I bin working, folks.
You've surely seen my news about Terra Magazine.
I should have something else to announce soon–much smaller and long delayed, but cool nonetheless.
I have, meanwhile, been working on a lot of stuff. I'm probably three quarters ofthe way through the penultimate chapter of my new novel, XDA ZAI. This is still the first draft, so we're a long way of from being submission ready… but I'm writing chapter 10 now and there's one more to go.
Also, as you might expect from my recent Attitude Adjustment post, I've been drawing. A lot. In the past couple of weeks I've cranked out about 12 pencilled pages for the new McBlack graphic novel, which I think is a record for me–and not only that, but these are the best pages I've ever drawn. I have been using a new process I that I started using earlier this year for the McBlack One Shot and that, combined with the (ludicrously expensive) new Strathmore 500 paper stock I've been using has me cranking pages that are cleaner and sharper than ever before at a much improved rate. I'll do a post about my new art process soon–I've added some more steps which has really reduced the degree of difficulty for me dramatically.
Another lesson I learned doing the one shot is that I'm still a terrible inker. I think this is primarily due to impatience, but regardless, I probably will not be doing it anymore.
Also, I have done a couple more interviews for the excellent comics website Tastes Like Comics, so look out for those.
Stay wrong,
— JF