Simon fucking Pegg. It meant the world that people appreciated it.

Of course, ego gets in the way. It always stung that Kevin got most of the credit for Sue. What made it worse was… I knew he deserved it.

Kevin worked hard punching up my initial script and his artwork takes him ages and was sublime. Not to mention he brought his massive fanbase to the party. So as much as I loved– and still love– Sue, it never felt mine. Not only was it a title that was associated more with my co-conspirator, but it was based on someone else’s stuff.

I attempted a couple of other series. I had come up with a movie script. Entitled Women in Refrigerators, it was the tale of four geek girls working in various areas in the comic world. I really liked the idea. It was the type of geek movie I had never seen. It was focused on girls. Usually, geek girls in movies are simply Hollywood hotties in glasses who never get to act as awkward as their male counterparts.

But I was a comic book writer and artist… Wasn’t I? Why was I working on a movie script when I should be focusing on comics.

It is available in viagra generic uk mint, pineapple, strawberry, orange, banana and mint. It helps in spiritual growth buy canadian viagra of the mind while you both tackle this problem. Minerals such as viagra online prescription zinc and calcium, as well as the old user to follow the directions of usage and only for the time when the medicine is taken by the user, the chemical quickly reaches penile area and start the functions. The gallbladder is suffering, Check This Out purchase generic levitra and often surgery is the proposed solution. I ended up gutting Refrigerators. I took out the plot (and the lead character) and focused instead of altered versions of the supporting cast. It became known as No Special Snowflake.

I liked No Special Snowflake. I think it was a decent story. But I was starting to grow tired of writing comics.

No. I have to be honest. I was getting tired of drawing comics.

Drawing has never been my strong suit. I can do all right, but it’s hard and my drawings have little flow to them. My ability to tell a proper story through my drawings was never quite there. And this made my storytelling suffer. I was writing to my weaknesses. I deliberately left things out because I knew I wasn’t able to draw them.

I wasn’t having fun with things. I know it’s supposed to be work, but you should get some joy out of it. The Otherkind was never going to be the story I wanted to tell, because I couldn’t draw it well enough to do it.

I’ve been told by many friends and family that Creator Confidential is their favourite work out of my catalogue. It was personal while still being incredibly funny.

I loved doing Creator Confidential. But along the way, it stopped being the cathartic release of my frustrations from my work. Instead, I was making fun of myself on a weekly basis. I was picking apart every single one of my insecurities for comedy.

No Special Snowflake felt like what so many other people were doing, just with a tiny twist.

I was floundering. And it’s not like I had a massive following begging me to continue. I had nine books to my name and the only thing that really got people’s attention was something that I hadn’t drawn.

I’ve had several artist friends– Kevin included– tell me that if I just worked on my art, I could do what I wanted.

The only thing was, I didn’t want to work on it. The art was not my passion. It was a means to an end.

For something that difficult, you have to have real passion for it. I just don’t have that in me.

Coming to terms with that was hard. I’d already spent years and thousands of dollars on trying to be a comic writer and artist. I tried to force myself through it, but I ended up melting down spectacularly and spiralled into a deep depression.

I ended up falling into the comfortable and the familiar. I had become enamoured with a little BBC Mini-Series called Sherlock. It ignited my passion for a series I hadn’t experienced in years. Except for a few scattered stories, I’d mostly given up writing fan fiction. But I wanted to for Sherlock. And I did.

The stories I wrote went over better than anything I’d ever written in fandom before. It won awards and won me notoriety in my corner of fandom. I’ve made some WONDERFUL friends through fandom (both in my pre-comic Harry Potter-Doctor Who and in my post-Sherlock days). And I loved it. I was having fun for the first time in a long time and people  were liking what I was coming out with. It was exactly what I needed at the time.

More than anything, it reawakened my love for prose. I love writing novels. Painting a picture with words is more satisfying than any drawing I could possibly make up.

So Kevin and I have done the first sequel to Ensign Sue and it went over remarkably well. The third– and final– story will be coming soon. I love working with Kevin and I hope, should the time and story be right, we’re able to work together again.

As for my other comic work… I’ve come to the conclusion I have to put it aside. I doubt this will come to a shock to anyone, as I’ve effectively been on a pretty permanent hiatus for a while.

The Otherkind is a story I believe in with all of my heart. I think it’s good. It’s something I absolutely, positively need to tell. But I need to tell it on my terms. I’m just not getting that from the comic version. For about a year, I’ve been playing with making it a novel. I’ve reached the point where I need to dedicate myself more fully to realizing that story.

No Special Snowflake is going back where it originally started: as a movie script. I have no idea what will be the fate of that once its finished, but for me… That doesn’t matter right now. All that matters is I actually get it written down.

I mention those two, but what about Creator Confidential? That was my other on going series. And the truth is… I don’t know where that story lays right now. It lives and dies as it is, as a comic. I think there’s still some life in it. It may come back. For right now, its just resting until I have something I really want to say.

I have a couple of other things stirring in my head. There’s a radio play that’s been knocking around my head I might try my hand at. And yes, I’ve even got another comic script in me. It’ll be different than anything I’ve done before. It’ll be a graphic novel rather than an ongoing series. I also don’t know if I’ll be the artist on it. Again, it’s a matter of getting it written before anything else.

Of course, I do have an Etsy store of craft things. Which I know sound bizarre considering I’ve been yammering on about how I’ve never wanted to do anything but write and I’m eschewing my artistic tendencies. The truth is, my artistic side is still there and sometimes, that’s what I enjoy doing.

In the words of Pete Townshend: I want to be obscure and oblique, inscrutable and vague, so hard to pin down.

So I’ve mentioned my fan fiction work in here and I’m sure the fans of that are wondering what’s the fate of that. And my answer is the same as its always been: I’ll write what I want to write, when I want to write it. And if I come up with a fan fiction story, I’m not not going to write it. My opinion on writing has always been a good story is a good story, regardless of who own the copyright.

I’m not going to delve as deeply as have been. Fan fiction is like cookies. And to quote another great man (well, blue furry monster): Cookies are a sometimes food. I need to focus myself on the stories that no one else will possibly tell if I don’t do it. But every once and a while, I need to check in with old friends.

I don’t even know what the point in me writing this is. This is a baring of my soul in a way I’ve never really done. Not all of it is pretty, but this is the reality of things. It’s really a roundabout way of saying I have logs in the fire and people should expect things from me that might be different than I’ve done before. But it was important for me to get this out there.

The path I’ve chosen to take is definitely a road less travelled. And it’s never going to be a road paved in gold. But its the road I’m meant to be on.