Trying to psych myself up and not out. Same coffeeshop, same mix CD. We’ll see how it goes.

P. S. If you’ve been reading me for a while, it will probably not surprise you that I very strongly recommend the latest in the 33 1/3 series, John Darnielle’s Black Sabbath Master of Reality, whether or not you think you have any interest in Black Sabbath. Here’s Darnielle talking about how his past work influenced the book:

“I worked in the psych biz for most of my adult life until the Mountain Goats took over, and much of my work life was devoted to children and adolescents, and it’s pretty impossible to describe just how heavy an impact that kind of work will have on you if you’ll only let it. The trick is in not getting jaded, in not succumbing to the punching-the-clock aspect of things: staying engaged, staying vulnerable, being able to understand that every kid you work with is his or her own story, all new, not the same story as the similar kid who just left last week. Trying to understand them instead of bringing some pre-configured understanding into how you deal with them. I don’t think you can really sustain that kind of attitude toward the work over an entire lifetime without going crazy, but I tried, and it left marks on me, so I kind of tried to conjure up the spirit of those marks when I was writing.” Via Popmatters.

P.P.S. Why yes, you could apply that quote to being a YA author. And/or librarian.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

1. Can’t stop listening to Busdriver.

Anyone have some “if you like Busdriver, you’ll like…” suggestions?

2. Love this post from Jonathan Carroll that begins: “Part of creating is letting go.” I needed to hear that. You, too?

3. A chicken with a skull necklace:

4. Been thinking a lot about this quote from Mark Haddon, whose A Spot of Bother I really enjoyed: “What makes all of us human is the way we get things wrong.”

5. I am NOT GOING ANYWHERE this weekend. Heck, I may not even leave the house.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

I was burned out on the notion of writing a con report until I thought of doing haikus.

Then the whole gang got into it. Here are some of mine:

Loud fight with girlfriend
turns into performance art
when you’re cosplaying.

Warren Ellis said
He wanted to have me killed
Most effective blurb.

We’re webcomics fans
We’re not used to paying for
Anything we read.

He buys five minis
“You’ve been very well reviewed”
Thank you, nice bloggers.

These and a whole bunch more over at Periscope.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

It is already Tuesday and Friday after work I will be on a train to Seattle for the Emerald City Con! All with the books and comics and buttons and whatnot!

I put those exclamation points in to help inspire myself, because right now this second I’m thinking dang, I am tired and it would be nice to have a weekend without Events, but that will not be until the weekend after this one, unless sometime between now and then Events spontaneously manifest, as they sometimes do.

Anyway, no offense to Seattle and its many excellent denizens, I am sure I will have a lovely time once I am there. And, excellent denizens, it would be nice to see you, especially those of you I have not seen in far too long.

In the meantime: so now I have a buttonmaker and I can make buttons, as I have mentioned previously.

If you have a button design idea, ideally related in some fashion to my books and/or comics, and you would like to have me make it exist, please to be letting me know.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been reading Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude, the audiobook version, and just got to this passage:

It was entirely possible that one song could destroy your life. Yes, musical doom could fall on a lone human form and crush it like a bug. The song, that song, was sent from somewhere else to find you, to pick the scab of your whole existence. [...] Every time your sneakers met the street, the end of that summer, somebody was hurling it at your head, that song.

Forget what happens when you start haunting the green-tiled halls of Intermediate School 293.

September 7, 1976, the week Dylan Ebdus began seventh grade in the main building on Court Street and Butler, Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music, White Boy” was the top song on the rhythm and blues charts. Fourteen days later it topped Billboard’s pop charts. Your misery’s anthem, number-one song in the nation.

I didn’t have it quite as bad as Dylan. But mine was a number-one song, too, so cloying that even now I can’t bring myself to put in a link, but it’s easily You-Tubeable, and those of my readers who are around my age have probably already guessed which song it is, a song that made me writhe in embarrassment, even more because so many people seemed to think I should like it, and if I looked angry, they’d say, “Uh-oh, I think storms are brewing…” Yes, it was Jefferson Starship’s “Sara.”

Who else has a song that made their lives hell, however briefly?

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

Tonight we devoted ourselves to restoring the house to something like order.

Snag hid out while we swept, straightened, sorted paperwork, entered receipts into Quicken, and listened to the entirety of Heretic Pride three times in succession (so far).

While I’m on the subject of matters domestic, does anyone know of a source for a piece of storage furniture designed specifically for storing boots? Knee-high, lady-type boots? I am a big fan of big stompy boots, but dang, once you have more than a few pairs of same, they tend to overwhelm your entryway.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

Hey didn't we just do this? Yes we did. (Relatively speaking.) Here we go...

Cannot believe how many people managed to cram into Cosmic Monkey for the trophy awards & Comic Art Battle. I was happy to meet Matt Silady and Kirsten Baldock (comics writer, librarian, and bartender -- I knew we'd get along) and Jason McNamara, and to get a few minutes to chat with Jemiah Jefferson and Katie Moody, whom I don't see nearly often enough.



Credit to John Aegard for the observation that Stumptown attendees are so polite that when you accost someone passing your table with a pitch for your comics, books, & assorted ephemera, and they don't quite catch what you've said because it's a loud, busy room, they'll actually lean in and say, "Pardon me?"



Several ladies' Technicolor hair coordinated beautifully with their outfits.

On Saturday, I suggested that we resolve the Inevitable Con Dinner Dilemma by getting takeout and going back to the studio. Worked out nicely. The group sorted itself into artists in one room, writers and programmers in the other, in the dark. People kept asking if we wanted the lights on. No, we like it this way. Talk of using the Periscope model for programmers. Discussion of the digital nomads report in the Economist and what kinds of work are best suited to space-sharing collectives. Then I saw that Matt Maxwell, who'd been feeling increasingly under the weather, looked as though he might actually be on the point of expiring, so I excused myself to deliver him to the place he was staying.

Thank you, nice lady whose name I did not learn who had KATIE BEATON MAY I SHAKE YOUR HAND written on your shirt with a Sharpie. Your noble gesture meant that I was able to meet and enthuse at Kate Beaton! And then she gave me a Napoleon.



Since I've been doing cons, I've been increasingly aware of the need for a "close" indicator for the non-transactional conversations that happen across the table. You know, when you're talking to other exhibitors and/or friends without the expectation of money changing hands. Lately, I've been giving folks a not-very-military-style salute. I don't know when I started doing it, but it's become automatic.
I sat next to Carla Speed McNeil and this led to any number of cool interactions. One of them: getting to flip through Marian Churchland's sketchbook. Keen!



Most appropriate pairing of item purchased with purchaser: a copy of Einbahnstrasse Waltz to an Austrian-born illustrator who's also a musician. She bought it for her friend the concert violinist.

I told Kevin Moore he should put his sketches of conventiongoers on Flickr and he did!

Talked to a girl who'd done a reconstruction of the Empress cover for a school project. (Yikes, that book's been out a while.)

Awesome: people approaching your table all eager & excited because they've liked your stuff in the past. Less awesome: not having anything new on offer. note to self: get cracking on next Flytrap script, stat!

I did have one new thing: buttons. Yes, Empress has been out for seven years and I only just now made them.



End of show: we've got our stuff and Carla's stuff and John's stuff and Kevin is helping and gosh there are a lot of boxes (although we all sold a bunch, too) and the trunk is totally full and we drive off to have a decompressing dinner at Yuki, which is delicious, and after that we get back to the house and unload and...wait, what happened to the other box? You know, the old laptop box, with all the books in it? Back to the Doubletree. View the post-con carnage:

**

Box nowhere to be found. Back home. Make some phone calls. Box located! Stumptown founder Indigo Kelleigh has it, bringing us full circle. Whew.

...And Emerald City is in two weeks. Yikes.

** not actually the scene of the comics convention.

pasted manually from sararyan.com, until we figure out how to make the crossposter plugin work again

I couldn’t believe this when I saw it, so naturally I had to document.

Fred Meyer courts the PMS market.

Could they make it any more blatant? Perhaps by additionally juxtaposing small packages of tissues?

‘Cause you know, ladies get weepy.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

This weekend, as many of my readers doubtless know, is the Stumptown Comics Fest. I will totally be there. With comics. Because, comics. But also novels. Because, novels. You should come. And thanks, Steve Duin, for the kind words in Seven Reasons To Love Stumptown!

In other news, Comic Book Tattoo is now up for preorder on Amazon. The book description:

“Over 80 of the best creators from every style and genre have contributed over 50 stories to this anthology featuring tales inspired by the songs of multi-platinum recording artist, Tori Amos! Featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman, with stories by creators such as Carla Speed McNeil, Mark Buckingham, C.B. Cebulski, Nikki Cook, Hope Larson, John Ney Reiber, Ryan Kelly, and many, many others, Comic Book Tattoo encapsulates the breadth, depth, and beauty of modern comics in this coffee table format book.”

I am one of the many, many others! As is the esteemed Mr. Jonathan Case, my collaborator on the project. I don’t think I’m allowed to say which song we did…yet.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

Photos from TBF Live! 2008 a few weeks back, courtesy of the fabulous Sarah Hodges. Thanks, Sarah!

Anna and Emi, handlers extraordinaire! Note that Emi does not actually have someone else’s head growing out of her shoulder.

Me and Sarah, also a handler extraordinaire and official Adult!

Me and Anna.

At one of my sessions. It delights me that the vocabulary words adroit, intelligent, knowledgeable, and sagacious are floating next to me in this photo. My hosts were all of the above.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

Conversation en route to the sale: “Well, it’s Sunday, so probably someone’s already bought the skull.” “Yeah. Oh well.”

My grandparents had this same thermometer/barometer. Theirs still had the man with the umbrella, though.

There was a plethora of anticommunist and Catholic ephemera. And one, lone, girlie picture. (But it was the last day of the sale. The proportions may have been different at the beginning.)

Why aren’t owner’s manuals this cool any more?

Creepy old baby doll with no eyes AND haunting, slightly drugged-looking lady amidst foliage. Aw yeah.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

and found the Fraenkel Gallery. Fell in. So many gorgeous, haunting images. So many stories.

This is the one I was looking for –

doesn’t it look oddly like she has an iPod?

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

Yikes, I almost forgot!

Sometime before the end of today, I will release a copy of Empress into the wild. Not sure where yet. Perhaps a community center…

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

A few weeks back, after more than ten years in Portland, we finally made it to the Art Museum. The occasion: The Dancer: Degas, Forain, and Toulouse-Lautrec.

At first, I found myself oddly resistant to what I was seeing. Then I realized that in order to look at the ballet-related images, I had to overcome a century or so of kitsch overlay; banish the spinning ballerina on my childhood music box, in her tiny tulle tutu. Like listening to the original after hearing dozens of lackluster covers. After that mental readjustment, I fell right in.

Two surprises: first, the solidity and strength of many of the figures. My friend explained that the ideal of the super-thin ballerina came in later, with Ballanchine. Second: Forain. Even if I hadn’t taken art history, between dorm-room posters and the aforementioned balletic kitsch, I’d have seen a lot of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. But I’d somehow missed Forain.

His work is lovely, and also creepy — those abonnés in their ominous top hats. I was very glad to discover him. Too bad he was also “a great hater.”

Still, the exhibit is most definitely worth seeing. It’s up til May 11th, Portlanders.

In entirely unrelated news: via the magic of RSS feeds, there is yet another place to read these posts. As of yesterday, I’m signed up with Amazon Connect. I won’t be responding to comments there, though, so if you find me in the land of Amazonia, click back over here to let me know.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

Those of you who know me IRL are well aware that unlike most other Portlanders, I am not a gardener. My typical approach to all growing things is one of malign neglect.

But today, there was a convergence of factors: the weather, my (sadly infrequent) desire not to look at a computer screen, and a gentleman informing me that one of the plants on the parking strip was so overgrown that those wishing to park in front of the house were forced to do so pretty much in the exact middle of the street.

So I did some pruning.

I saved a little of the rosemary.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

Thanks for the kind and wise comments on my last tiny sad entry.

Today, though, there’s sun, I have the windows open, I’m listening to an old, slightly over-the-top favorite, Murray Attaway’s “No Tears Tonight,” and I’ve been sorting through my wardrobe for the inevitable spring purge.

Three Things I Can Never Have Enough Of:

1. Hoodies. (God help me if they ever go seriously out of style. Don’t tell me if they already have.)

2. Amusing t-shirts. (Yeah, I know.)

3. Vintage dresses. (Anything designed after circa 1964 doesn’t seem to work.)

Three Things I Keep Buying, Thinking That This Time I’ll Wear Them:

1. 3/4 and long-sleeved cotton “basic” solid-color shirts. (I always think they’ll be good for layering, but they never seem to actually fit right.)

2. Button-down blouses.

3. Neutral, business-professional-type jackets.

What are your wardrobe staples and recurring misses? (Or am I the only one with that problem?)

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

you can power through. Snap out of it. Stop being shipwrecked, hijacked, floored.

You’ve got so much to do.

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

Convention season, that is. I just went through my calendar for the rest of the year (!) and put in the dates of the shows I’m planning to attend.

Stumptown (April 26-27, Portland, OR)

Emerald City (May 10-11, Seattle, WA)

American Library Association (June 26-July 2, Anaheim, CA)

San Diego Comic-Con (July 24-27, in, you guessed it, San Diego, CA)

Small Press Expo (October 4-5, Bethesda, MD. I’ve never been!)

Add to that a few non-convention trips I’ve either planned already or am contemplating, and it’s shaping up to be another year of many days away from home.

Anywhere else y’all think I should go?

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

Right now I’m sitting in the lobby (where the wireless signal is much stronger than it was in my room) waiting for the shuttle I’m sharing with a couple of the other authors whose flights are similarly ludicrously early. I’m down here even earlier than I need to be because I decided my flight was SO early that it was dumb to sleep, and that if I didn’t, I’d increase my odds of being able to sleep on the plane.

Time will tell whether or not this was a good idea.

Here are some more things about TBF Live!

1. Cheerleaders. Actual cheerleaders cheering for authors and books. I wish I could remember the words to the cheers, but I was so stunned that they were even happening that I could not commit them to memory.

2. An auditorium overflowing with teens who all wanted to be there.

3. I should’ve prepped answers for the “lightning round” questions. I want to substitute Natalie Portman for MacGyver and The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton for One Night In Bangkok. I will stand by Magic Shell however, though as I said, it’s not really for eating.

Shuttle’s here!

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.

Thank you guys so much for being the most excellent ‘handlers’ an author could ever desire. I’ll post more about the festival (which was fantastic), but I wanted to say that first. :)

Originally published at sararyan.com. You can comment here or there.