Artstuff: Scenes from Haunted Places

In 2018 I was commissioned to do a series of illustrations for the website of a horror comics writer. We’d discussed doing a dozen pieces and tossed back and forth more than a couple dozen image ideas. I finished four drawings before the writer decided to cancel the series. He liked the work but it wasn’t really related to the stories he was writing. With his permission I’m posting the work now.

Story Seed #41

Four story seeds. Pick any one of the four images above. Write a story.

Or pick them all and write a story that connects them.

Your version will be the true one. All your versions.

Send me the story. I’ll publish it in a future newsletter.

Recommended: Ink & Snow

Ink & Snow is the blog of Jamie Smith, an Alaskan cartoonist. Among other projects he does the strip Nuggets for the Fairbanks News-Miner. I was born in Alaska and lived there until I was five. I’ve still got family up there. While I prefer my current place of residence, I have a lot of affection for the state.

It’s said that if you have to explain a joke it ceases to be funny. Smith’s blog is him writing about his cartoons and showing off preliminary sketches. I enjoy seeing other artists’ processes so I appreciated the background material. And his cartoons are still funny.

Lifestuff

Sabe has been tolerating his electrolyte injections pretty well. He’s not fond of having a bigass needle jabbed in his neck skin but he hunkers down while the electrolytes go in. We’ve put the electrolyte bag in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes before we inject him and that seems to help. A nurse once told me that injections hurt less when the material being injected is at least room temperature. It’s not the needle that causes the pain so much as the cold material going into the body.

I’ve finished all the illustrations for The Mystery of April Snow, the add on scenario for The Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection. Work continues on the illustrations for the rest of the book.

And the mail continues to be delivered. Customers have been asking “How are you?” recently and are actually interested in the answer. It’s a little weird. I’d gotten used to “How are you?” being the equivalent of “Hi!”. Not a question, just a greeting made in passing. Lately though, folks are waiting for me to reply and asking questions. It’s nice.

I am, so far, healthy. By this time in the season I’ve usually caught my spring cold, mostly recovered and am suffering through the three weeks of coughing that follow the initial sickness. No spring cold so far. I wear a mask and gloves while sorting mail at the beginning of the day. From 9 am until I finish delivery I’m mostly by myself. When I do talk to customers we both keep our distance. Apparently precautions against C-19 work for other viruses and bacteria as well. Who knew?

I hope this finds you well, mentally and physically. If you haven’t been doing anything productive or useful – congratulations! Too much emphasis is put on us being good cogs. It’s okay to be a bad cog. There’s a machine that needs crashing and we can all play a part in bringing it down.