Just a note

A fellow writer and friend mentioned how, at 16, she had simple story ideas, but as an adult, those ideas have grown and multiplied into more complexities. 

My own stories began so simply(alien & human in love, dog gangsters, merman falls in love with tree woman researching him) and now those same tales have grown into journeys of self identity, dived into gender politics, injustice, advocacy, sex and body positivity, with cast of characters from diverse cultural ethnic groups, mythological beings, and various alien species. 

I will continue to tell the stories that speak to me and that I wish I had read when I was younger.

Until next time, my Dear Readers.

I wish my readers a belated NEW YEAR'S

A disturbing start to the New Year, which I can't add the appellation 'Happy' this time. 

I DO want to say that I've gotten the ball rolling on purchasing art supplies every few weeks. 

I may be starting the next chapter in my life just as I'm doing with my stories and artwork. 

2020 was a godforsaken and awful year but it brought a lot of lessons with tears and now I'm ready to apply what was learned.

Let us explore 2021 together!

Decolonizing my own work...

When I drew a cat character back in high school, this was around the time I began to formulate characters for my Tabber the Red series. One of the more important female characters, a male student called her 'thunder thighs'. A male character 'looked gay'*.When working on characters for my scifi dog comic, one athletic-looking female character 'looked like a lesbian', as if one's body type determined one's orientation! 

I have gotten a lot of flack, criticism, and insults towards my OCs (original characters) since I could put pencil/pen to paper. And when people attack my characters, I feel as if they're attacking me. One particular hurtful comment was when a close friend and fellow artist told me to kill off my main female character because she wasn't 'good enough for the main male character', who happened to be a gangster! 

Now you probably noticed a pattern here. Most of the harshest critiques are towards my female or femme looking characters. We already know why this is and I can discuss it another time, but, the point of this post is to understand how important it is to me as an artist to show diversity even within my speculative fictional worlds. That's why even my anthro cat characters will have locs and braids. That's why I make sure that this October artist month, when I show my Tabber the Red fantasy-sword&sorcery characters who happened to be tattooed, scarred, or wearing mendhi and/or henna, I put a footnote that all those body markings have nothing to do with war or becoming a warrior and everything to do with cultural/ethnic/tribal/national identity. 

Since I pull inspiration from real-life beliefs and practices, the same respect I will accord to others, I will do so for my fictional people. To me, culture and ethnic identity is important and not to be appropriated as gimmick or 'trendy'. I'm doing my research. I'm speaking to others. I will learn, so that when my characters express themselves, the identity will be as seamless as the 'air they breathe'.

There will be more 'decolonizing' for my OCs and in my writings. Just you wait and see.

*That character that was called gay? It seems that even if that person meant it as an insult, I realized while writing the character that he is indeed QUILTBAG and I'm writing in his sexual identity and orientation into the story. So, I guess that long ago person did me a favor by 'outing' my cat character! 

The Comic Story I'm Working On

The more I explain about the work-in-progress comic I'm currently drafting, the more I have to keep explaining to justify a premise that, in this case, needs no justifying.

In a nutshell, SUMMER TO WINTER is about a high schooler who falls in love with her teacher. Eight years later, the two reunite and begin a relationship. Sounds simple? Pure and wholesome? Well, not to some who I told the synopsis to. Without even waiting for an explanation, folks assumed the worst. They assumed a toxic relationship. Something wholly inappropriate had the high schooler and her teacher started that kind of relationship. But they didn't and I wouldn't write that.

I'm not judging other writers for writing about that. Writers we can write whatever (as long as it doesn't hurt or harm innocent people). There's all sorts of ethical and moral issues with writing certain topics. That's not what I'm getting into with this post. What I AM SAYING is most of my story ideas stem from conversations I've had or eavesdropped on, rumors I've overheard, folklore, family history, and the tales read and/or spoken to me or that I've read over time. 

When I was in high school, I heard a rumor about a student and a teacher(rumors are great fodder for storytelling. I'd rather turn a rumor into a story idea rather than repeat it) and it went something like this: 

A teen girl likes her teacher and goes after him. He rejects her, citing that it's inappropriate. Student tells him she's set to graduate and that she'll come back for him. 

The 'story' is when she DID graduate, she went back to see him and they ended up together. In another version, they got married. 

Now, did this really happen? A lot of folks have asked me. I don't know. I don't know if this was a true story or made up. So is the nature of rumors. 

Depending on circumstances or situation, you may not get the real life drama behind the story, but the 'What If?' is compelling enough to want to write about it! 

So this is what I did. I didn't want an imbalance. I didn't want an illegal relationship. I knew about peers who were minors and abused by adults. I didn't want to normalize such in any story I write.

I am a romantic. I love romance. I love romantic movies and shows, comics and graphic novels, I love romance novels. I'm a sentimental person, probably to the point of being schmaltzy. I don't deny it. I like when couples wear the same clothes. I like when a couple cosplays together. I even think it was cute reading about such a couple that the guy crossplays his characters so he can wear the same clothing as his girlfriend. Don't judge me. Don't judge him. 

I've even been reading more representative romances, the kind I've always gravitated towards when younger: interracial, intercultural, interfaith, and inter-ethnic. 

I also have been reading a lot of webcomics and e-manga that shows LGBTQIA+ romances. The more representative of real life, the better!

So, getting back to my story, SUMMER TO WINTER, I wanted to expand on that rumor I heard from my high school days. I wanted to see behind the scenes. And I wanted it to be a sweet love story with a lot of steam to get the pulse racing. And I love comedies, and life can be hilarious, so that's in there too. 

The draft pages I've been posting to my writing group and to my Instagram - I also post the SFW (Safe For Work) pages on Facebook - Hey, my bosses, coworkers, family and family friends are still on there! I don't feel comfortable posting there! - but the rest is received by my Twitter chat group and my Insta followers, and the feedback is intense and mostly positive. 

Pretty much in a nutshell, I continue to write the stories I wanted to see on TV, in the theatre, and in books. And I've been getting those stories, but now I'm getting even more that I didn't know I wanted, and that's perfect for me as a storyteller... 

Stay inside as much as possible, be safe and take care, Dear Readers!

Story can be a challenge

I had a short story in mind but realized another story within the same world, yet dealing with a different cast, finally started to make sense. I also didn't want to force the characters of another story in the same series for the sake of meeting a themed submission guideline. That routine has hardly worked for me except in this year, when I crafted an article just for a journal and it was accepted! 

Mind you, this is 2017 and I've been trying to write professionally since 1996 with my first publication in 1999-2000!

Since this break in the semester, not only has the novel continued rolling around in my head as it should, but a solution came to a short story within the cat epic fantasy series! I've been on-again-off-again with a particular title within the collection and I realized it proved difficult to write another title because I needed the events of the title I'm STRUGGLING WITH NOW to happen!

EUREKA! Can you believe this? And now, that difficult story is almost writing itself! I'm still jotting down notes, swathes of exposition and setups. The story deals with one of my magic using characters who I believed for years to be a villain, or at best, an antihero. I couldn't be further from the truth! He's not only a nice and generous person, he's lovably sardonic and sarcastic! His sardonic personality was already fixed when he was originally 'conceived' but that was with a villainous character. With this more pleasant personality, my shero/heroine won't seem like such a masochist when she falls for him.

There have also been changes to his back story as well. Actually, I kept his origins but in the nascent conception, I had him move far from those trainings and how he was raised. I also had him a stranger to most of that background. Now I understand he couldn't possibly be who he is while disavowing his origins. He just wouldn't be that person! 

His back story also solves my reasons for the antagonistic relationship he has with another fellow magic user too! It's all making sense now. After HOW long? Sheesh... Well, 'til next time!

The Storytelling Animal - by Jonathan Gottschall

The Storytelling Animal - this book appears interesting, and I'm going to try this out.