Channeling Lydia Deetz

This is an older cartoon, one of the first that made it out of my notebook for Primordial Syrup. As usual I’d love to redraw it, make it darker and have a much more detailed, grotesque creature perched on her head. Still, I love the mode of this one and the unanswered question of what exactly it is protecting her from.

Quick update for those wondering if these posts are only going to be single panel cartoons. Soon there will be much, much more. Book one of “The Conjurers” launches next July. That means I will be donning my marketers hat. It’s always been a small hat as I don’t have much room on my head for many more hats.

However, this time, I’m putting a lot more effort into that side of the creative business. Now that doesn’t mean I will be drudging on with endless promotions of “buy my book”. The good news it means I’ll be working on all the other fun stuff that comes along with the Conjurers series. For starters, the webcomic companion will be starting back up this Halloween.

For those not familiar, the webcomic was an experiment I undertook while writing the novels. It was only once a week and I allotted three hours max on the art. The characters are straight from the books. So if you’d like to meet the cast before next July, you can start reading here. And for those of you have been more than patiently waiting for the story to continue, you only have a few weeks wait left. And it shall continue between releases of the three books. There is so much to explore in that world, and my dream is to eventually bring on other artists to do some of the exploring.

Enough prattling for now. Much more to come, including giveaways and other such announcements. Soon, I’ll be putting together a book tour. If you know of any schools, libraries or book shops that might want to host an exhausted, but talkative author, drop me a line.

Channeling my inner Lovecraft

This is one of the earliest Primordial Syrup comics I wrote. Sums up the tone of the comic nicely. Still not happy with the finished art. Wish I had made the creature more creaturey, with a bit of “Ancient One” flair. Still, progress not perfection.

In the coming weeks I’ll have more posts on “The Conjurers”. Currently I’m working on the illustrations for book two. Also sketching concepts for the cover. And I hope to have news on book one soon. A release date and maybe some actual photos of an actual book. Stay tuned.

Single Panel Cartoons

Where the weird things are. I’ve always done single panel comics. The earliest ones I remember were in fourth grade. It was always the best way to get the weird images in my head out. They also made me infamous in high school. First time I got called to the headmaster’s office was over a single panel comic.

The comic, like most of my single panels, was only a fleeting, strange thought. No deeper meaning, just something that struck me as funny. This comic featured an average tree-lined street in an average neighborhood. Except an enormous soap on a rope had smashed one car parked on the road.

Long story short, they called me to the headmaster’s office after the comic ran in the school paper. I spent half an hour reassuring him that there was no deep religious connotations implying that god had dropped his soap-on-a-rope. 

Despite the momentary apprehension of a week’s worth of detention, I realized why I had always loved off-beat, bizarre comics. The sheer fun of seeing the hundreds of different interpretations over a bit of nonsense. With no effort of creating something that contained a profound statement or some worldly truth, it could inspire deeper thought unique to every reader. 

So ya, Primordial Syrup is the ongoing stream of strange that runs through my brain. I have notebooks full of ideas. I plan on rendering them into reality once a week. Let me know what you think in the comments. I’m always interested in what people think they mean.