A Nice Relaxing Vacation, and Great Now I’m Behind

By far the most strenuous part of my marriage is vacation. My wife is a go somewhere, do something kind of person. I would do the same thing anywhere I went so why would I go anywhere? Any vacations we take are inevitably further away than I would like, and full, unbelievably full, of planned activities. If there is a single second of time my wife hasn’t scheduled, then she’s done something wrong. I find it incredibly exhausting just thinking about it. There was only one notable to exception to this system of torture, a trip to Disney two years ago, but now there are two.

Despite being in Texas, a ridiculous state to drive in, San Antonio is mostly fantastic. The river-walk, the Alamo, some Ripley’s Believe it or not attractions (my daughter is a huge fan,) on the whole, pretty amazing. The only real downside to the San Antonio portion of the trip was SeaWorld.

I was not that impressed by SeaWorld. It was animals, doing animal things, things animals could already do, sooooo, what’s so different about seeing it in person instead of in ‘Free Willy?’ (Or ‘Blackfish,’ though I hear that one has an entirely different take on the subject matter.)  There was this one show, Azul, which I liked, but that was because of the human performers.  Humans can’t naturally do those things, but they have trained themselves to be able to do those things, that I find impressive. Also, I don’t like to be wet and roller coasters terrify me, so I’m not generally big on amusement parks. I’m a boring person, I do really like it that way.

The trip home included a detour to Dallas and the Perot Museum of Science and Nature.  They had a traveling Sherlock Holmes exhibit, and Sherlock Holmes is my jam. Seriously, one of my top four favorite fictional characters, only because I don’t want to kick anyone out of the top three. Typically I’m not that impressed with museums, if I could sleep walk better they’d be more tolerable, (that’s how boring I am, even museums aren’t boring enough for me.) However Sherlock is a subject worthy of lucidity and there were some engaging interactive elements on display.

But then the trip home, endless driving, (damn you Texas,) a few days of recovery, getting back into the rhythm of things, and now my buffer is gone just as I’m switching story-lines. This is why I don’t do things, and why I don’t like holidays, it interrupts my schedule of getting just enough work done to loaf most of the day. Moving into a new story-line is by far the hardest part of what I do, once the pieces are in place, it’s all about grinding out the art. Arranging those pieces, while also the most fun aspect of the process, is the most time consuming. Which I’d better go do now if I want to have anything for you guys to read next week, instead of revising this post for the umpteenth time.

 

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A Week Without Numbers

People who have been in the webcomics game longer than I have tell you that numbers don’t matter.  Focus on content, focus on interaction, the numbers will come later. Since I advertised for the first time in October last year, I’m obsessed with my numbers. Not a day goes by, not a day, that Google Analytics isn’t open in a second tab being refreshed every 15 minutes. My numbers aren’t big, and they don’t change much in 15 minutes, but I can’t help it.

This week is spring break for us, and we’re headed down to San Antonio.  Going to see the Alamo, going to see SeaWorld, going to walk around I bet, but won’t be checking my numbers nearly so often.  To be honest, I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to deal with that.  I imagine I’ll be able to get on at least once a day to glance, but not the obsessive 15 minute check I’m used to and that I crave. Most likely I’ll have even less chance to draw, but we’re covered on strips for the next two weeks so no one should miss anything.

However, if you follow me on Twitter, or glance down to the right sidebar when visiting the site, you’ll be kept apprised of some fun vacation activities to be enjoyed in San Antonio, and my own personal struggle as I wrestle with withdrawal from checking my numbers too often.

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New-ish and Improved Archives/Cast Page(s)

As mentioned some moons ago, I’ve never been perfectly happy with my Cast pages and wanted to redo them. What I had originally envisigied for them was overly complex and amazing and confusing and much worse than it was to begin with, but luckily that’s not what I ended up going with.

Instead what we have are slightly revamped Archives page, that leads to slightly revamped cast pages.  Each chapter of our story now has it’s own page, where you’ll find a list of the strips involved in that story, and any guest characters wherein are met, leave, or are important. For example our latest concluded entry, The Stone of the Frank, lists the strips you’ll find, as well as important characters, including Vitor and The Frank.

The old cast page, the Menagerie, will include those specimens who are always with the caravan. I’m 90% happy with it, but I want you guys to poke around, lemme know what’s missing, or what you’d like to see.

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Two Weeks in the Can

I’m super excited about this, two weeks of strips ready and waiting to be posted. I haven’t had this much of a buffer since August 25, 2014. Three weeks after I started the strip, and my pre-launch buffer and current work buffer started to move collide. One more week down, then I’m fixing that cast page like I said I’d do. Two more buffer weeks after that and we’ll take a looks at fixing the Archives as well.

This also means I have more time for reading.  Right now that’s “Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death,’ currently airing as ‘Grantchester’ on Masterpiece Mystery.  ‘Grantchester’ airs after ‘Downton Abbey,’ which used to be what I looked forward too, but now it’s just taking up air until the hotty shows up. My wife and I are in agreement about that. He is hot. Maybe not quite hot enough to count as our celebrity-hall-pass, but he’s up there. Course Downton and Grantchester only have a few weeks left, then I’ll be down to three hours of TV a week, a blessing and a curse.

The Shadow novel this month is ‘The Black Hush.’ There’s an episode of the radio show called ‘Night Without End,’ kind of the same thing.

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What Might Have Been

As per reader suggestion I recently picked up a copy of ‘The Circus of Dr. Lao,’ which was harder than I thought it would be, but well worth the effort.  I’m not going to offer an opinion on the story, I’m not qualified to do that, I think everything is good the first time I encounter it (I’ve only ever seen ‘Battlefield Earth’ one time, and I still think it’s good, that’s how unqualified I am.) I would recommend it, I liked it, but you know, don’t take my word for it.

The formative idea of the story is that Dr. Lao shows up in Abalone with a caravan full of exotic mythical creatures, puts on a wild show, presumably moving on to another town to repeat the performance. Which, you know, on the surface is what the first ten strips of Merunga may have looked like.  And, it was kind of where the idea started, and where I always thought I’d go with it.  But we haven’t seen a repeat of that scenario yet, or anything close to that scenario, since that time.

Looking back over my very first notes and sketches, and now at my current plans for where the Menagerie will be traveling, two paths diverged in a woods, well before the Caravan came to the Torgo road.  For whatever ‘Circus’ did with the concept, good or bad, I don’t think I could have done it as well. And with what I’ve laid out recently, where we’re headed, I don’t see us circling back around to that concept anytime soon.

I don’t regret where we’ve ended up, and I’m looking forward to where we’re going, but it could have been very different, and not nearly as good.

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