Update

[hmpf]

Actually working all day now, i.e. upwards of eight hours per day. Literally the only time I'm not working is when I'm trying to sleep, which takes inordinately long to accomplish. It takes between four and six hours for me to manage to fall asleep. Since I can't function without sufficient sleep for more than a couple of days that means that most days I spend insane amounts of time in bed - twelve hours in bed gets me six hours of sleep. Going to sleep can be hard work if your brain is constantly nattering away at you. I tend to try to calm the inevitable panic with mindfic, which sometimes does the trick - except when it works *too* well and becomes inimical to sleep in its own right.

My research is making progress now, which is good. The online version of Science Fiction Studies and Neil Barron's impressive bibliography of the science fiction field, "The Anatomy of Wonder", are proving useful in determining what books might be good to get on interlibrary loan. I've also started reading through the archives of When Fangirls Attack, although that's of limited usefulness so far.

I miss real food. Deep-freeze pizza and sandwiches just aren't very good for the soul... (And it's only been a few weeks... arrgh.)

On the plus side: researching indie fantasy comics of the nineties led me to Artesia, which rocks rather a lot more than I expected. Heroic fantasy - despite my love of Tolkien - is usually not quite my thing. But then, "Artesia" is not exactly cookie-cutter heroic fantasy... This just may be the first comic I'm aware of (outside the unique and disturbing universe(s) of Donna Barr, that is) which actually equals Finder in terms of depth and breadth and *believability* of the world it creates.

Speaking of Finder... Do I love Roy or do I love Roy? Heh.

Right. Going to bed now, to wrestle with sleep and 'write' some sickeningly domestic/bizarrely disturbing mindfic...

Comments

Disturbing

[dbarr.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the book mention. Can I leave my website address? www.donnabarr.com "Artesia" sounds interesting. Speaking of mindfic: check out Dickens' "David Copperfield" and the way the boy wanders the streets making up stories about the people around him. How many writers have started like THAT? Using their art to get out of a horrible situation, at least in their imagination?

Wow.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Speak of the devil Donna Barr... I'm kind of scared to ask how you happened upon my entry! ;-)

I've actually plugged your comics here before (http://hmpf.livejournal.com/182130.html) (thought I'd done more than one post, but apparently not... it's been a crazy year and a half since I discovered your works), but yeah, you're always welcome to leave another link. I should have put one into the original post, really, but I was in a hurry. Will remedy that immediately.

Oh, and I hope you realise that I meant 'disturbing' in the best possible sense!

I've read David Copperfield (ages ago), but I don't remember that bit. Have to admit my mindficcing was always more about people who were already fictional; somehow I've never been as tempted to invent stories for real people... possibly this has to do with my love of fantastic scenarios/worlds: much more fun to play with the stories of people who live in a fantastic world! The 'what if?' options were so much more interesting there. (Unsurprisingly, I eventually started writing fanfic. Though actually fanfic is a bit of a weird choice for me, considering I was always more interested in worlds than in people, and fanfic is nearly all about people. Hmm. Then again, I'm possibly better at writing people than at creating worlds... my teenage attempts at worldbuilding were hopelessly pedestrian. Oh, hell, I'll figure out what I want to (and can) write *some* day... *g*)

Since I conveniently have you here, I may as well ask: I'm currently considering doing my M.A. thesis about a comics-related topic, possibly about some aspects of American independent comics with a fantastic theme. Now, my knowledge of your works so far only encompasses the Desert Peach, which isn't exactly fantasy and/or sf (well, it's a bit of a borderline case, really. Afterdead certainly fits the bill). Stinz, I imagine, would fit the description better, being more clearly set in a somewhat fantastical world, but I'm not entirely sure if the issues that are still available from your website would be a good entry point for a novice. (Addendum: Oh damn, I see they're no longer available. Should have ordered sooner. Double damn.) Do you plan to make Stinz available in some form online, be it as paid download via Lulu or free download on WOWIO? Stinz is one of the major gaps in my little library so far, and also, leaving aside the issue of the, ahem, advancement of science ;-), I'm just personally curious about the series! Libraries here in Germany are unlikely to have Stinz, so it seems as if some form of online access would be the only chance for me to actually get to read it in time to be of use for my thesis.

Oh, and lastly: back in early 2007, when I completed my Desert Peach collection with issues bought from your web store, we had a short e-mail exchange that was broken, on my side, by Real Life intervening forcefully in some manner or another (I don't remember the details, but 2007 was a very real-lifey year.) I'd like to apologise for that.