I have no clue why I drew this. It's some sort of freaky alien walrus thingy, perhaps meant to be a companion for the freaky alien dog thingy I posted last week. Seriously, no idea. Why on earth would I have drawn a red and purple freaky alien walrus thingy? This completely mystifies me.

Not really sure why I drew this. For some reason, when I look at this, I think of that one episode of Star Trek where Kirk gets split into two people during a transporter accident. There was this weird green dog, which I think had a horn, that was also split into two while everyone was trying to figure out what happened to Kirk, so maybe that was the original inspiration for this. I do know it was definitely supposed to be a dog of some kind, very sheep-doggish in nature, but also alien. But that's all I can tell you.

And look at how yellow that paper is! For once, I didn't bother to color correct the image before putting it up, just so you could see that this really is from an old, old sketch book of mine.

Mich had originally suggested to me that I try the sketch cards as a little something extra to offer for sale while working at my artist table at cons. But apparently there's a lot more I could do with sketch cards, and I have to admit, I'm sort off addicted to them now after having drawn a handful. Here are some samples of what I've done so far:

The mustaches were inspired by my new zine, "Mustachequerade." I start work on issue two of "Mustachequerade" this weekend, and plan to offer it for sale at Farpoint next month, along with what I have left of issue one.

So what do you think? Do you like the sketch card art? Let me know!

I'm still going through the same sketchbook, which I must have used during my early teen years. I'm not sure what inspired this image. She vaguely reminds me of the wicked queen from Disney's Snow White, but for some reason, I drew her as African American with some sort of basic tribal face markings. It's a bit odd, and the proportions are all wrong, but I like the drawing. No idea why her eyes are closed, nor why she has that expression.

Welcome back to Flashback Friday! I dug this out of the same sketchbook as the previous two Flashback entries. This is some sore of mer-creature. I'm trying to decide why I thought a mer-creature needed both a blow hole and eyebrows, and why the eyebrows needed to be dark blue. I don't know. It has sort of a "Land of the Lost" feel to me, and I think that was probably part of the inspiration. I loved the alien creatures in "Land of the Lost," just as much as I despised the human characters. To this day, Holly and Will just grate on my nerves. But the Sleestak and Altrusians were very cool, in my opinion.

Because it just struck me as something funny and weird to cartoon about! How's that for an answer?

Here is the cover art for issue one of Mustachequerade:

As you can see, these will be done as limited editions. I've printed up 100 copies to take with me to sell at Marscon, at the price of per issue. It's 8 pages of mustachioed madness, folks, and probably one of my most bizarre, creative projects yet! So if you come to Marscon this weekend, be sure to see me at my author table to pick up a copy. Issue one includes "The 'Stache of Wisdom," "Famous Mustaches in History," "Know Your Mustache," "The Mustache ABCs" and a clip and cut mustache that you can decorate and tape to your upper lip, if you so desire.

So stop by and see me at Marscon. For the bargain price of a dollar, issue one of Mustachequerade could be yours! Supplies are limited, so don't wait!

The first is "La Isla," the NaNoWriMo project I did last month. I made it through 60K words by November 30th on a story based on a dream I had the month before. It was a weird, freaky dream, and the book looks like it's going to be a weird freaky book. At this stage of the game, "La Isla" is really more outline than first draft of a novel. I hadn't planned to do NaNoWriMo this year, so just jumped in with whatever idea I had on hand when November 1st came around. I do believe there's a very interesting story in there. The novel will be, however, very experimental. Here's a small sample of what I've written, unedited so far:

What is Flora's first memory? That ought to be the first thing she talks about, the first thing she opens with. The beginning of chapter one. Most people can recall a time early on in their lives when they were children, like the day their mothers made them wear a horrible scratchy suit to church, or the time they wet their pants at Grandma Bingley's funeral, right during the minister's sermon, and it wasn't their fault because no one would pick them up and take them to the bathroom even though they pleaded that they really, really had to go, and besides Grandma Bingley wouldn't have minded, she would have taken the kid to the bathroom for Pete's sake, just got up in the middle of the funeral and said, "Excuse me, but those of us still living have needs that must be attended to." Whatever that meant. When you were only two or maybe three and still toilet training, you never really did get what adults were saying.

Like I said, at this point, it's all notes and bits of dialog and occassional outright scenes, but mostly notes of what the story should look like. I'm well over 70K words, right now, and once I get the story settled in my mind, I'll pull out the relevant parts of that very rough pre-first draft and begin the actual writing part of the process. But this pre-writing process is actually very important to me, and I'm happy with how it's going.

In addition to "La Isla," I've also been working with author Mark Jackman on a potential new web comic. We're going to have to do a lot of prepatory work, figuring out the format, the story, the art, etc. But I spent all last week working on drawing a sample page based on a short script he sent me. Here's a quick look at one of the panels.

I have no idea when we would be posting this on a regular basis. Right now Mark and I are just figuring out if we can even do this. We've both got very busy schedules. But Mark's a very funny writer and I would be very happy to work on any project with him, so we're going to see if we can make this work.

And that's it for WIPs today, kids. If you have any comments or questions, let me know!

Welcome back to Freak Friday Flashback Edition! This sketch is pulled from the same notebook as last week's, and looking at it gives me a pretty good idea of where both sketches may have been drawn. My dad owned land in Arkansas, and one particular summer in my early teens we went down there to camp for a week or so. I'm pretty certain I did NOT see this deer, but I probably did see the trees and dead logs I drew. I may even have a picture somewhere of me bent very intently over my sketch pad, drawing furiously, probably wishing a real deer would stop by so I could say I drew it.

Let me know what you think of Freak Friday Flashback Edition. Do you think it's a fun idea, or are you bored to tears with my pathetic teenage artwork? I've got some even older stuff, and lots of it, so there's plenty more I'm going to post, whether you like it or not!

Freaky Friday Flashbacks!!!!!

Okay, enough with the dramatics. While digging around for some drafting supplies in my art bins, I came across several old sketchbooks, some from waaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day. I thought it might be fun to show my really, really old artwork here. And you know, I don't do nearly enough scanning in of stuff during the week, so why not scan in my old scribbles and doodles? Anyway, here's the first drawing in one of my oldest sketchbooks.

Freaky, huh? I think I was about twelve when I drew this. Possibly younger, I can't really say. Obviously I had access to colored pencils and books on druids, because I drew this very colorful shielf with a sickle wrapped in what I think was supposed to be mistle toe, and a bloody sword beneath that. This was pre-Princess Bride, so no, that is not Inago Montoya's sword. I just came up with something fancy on my own. Or maybe I cribbed this from an old D&D manual. I don't really know.

I do know I used to want to be a druid because I thought it would be cool to have magic powers. Then as I got older, my philosophy on that changed. First, I came to realize that wishing and casting spells did not make things happen, no matter how badly I wanted them to. Second, I also began to think that magic was cheating in a way. I have talents and abilities that I can use, but I have to work to be good at any of them. But doing that work leads to wonderful things. So why not sweat a little over a drawing or a writing project and earn money by the end results? Because honestly, all waving a magic wand ever got me was in trouble (mainly because I accidentally poked someone in the eye when I did it).

What other horror lie in the pages of my old sketchbooks? You'll find out next week!

And don't forget, the Cynical Woman Zazzle store has much more recent art that I worked very hard on, so go visit and see if there's something there you like!

The first is "La Isla," the NaNoWriMo project I did last month. I made it through 60K words by November 30th on a story based on a dream I had the month before. It was a weird, freaky dream, and the book looks like it's going to be a weird freaky book. At this stage of the game, "La Isla" is really more outline than first draft of a novel. I hadn't planned to do NaNoWriMo this year, so just jumped in with whatever idea I had on hand when November 1st came around. I do believe there's a very interesting story in there. The novel will be, however, very experimental. Here's a small sample of what I've written, unedited so far:

What is Flora's first memory? That ought to be the first thing she talks about, the first thing she opens with. The beginning of chapter one. Most people can recall a time early on in their lives when they were children, like the day their mothers made them wear a horrible scratchy suit to church, or the time they wet their pants at Grandma Bingley's funeral, right during the minister's sermon, and it wasn't their fault because no one would pick them up and take them to the bathroom even though they pleaded that they really, really had to go, and besides Grandma Bingley wouldn't have minded, she would have taken the kid to the bathroom for Pete's sake, just got up in the middle of the funeral and said, "Excuse me, but those of us still living have needs that must be attended to." Whatever that meant. When you were only two or maybe three and still toilet training, you never really did get what adults were saying.

Like I said, at this point, it's all notes and bits of dialog and occassional outright scenes, but mostly notes of what the story should look like. I'm well over 70K words, right now, and once I get the story settled in my mind, I'll pull out the relevant parts of that very rough pre-first draft and begin the actual writing part of the process. But this pre-writing process is actually very important to me, and I'm happy with how it's going.

In addition to "La Isla," I've also been working with author Mark Jackman on a potential new web comic. We're going to have to do a lot of prepatory work, figuring out the format, the story, the art, etc. But I spent all last week working on drawing a sample page based on a short script he sent me. Here's a quick look at one of the panels.

I have no idea when we would be posting this on a regular basis. Right now Mark and I are just figuring out if we can even do this. We've both got very busy schedules. But Mark's a very funny writer and I would be very happy to work on any project with him, so we're going to see if we can make this work.

And that's it for WIPs today, kids. If you have any comments or questions, let me know!