Some weeks are good, and others are… difficult.

I’ve had a couple of the latter.

I don’t know if this book will be a graphic novel or more of a catalogue of paintings.

I like the idea of a quick and dirty novel, but being at a gallery, there is a calling to present my work in a “higher form.”

There is a lot to ponder for sure.

I have 20 sheets of 16 x 20 masonite in my cart at Aboveground, but given the subject matter, it would be interesting to paint on objects, giving second life to pieces collected in subterranean miasma. Though that’s something I’d consider more if I had a studio, the thought of bringing that into my home is less than desirable. Someone would certainly kick me out.

I think I’m dropping the one-character storyline as well. Though it was always going to be vignettes, I think switching back and forth between characters is a good idea.

I have pages written for the old character, Gerald, but I have the idea of having characters based in other subway systems. Gerald is based in the TTC. But having a character in NYC, London, and Paris could be cool.

The working title is now Kings of Subterrainia.

No drawings this week.

Okay. Things are different, or maybe it’s a return to normalcy, and who knows if that’s a good thing?

I’ve somehow managed to press pause on a great dissociation, or maybe I’ve finally recovered from the Great Burnout of 2018. (2015 is the year that the camel’s broken back had finally been crushed by the weight of straw into a black hole and started absorbing it at an unholy rate. Three years later, a decision was made to stop loading straw onto the dead camel.)

After graduating from OCAD with mediocre results, I did okay GPA-wise, but my Thesis was trash cause I was doing too much. I’d been working 40-hour weeks at the bar, going to school, and drinking and partying. It was a bad mash-up of making the end of my schooling amount to nothing. Not to mention that I had admitted defeat before I had even graduated by getting a job at a landscaping supply company with 72 hour work weeks. There was no chance that I could possibly set myself up for a career in Illustration.

That took a year, covid and many 3-month stints at shitty and dangerous jobs took the three years after, and then I found myself working at an art gallery. A return to creative endeavours.

But to get back to the point where I’m creating has taken a couple years still.

I’ve just now started writing a book, the first one since “Oddies,” I think. And I don’t even really consider that a book anymore.

I even re-read “Space Banjoneer…” and I had so many harsh criticisms for myself. I can’t fathom how I thought it was publishable. Not only is the pacing horrendous, but the jokes and story are decidedly not ME.

I do realize that I was on quite the tight deadline for that one, I think I doubled or tripled the page numbers that was required, but that’s no excuse.

So now here I am sitting down to write a book for the first time in 7 years, and I have to be so careful.

Careful to be myself.

Careful to not be esoteric.

Careful to finish the work.

Its working title is “Gerald the Subway Rider”

It’s going to be about an old man who lives in the subway network because the cost of living is too high and he can’t afford to be in a retirement home.

Which is quite sad, and is happening to far too many people, and I could go on about food prices and housing, but at the end of the day this thing is going to be a comedy.

A terrible, horrible comedy.

I hope it punches up, It at the very least won’t punch down… I hope.

Continue the journey with me and hope I perfectly straddle this line!