I’m primarily a fiction writer. Actually 99% fiction writer. The exceptions are these posts for the Cafe, some real-life stuff on my own blog and a rather largish pamphlet I wrote back in the early 2000s (the Naughties – heh) on the subject of making mini comics.
Once upon a time there was a website called SixShooterComix.com (it’s now defunct but you can see a shot of the forum here thanks to the WayBack Machine). I met Rob Schamberger and Thom Thurman at a comics convention in Kansas City around 2001 and we hit it off. Rob has gone on to become recognized for his paintings of wrestlers and we’re still friends.
Before I go any further, 6SC was very good for me. I met a wonderful artist in Svetlana Chmakova and we produced exactly one story together. There was potential for another but things never worked out. Anyway, based on the success of that story and the fact that I was still producing mini comics on my own, Rob asked me to write a column on the forum about my process. He anticipated three or four columns, but there’s a lot to making comics. Add that in with the fact that I like to talk and I produced I don’t know how many columns. Eighteen or nineteen if I remember correctly. (I have a copy around the house somewhere but it would take earthmovers to dig it out.)
I interviewed a couple of friends for the column to get insight into the creative process, made a lot of assumptions about what was right and in the end created a book. I collected the columns into a photocopied ‘zine, did a cover and got it into the local stores who were already selling my other works. It was the least successful of all my efforts. People weren’t interested in learning how start out in the business of comics (or comix as Rob called them and convinced me to, as well, at the time). Or at least not my take on it.
That led me to actually blogging, then to writing prose stories.
Rob and I did a team blog together later on but that’s another story and besides, it’s in the past. Let’s talk about what’s coming up.
Like every other writer, I’ve got multiple projects in various states of readiness. One of them is a book I’m going to write about customer service in the food industry and how to train staff. I’ve got enough experience from 22 years in food and my run in retail foodservice was pretty successful. Plus I think I can tell an entertaining story. All those things should combine neatly into a book that offers an alternative to not training people to work in food, which seems to be the standard in nearly every restaurant I ever get out to.
This is something I’d probably self-publish. I have it all planned out, even have a couple of chapters written, too. It’s a project I work on in odd moments, when a bit of inspiration hits me.
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