Venturing into the Slush Pile.

For Christmas 2015, I did something which I hadn't done in a while. No, it was not staying up all night dancing, eating Krispy Kremes for breakfast and then go to work for 8 hours—those days are over. I did an actual  acrylic painting in the real world. This one is a scene in Le Marais district in Paris taken from a photograph of my 7th trip to one of my top 3 favorite cities in the world (New York, San Francisco, filling out the rest). It was also one of the largest paintings I have done at around 30 x 40 inches. I chose the size in reverse, meaning I found the frame first and then cut a panel of wood to size, primed it and painted it.  It took a while to do but I enjoyed every minute of it. Very therapeutic and meditative. I've decided I would try to do at least one real painting per year, if not more.

In Etsy news. I sold something on line for the first time which usually only sells in person at the Richmond Holiday Arts Fair. The Mysterious Box of Mystery has finally made it's on-line presence in the sales department. Usually it takes a while to make these because it contains lots of trinkets, intricately hunted down and recreated letters, post cards, news articles and other nick knacks that come together to tell a story. The new one will be the fourth one I have made, as they have all sold out.


Another new venture is on the very horizon, or rather whatever comes before that, is I will be trying to venture into the world of publishing again to push a series of novels out of the nest. My early experience with publishing all involved comic books and dealing with distributors or book stores. I am not looking forward to trying to convince someone to take a leap of faith with my novels because they are only looking to publish the next : Twilight, Divergent, 50 Shades of Gray or some other sure fire hit book which can easily be made into a movie and the publisher and editors make enough money to pay the rent on their time shares at Martha's Vineyard. I totally get them and I can't blame them for only publishing 50,0000  fiction books per year on a average (150,000 non fiction) , but lets face it. On the Road by jack Keroack was rejected by many publishers as was Harry Potter, The Princess Diaries and countless others that were not only good books but financially successful. All it took was a leap of faith from an agent and a editor. That being said, I have created yet another blog for one of the novels so you can follow it's journey from the type writer to the coffee table or to the slush pile (where 99.9% of submissions end up). Believe it or not, I'm not being pessimistic only realistic. One way or another, my books will see physical or digital print and be made available for the public.

The first novel: Flaming Jackass, is based on a comic which first appeared in 1996 in the the pages of a  magazine called Splunge Comix,  a humor magazine aimed at Gen-xers. The story followed the life of a 21 year-old girl who I loosely based on a friend of mine I knew when I lived in Atlanta, GA back in the 90s.  

A bit of a warning, because this novel was written for adult Gen-xers, some language in the book and on the blog are a little raw.

 That's all for now, A.J.