i should be working on other stuff, but ~

last night i wrote the opening scene i meant to write for Reconstruction many moons ago when i first started posting it online. but i didn't write it then because i chickened out. i didn't want my introduction to web serial writing to be something so offensive (it's offensive to me personally, so i figured it ought to offend others). it was also hard finding a way to write the scene without convicting my protagonist of being, well, pretty much everything that he is, unfortunately. i think i had forgotten then what i remember now: Lewis Fletcher is a troubled human being with the all the baggage of the worst of the South slung over one shoulder. that was sort of the point of creating the character. i guess i got to liking him so much that i started really softening the edges a lot.

no more of that nonsense. it's about time i got fearless. or at least moved in that general direction. i think it will start something like this:

At first the club was just sport. It was something to do to keep from thinking about starving: scaring the beejesus out of the Freedmen. The war was all their fault anyway, wasn’t it? So it was, the way the Yankees told it. So Lewis, in a continual sot of brandy and morphine, ran with the Kirkwoods that long hot summer in '66, in a mad collective county vengeance against the perceived objects of their apparent ruin.

i had a great time drawing this picture this morning. i really struggled with trying to decide whether he should be wearing his Confederate uniform, though. i decided against it, but i kind of wish i hadn't. it didn't even take me that long to throw it together, so i might try another version with the uniform on. i'm only really sorry that i will have to reduce the picture so much to post it to my website, but i think even in a reduction, it looks pretty nifty.

a prize to whoever can guess what's burning in the background. er...maybe that's totally inappropriate.

: o p

i spent all day drawing this, so you're going to look at it!

wow, i spent entirely too much time making this. i don't know what i was thinking. that said, it came out pretty nifty. i basically kiped the design from this fabulous library in portugal, but toned down the opulence a bit. i'm still working on the bottom half, but i had to stop after drawing and coloring all those little books. it was a bit much.

it's been a lot of fun doing this today. i seem to work best when there's no expectation looming over my head (no surprise there). and look: it's even in color, which is pretty amazing for me. i might dicker with the tones a bit for the final, but for now i am pretty pleased with it. and i wrote a little today too. about two-thousand words for whatever that's worth. nothing brilliant, but it was nice to throw down some verbiage nonetheless. i can't exactly account for my current good mood, but i certainly welcome it given all the angsting i've been doing lately about my creative stuff. i don't know if this will last, but i plan to enjoy it while i can. i've still got a ton of work to do on other projects and i'm now going to go do it (yes, at ten o'clock at night, why not?). i'd like to wrap up at least one of the major projects on my desk tonight (i'm nearly there!), so that i can work on the other one tomorrow and next week. with the holiday weekend coming up i have an extra day off and that's great too. i'm just babbling at this point. but all procrastination must come to an end and this is it. happy sattidy all! : D