Monsters, NaNoWrimo, Sims and massages

Above: Rob Rummel-Hudson liked my Little Nightmare series, and commissioned me to create one for his new book site. See this entry by Rob in his blog. I'm a fan of Rob's blog and am looking forward to his new book: Schuyler's Monster: A Father's Journey with his Wordless Daughter. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how the illustration came out.




I'm delighted to announce that I'm going to be doing cartoons for NaNoWriMo again this year. "NaNoWriMo," for those of you who don't know, stands for "National Novel Writing Month," which is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

This year, I'll also be doing some cartoons specifically for young writers as well. Like last year, some cartoons will be revamped from Inkygirl while others will be created specifically for the event.

The novel that I recently sent out began as a NaNoWriMo novel. I've promised Chris Baty that I'd let him know when it gets published. :-)



Thanks for all the feedback re: my selfish-time survey; it's clear that people "recharge" in a wide variety of ways. Some prefer being with people; others (like me) need time alone.

I was amused by Tony's comment:

"Who are you kidding? You of all people can't possibly have time for yourself. Unless you possess some kind of temporal technology, as I have always suspected..."

I do find that I have to purposely schedule "recharge/selfish" time or it just doesn't happen....too many other things tend to take priority otherwise, things I feel I should be doing: tasks (big and small) and obligations to people. As a freelancer, I sometimes struggle with being able to take time off without feeling guilty, but I've learned how essential that time is to my productivity and mental health.

To show you how nerdy I am, this reminds me of the old SimPeople game, which attempts to emulate real life; I only played the first version years ago so I'm not sure how much it's changed since then. Anyway...if you didn't give your Sims enough "fun time," then they started getting cranky and ill. I can so sympathise.

Yesterday afternoon, I indulged in a massage at Sutherland-Chan. I am a HUGE fan of professional massages and Sutherland-Chan is my favourite. It's a decadent luxury for me; I hadn't had one in over two years, and promised myself a massage once I sent off my book.

My next massage? When I sell my book, or when I send off another. Hopefully the first will happen sooner than later! Fingers crossed...



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