All about the novel (part 124)

My friends that I mentioned, Bianca Zander and Rachael King, both have books coming out this year. I’m super-excited – they are going to be great. Bianca’s The Girl Below is about a young woman who finds herself slipping back into her childhood to solve the mysteries of her dysfunctional family. And Rachael‘s book is all about selkies – how cool is that?

Today is the anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake. For readers from abroad, it has been a hell of a year for Cantabrians, with their city in ruins and subsiding into the mud. They’ve had to deal with aftershocks, as well as exhausting wrangles with insurance companies, government, and utilities providers. Many of them haven’t known where they are going to live. I don’t know how they’ve managed it, and my thoughts are with them. I posted Roses for Christchurch last year soon after the earthquake, and it has remained my most visited post.

Tomatoes and other natural disasters

Treme, set in post-Katrina New Orleans, does seem very good, and we have another 6 episodes to watch before Friday, when it’s due back at the library. In the meantime, I am still procrastinating. Right now I’m meant to be starting on a Real Graphic Novel so that I can legitimately apply for an arts grant. But the temptation for quick comics is too great. Besides, I have too many ideas, and I don’t know which one to start. The collection of graphic short stories? The fantastical Michael Ende-inspired story? The memoir about my childhood in Germany? Or is there something I can make out of this, this profusion of comics I’ve been drawing for the past couple of years? I don’t know.

In the mean time I’ve got my feedback on my novel back and it’s off to write a final draft. There may be a graphic novel component of that – watch this space. I will write a comic about it soon, or perhaps not, if I actually manage to do the things I am meant to be doing. What I really should be doing is earning some money. Which takes me back to the grant application…

St Vincent de Disney

You can click on this to make it bigger!

I actually didn’t have this conversation with Jonathan. It was a conversation that I started with Tim Jones on twitter and then backed off it, feeling like too much of a fluff-head, leaving my more witty friends (yes you, Helen Lehndorf) to leap to my defense. It’s the kind of conversation I do have with Jonathan though. I am far more likely to concentrate on the voice and the lyrics than the guitar. I do appreciate guitars, but I take them for granted, whereas Jonathan, who spent years noodling in his bedroom, and owns a fender stratocaster, actually listens to them carefully.

Also, I didn’t initially create this comic for this blog – I made it when I was trying to figure out what to do for next month’s Metro. You’ll have to buy it at the end of February if you want to find out what I submitted in the end.

Oh, and here is the beautiful St Vincent (she really is stunning) who I will be seeing in March.

In case I break the china

As you can probably tell, I am still procrastinating, or, trying to draw myself into drawing. That’s the whole wisdom about writing – you don’t wait to be inspired, you work and hope that you might collide with inspiration if you stick at it long enough. Also, I felt compelled to make a record of my purchase since the woman was right – I am the kind of person who chips and breaks china. I am clumsy, and I have three children.

Here is a picture of the china. See? It’s beautiful, and should be preserved, but I want to see beauty every day, so I am using it.

And here is the A Lion in the Meadow book I was talking about.

Breaking myself back in

It’s been a while… and I don’t think that I was the wholesome earth mother that I thought I might be over the holidays. I get bored and frustrated pretty quickly, and I give into demands for DVDs and computer games way too easily. Nor did I get much creative work done, because by the time the children were in bed it was 9pm, and then I was exhausted from having to hang out with them all day. We did have some drawing sessions, but Violet usually embellished my comics with her over-sized felt-tips and demands for me to draw Mr Big. But it’s school/creche time again! And I have 3 dedicated days to work. So wish me luck! I want to have a productive year.

BTW here is part of a cool documentary about the brilliant Daniel Clowes. Now there’s a man who can draw.

 

tUnE-yArDs in New Zealand!

Here is a clip from Tune-yards if you want to get an idea of what they’re about. Otto really loves this clip because ‘you can see the kids growing up.’

The sound of butterflies and crocodiles

Have you read Rachael King’s The Sound of Butterflies? It’s very good. So is Helen Lehndorf’s beautiful collection of poetry, The Comforter. And if you want a taste of what kind of music Mariani is making, here’s the link to her album of children’s music on Bandcamp. I had a look on Canta Conmigo’s facebook page and I realise she looks nothing like how I’ve drawn. I really have to take a drawing class… it’s been 16 years since my last one.

 

Comic, interrupted

The Cat

The library

The pimple

The writer

Jonathan has gone back to work and I am now looking after the children full-time. I don’t have much time to draw comics, nor to hold a continuous thought in my head, but today we all grew comics together. Violet did a series of scribbles (that’s Mr Big! There’s Violet!), Gus did a couple of speech bubbles which said ‘how long do cats live?’ and Otto did three issues of ‘Ninja Old Days.’

The Katherine Mansfield movie we saw was great – written and directed by Fiona Samuel, called ‘Bliss’. Although I now see from link searching that I didn’t need to rent it from the DVD store!

Bras and loathing in Newmarket

I am posting this comic at the risk of over-sharing, but let me assure you that I never draw myself accurately – it’s all ‘artist’s impression’ around here.  Talking of bra shopping, graphic novelist Vanessa Davis has the opposite problem from me, as she so delightfully illustrates in the Tablet.

Insomnia

I was reading an interview with Casey from Fleet Foxes in Frankie magazine today, and he said that he was saving sleep for when he was older. I realised that although I am seduced by pictures of pretty frocked girls riding old-fashioned bicycles, I am not Frankie’s target demographic. I am ten years too old. I wanted to say ‘No, Casey! Sleep now! You might have kids later and then you’ll be wrecked. My mother says she hasn’t slept properly in 38 years!’

Talking of Fleet Foxes, I have a comic about them in the latest Metro magazine. You should buy it, or linger in a magazine store that stocks it. Here is a snippet: