TWO FISTED HOMEOPAPE December/26 - My New Author Dust Jacket Photo
Considering plans for next year, and how 2022 is the year my brain learned to stop scrolling and love the Substack app.
♫ I applied for a rescue dog,
But if I get you dog,
You're rescuing me ♫
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2022 -- bounce.
Mapping out 2023. Will it be…better?
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And the last few years have been real Mike Tyson jabs into my head, but I always retreat into the corner and plan up, so here goes:
Okay, I’m really taking a decent sprint at the starting line for 2023. On both the writing front, and the teaching front, there’s cool stuff I want to do.
The fact DEER EDITOR is back, and on top of the list, fills me with insane joy. I often feel like Bucky was my favourite character to create, and this book certainly sits in that pocket where I want to be creating - weird, crime, noir, strange. The current plan is to make 2023 the year we bring Bucky back into the light. This comic was born in my brain a decade ago, and with Sami Kivela we released three issues via Kickstarter. For so long I’ve wanted to return to this in the form of a collected edition and recently was afforded this very opportunity. If we pull this off, it’s proof you should hold onto your babies, and not rush lesser versions of your dreams.
There is some tweaking to be done - slight script arrangements and improvements - and then there’s also something else, something really special, that we are aiming to include in the collection - but I’ll save that tease/reveal for a later day.
Next up is a Pitch Bonanza to a publisher that’s been really rad to me so far, so I’m looking to see what we can work on next. I have a bunch of ideas and stories I am passionate about so early 2023 will see me start to roll these out and hope that I can start writing one of them quite soon to make it my 2023 project to focus on - I usually have that one major story I’m working on, it’s a good balance against the day job and life in general.
I also have two prose projects I want to tinker with. Both involve short stories. One would see me collaborating with my two brothers - both amazing novelists in their own rights - and the other is this weird thing that might only interest me, but the aim is to write a weird collection of fantasy shorts that are aiming to be high literature about elements of the human condition. Who knows what that actually means, and whether I can do it, but it excites me nonetheless, and sometimes all I need is some excitement to get me in the office at 4am. The rest will take care of itself.
I know this year in particular, the more adult prose I’ve been reading [in opposition to a lot of the junior fiction I used to read for work to read to 8-11 year olds] has really given me an itch to dive back into this skillset and explore.
On the teaching front, I’m in charge of running a Writers’ Camp, where we take a gaggle of students out to a camping ground and structure 3 days of author workshops and writing time so they all get a chance to learn, focus, collaborate, chill, and create in an environment focused solely on that for a few days. I’ve been on these before, as a visiting/presenting author, and they are crazy fun. I am very excited to now take the reins and see what I can do with the event.
I also have a few little teaching jobs/tweaks/initiatives that I’ve been working away at for the past few months, and 2023 is the year I put them into action. I can’t go into details, but I can confirm they excite me greatly.
ALSO, in order to be completely transparent, let’s discuss the project NOT on the list :[
I’ve spent every month of 2022 working on a comic miniseries set for release in 2023. I have written all 4 scripts, the art is complete for #1, and is coming in for #2. The publisher set to release it - not that we’ve announced it yet - have delivered me a big shock after filing for Bankruptcy. What this means for the book…? I have no clue. But I won’t be doing any work on it at the current moment until things look like they will actually come to fruition.
Shockingly, after a year’s worth of work, a cruel blow that looks to probably sink the project entirely hasn’t seemed to completely implode my head. Losing projects is hard. I’ve had plenty of opportunities just up and disappear. I was going to write a fill in issue of GREEN WAKE [one of my favourite Image comics ever] and it fell apart. I was going to write an Adam Strange short story [it got nixxed due to lack of energy for the character, which was well before the King/Gerads/Shaner maxi-series] and then I was going to write a Lois Lane and Jon Kent short [it got pulled after many rounds of edits, I’m assuming because I’m a terrible writer and the quality was similar to that of puddle water in your drinking glass]. I pitched TMNT stories and never quite got across the line. I had a production company interested in adapting ETERNAL into a feature film, where I would write the first draft of the screenplay, and then Covid absolutely battered them. I had a dream project of 10 issues softly greenlit and then nothing came of it.
You make comics long enough and you know nothing is certain until it is in your hands - and when it falls apart, a little piece of you falls apart with it. So I’m shocked that this current news hasn’t hit me too hard. I’m disappointed, and I am definitely going to miss the quite sizable payment this project was going to net me - I never really budget my life around the comic work because I know it could dry up at any moment, but this was signed and nearly completed and would have completely paid for an entire family holiday overseas, so I don’t lie and pretend like I wasn’t factoring it into future budgets a little.
Now, I could be angrier about possibly having wasted a year’s worth of writing time, but in the end I just seem to feel…a sense of calm about this one. Here’s hoping that holds :]
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No more scrolling.
I am in a pocket right now where I am not using any scrollable social media at all. I can already feel my brain mending. All Zuckerberg media was ditched by 2020, and now Twitter is being run [and owned] by someone sharing Pepe the frog memes and tweeting about the “woke mind virus” and I don’t have enough good will in my pocket to allow that shit, so I’ve bounced from there. Which leaves me, nothing to scroll.
Now when I have a moment, and I go on my phone [sometimes] and I usually just read longer form stuff. I read emails, I sometimes delve into the old links I have saved in Pocket, but mostly I’ve been enjoying going into the Substack app and reading newsletters in there. It means I go into a newsletter and focus for 5 minutes on the one thing - the app even tells you how long it expects each one will take to read, it tracks which you’ve read, and which ones you’ve only read a bit of them.
Then there’s the Chat function over there, which is clearly still suffering from not quite enough people chiming in, but the interaction that is there is pretty good. But mostly I’m just there to read and not scroll. I’m rebuilding my focus. I’m aiming for 2023 to be a year where I maintain this scroll-free mindset and just give myself quality things to read and immerse myself in.
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The working class needs to be creative.
An analysis from the UK showed there were less working class people in the UK now than there were in the past - click here to check the article, it links to the research which is actually all about social mobility as linked to the arts as a profession [in so far as I skimmed through it, no deep reading was attempted, sorry].
This is a sad thing to hear. I do wonder [and maybe it’s in the report] but where are all of the number of people who used to work in creative areas now working? The next question is: why the shift?
You can’t help but imagine it’s a division in the social classes, with working class people kept into their roles, and upper class people still having access to creative avenues, role models within those avenues, and opportunity to explore and express creativity.
I also do wonder if “jobs” like streamer [or whatever] don’t fall under the category of creative and so are missed. It could be a fault in the new labels we have for things. I also wonder if people who do something like this on the side, as a hobby - which is exactly and legally how my comic career is listed - perhaps don’t qualify as these things aren’t always full time jobs anymore, but are rather side hustles…? But it also shows that those who work in the “libraries/museums” space dropped 90% in 40 years from 200 to 20 [in whatever scaling this study has, again, skim read, sorry]. But that’s a huge drop, and one that speaks to access and importance placed on things.
I think it’s vital that everyone feel the opportunity and see the merit in having creative expression. I push this at work all the time - maybe not as a job to pursue, but as a mental avenue to wander down. Writing poetry, recording songs, creating art; it’s all mental health care. It’s all good for the brain and good for the soul. It’s a shame if people think they just can’t explore themselves in whichever area they like, or worse, feel that they shouldn’t as it’s pointless.
Alongside this, does it mean the arts are more just full of upper class people? If the arts don’t have a diverse range of views and voices, then that’s going to limit who feels seen, who feels heard, who feels inspired, and how authentic it all can be. I would love to push for and support more working class voices in the arts.
I grew up working class. No one in my family had finished high school - I was the first person to go through and finish it all in one linear educative process. My parents worked good jobs and we had food on the table. We lived in towns that had a mixture of people in our public education schools. My best mates from high school went on to be: a lead singer in a punk band, and a live sound engineer for an insane array of live acts. Me, I’ve written comics for some publishers and won a few national awards.
We all had basic home town upbringings and definitely had things to say and express. Man, it’d be sad if we didn’t think we ever could do that, or that it would be worthwhile.
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PERHAPS YOU'D CARE TO SAMPLE
This somewhat old interview with Michael Chabon on Hibrow - it’s all gold, but at the end he talks about whether you can teach writing!
I found this really heartwarming to listen to.
Please let women be villains - an article/essay on Electric Lit about not needing to rehabilitate old villains into understandable women. I hadn’t considered this trend from Wicked through Maleficent to Cruella, and it’s got some interesting points. I’d argue that their rehabilitation is a step in the right direction, but perhaps not the complete final landing point on a way to rectifying lazy 2D women as villains that the past is littered with, but I also realise I come at concepts like these from a very removed and privileged position.
Chuck Palahniuk gives short story feedback - the author of Fight Club, and many other books, has a robust substack newsletter that does many things, but something I dig is that he’ll pluck out a short story and offer feedback peppered throughout it. The process is a more dialogue driven version of what I do for students, and I actually want to use this linked post in class to show students what feedback can look like, and how it can be helpful. I definitely advocate for signing up to the Plot Spoilers newsletter, as well as Margaret Atwood’s newsletter. I know a lot of comic creators with substack newsletters, but not as many authors that I can think of.
Pink Midnight Presents: The Butterfly House - this comic from Juan Romera and Paul Allor is a brilliant one-shot masterpiece and it’s launching on Zoop in the new year so click the link to be notified when it does because I promise you do not want to miss this!
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GRIST FOR THE MILL
All of the Xmas movies. Pour them all into my head. I know, I’ll most likely fall asleep midway through therm, but I feel like that might be the most Xmas Tradition of All in this house.
Once these are wiped from the viewing list, I have a bunch of other films I want to get to through 2023. I started a list on Letterboxd - because I was chatting with a nerdy coworker and they reminded me of this place, but was chatting to me about lists and I realised that would be a good way to track some new films I want to watch with the kids, and it also has a function where it tells you where you can watch it [something I find hugely helpful, even if most of the films I wanna watch are not streaming in Aus at all].
I am halfway through watching HER and it’s fairly brilliant - I just do not know where it’s going to go, but I’m keen to find out.
Oh, and STRANGE WORLD, the new Disney film - I loved it. There are two major themes running through it all - generations/legacy and sustainability of the environment - and I thought both were handled in lowkey genius/awesome ways. It might not be the best [Disney] flick ever, but I thought it was highly enjoyable and visually beautiful. Beyond that, it’s so nice to see Disney making films so far out of their mould - no princess ruining her life for a prince here. This is a story with heart and a longterm meaning and plenty of diversity, and I’m going to advocate for so many people to watch it.
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Be one of the good guys, because there's way too many of the bad.
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Who is Ryan K Lindsay?
I’m an award-winning Australian comic writer. I’ve been published by Black Mask, Dark Horse, ComixTribe, IDW, Mad Cave, Heavy Metal, Vertigo, and a few more. Kickstarter has been a home for many short comics. I often get to collaborate with great mates, and this brings me joy.
I write about balancing this creative game alongside a full teaching load [currently College English] and a lovely family load and the forever melting brain that is modern man. I think about a lot of stuff, I still don’t know if it’s the right stuff. ymmv.
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POST CREDITS SEQUENCE
I hope everyone is having a good end to the year. A usual time of reflection [I’ll look at New Year’s Resolutions next time - and I’ll consider my newsletter structure and timing a bit, too, actually] and a time to kick back and enjoy what you enjoy. Maybe it’s been a good one, maybe not - I like to believe there’s always more and hope around the corner no matter what you are after.
My one suggestion is - take photos to keep some of these memories right now alive.
I don’t like most photos I’m in. But I like the memories that photos capture. It’s a fine balance.
This pic was taken on a family retreat [as I retreated from my family into a good book]. I think it could be my best dust jacket author photo ever. It certainly benefits from the opportunity to photoshop any old book cover into my hands. Ah, finally nailed that pensive photo that’s been eluding me since 1999. May it bring you peace as you consider 2023 :] Thanks for being here!