Aw Shit, I Missed FanimeCon!… and Some Other Things
May 27th, 2009FANIMECON:
Motherfucker! I thought FanimeCon was gonna be this upcoming weekend, but it turned out to be this last weekend! I totally missed it alltogether, and I lost the $40 I spent on a table! Fucknuts! … Well, I was kinda getting tired and burnt out of doing cons anyways, so I’m not too pissed off about it. Frankly I’m more pissed about losing that $40. I’m probably not gonna do any other cons this year anyways. MAYBE I’ll do APE, just because. And then there’s also the SF Zine Fest, which is a one day event more in line with what I make, so maybe I’ll do that too.
SOME OTHER THINGS….
RADICAL CHANGES DUE:
Last month I took a trip to the Isotope and bought a few new books:
• Cecil and Jordan in New York, by Gabrielle Bell
• Funny Misshapen Body, by Jeffrey Brown
• The Color of Earth, by Dong Hwa Kim
• Likewise, by Arlel Schrag
• A Drifting Life, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
• Good-Bye, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
While I was there I had a chat with the owner, James, about what I can do to increase interest in Moose River. He gave me a few good tips, which I plan on sharing with you as soon as I can find the list. 🙂 There was a LOT of good tips and shit; one of his suggestions included creating minis for ALL chapters of Moose River… so that’s something I’m probably gonna do very soon.
In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that I’m gonna skip out on conventions and shows all together until I can get my shit together again and implement the changes and suggestions James gave me.
And for those of you who say I never can take constructive criticism, I say FUCK YOU because all I do with Moose River is take constructive criticism! If you think I never take constructive criticism, you’re not looking hard enough, or you’re choosing to see what you want to see and ignoring the rest. Well FUCK YOU if you’re doing that, and OPEN your GODDAMN EYES, MOTHER FUCKER.
…[slight pause]… Yeah.
SHEA MARERRA’S HEROIN DIARIES:
I’ve got a new side story I’m working on: Shea Marerra’s Heroin Diaries. Well, that’s just a temporary name, just because there are too many “Heroin Diaries” out there. The downtime involving new pages gives me the perfect opportunity to share what I’ve written in Shea’s heroin addiction saga, for whenever I DON’T post a new page, I’ll have some other writing to fall back on. Plus since it’s all writing (and it’s already written), it takes no effort to post. Here’s an example entry:
20061006 0637
part of me is kicking my ass for not bringing my jopes. another part of me is kicking my ass for smoking as much as i did. i dont remember at all of what i did to get to that point. i usually dont smoke that much. and yet another part of me is kicking my ass for taking out what cash that i did to buy jopes like i did.
i can tell that the effects of joping are short lived. i can feel some harshness of the post jope. and even though ill smoke some shit between work and school, im gonna end up killing it. the happiness i had today after meeting up with jane was totally short lived. and if i didnt have access to that coke of navy’s, i definitely would have killed my jopes. i hate having my happiness revolve around a drug like this.
oh but i love doing it so much!!
——————–
20061108 1820
jopes just hide my life and pains. i get to run away from them and not deal with them. but in not dealing with my life, problems build up.
when will i resolve my problems? i dunno. i never feel like doing them. im never in the mood.
i have fallen from my old position. i am not who i was before i started joping. well, in certain ways i am not. in other ways i still am. i got excellent grades in skool all whilst on jopes.
it’s a cycle i get myself into. i postpone things because i focus on acquiring jopes. i acquire jopes because i get depressed. i get depressed because i postpone shit.
There’s plenty more where this came from… you can watch her struggle, learn new things, and actually eventually take the steps on maybe even getting help!
I’m still in the middle of writing this, but it’s almost over. If anything I might throw this together into a minicomic, or as a part of Moose River book three (with chapters seven through nine) or maybe in the final, completed and collected Moose River graphic novel (chapters one through nine). I haven’t make up my mind quite yet…
June 2nd, 2009 at 06:31
“While I was there I had a chat with the owner, James, about what I can do to increase interest in Moose River.”
Other than updating it before 2012?
June 7th, 2009 at 03:20
TOM:
I…. aw you got me. Yes, I really need to update. But right now I’ve got to reorganize my life… I’ve been a complete mess this whole year. I think I know what I need to do, but it seems like it’s just one “I know what I need to do!” after another, and they never seem to end. Basically I’m all fucked up right now.
June 8th, 2009 at 08:40
I mean, seriously, I dont want to sound like That Guy (or Thad Guyy) or anything, but it’s true. Bad enough that Coffee Time ended and VGCats & Fanboys are on unofficial hiatus, but NOT the strip which has forced me to rethink Jeffrey Brown’s lameness as well. (Not that it worked, but hey, you tried…)
July 6th, 2009 at 06:38
Still alive, ol’ buddy?
August 12th, 2009 at 10:07
Draw, dammit! Please.
August 31st, 2009 at 05:48
Well… at least the site is no longer “temporarily unavailable”…
September 19th, 2009 at 15:46
Haha…. well I’m glad that you’re still behind me, Tom. It makes me all warm and fuzzy that someone out there still thinks about me and Moose River. 🙂
Anyways, once again I apologize for this temporary hiatus, as I said before my life is all messed up right now and unfortunately comics just isn’t topping my list of priorities. It IS however ON my list of priorities (as opposed to not), and every day I think about when I’m gonna get back to working on more Moose River pages. But I’m a guy who is quite very run by his second-to-second emotions, and if I don’t feel like doing something, I find it extremely hard to force myself to work on it.
I can’t say when I’ll get back on the horse and ride again. Mostly because there have been so many times in the past where I thought I was ready to start again, only to have that fleeting feeling fade from me. Right now I once again feel as if that drawing new comics is on the horizon, but for all I know it could disappear just as easily as it appeared. Only God knows when my next continuous set of pages will reappear on the site, but it ain’t gonna be anytime soon.
I mean like, a conversation with my friend Jimmy revealed that I tend to be energized to do something only due to anger. When I’m angry, when I have a score to settle, when something pissed me off enough to the point where I need to say something about it… that’s when I really get the ball rolling on something. But when I’m content, or at least have no war to fight, I sit, I stand still and I do nothing. And this past year I’ve been all fucked up AND been content with my life (is that even possible?)… I’d go so far as to say that the reason why I believe my life is all fucked right now IS because I’m incredibly content with my life. I feel empty with no wars to fight. And no, “not doing Moose River pages” is a battle that needs to be fought. Moose River has always been an end to a means, not a means to an end…. that’s just my Machiavellian Artist style in action (that is to say, I’m a very ends-focused artist, not a means-focused artist).
I have a lot of shit I do need to clean up in my life, and I know that that’s really the one thing that’s preventing me from doing it. But right now I just don’t feel like cleaning it now.
Fear not, I have no intent on killing Moose River. I’ve taken breaks like this before. For example, I had started Moose River back in 2004, only to take a year break before restarting the story from scratch in 2005. I’m not gonna restart the story from scratch in 2010, but I feel that maybe I do need to take a year-ish break before starting back up again. I guess we’ll find out what the reality of it is in a few months.
Again, I’m sorry. 🙁
November 11th, 2009 at 11:34
You need a mailing list; something to alert the adoring thongs when MR is back and Mooser than ever. (And yes, I said “thongs”, not throngs.)
Or maybe start accepting non-canonical fan fiction strips til then… you DO have fans still, yes?
November 21st, 2009 at 05:38
TOM: If you send me something, I’ll see about adding it, guaranteed*! (* not a guarantee)
I’m thinking of throwing some kind of update system. Maybe a Facebook page or Twitter account or something.