Update

Seems like it's been a while since I've actually posted anything more than short notes to the blog so...this is what I'm up to.

It's been just about two months since I started writing full-time on this mystery project for DC. Up until this past weekend, I hadn't even touched a brush or pen to ink anything but on Friday, Mike Marts offered me a Pat Gleason ROBIN cover to ink and I said yes. I love Pat's work, plus I like working with friends, and it seemed like a good time to dip my brush and keep my hand steady. Pat's stuff is never easy but I found this to be a particularly hard cover to ink. I like some of what I did, like Robin's face, and am not as pleased with other bits of it like the blood.

Oh yes...there will be blood.

I'd post a scan but I don't think I'm allowed to yet. The cover should be released in the Diamond Previews for October which, coincidentally, will also contain something Robin-related that I wrote for Halloween.

I'm about 3/4's done with the mysterious, unknowable DC assignment at this point. I'm having a lot of fun writing on a full-time basis but I have to say, there's been an adjustment period. There's a very different rythym to writing and inking. When I ink, I'm a soldier. I get behind my table and grind away the long hours until a book gets done. With writing, there's usually a bit of down time while I wait for an outline to be read, or to get permission to use such and such a character or, say...to kill another off.

I don't do well with down time; I've been programmed over 14 long years of inking to keep slaving away, whatever it takes to meet the deadline. So I find that instead of waiting for an outline to be approved, I just start writing the script to stay busy and hope it all works out in the end. Which is stupid and counterproductive because eventually, it won't.

I think the lesson here is I need to learn to relax.

I'm taking a break from the DC project this week to write a sixteen-page back up story for an upcoming annual. On Friday, I'll be heading to New York to go over some things with my editor and to meet with Dan Didio, hopefully about what comes next after this project is wrapped.

All in all, to date, it's been a good summer.