Weekly webcomic about my life as a stay-at-home mom and erotica writer.
This is a link to a picture of cartoon I did while at the podcasters and webcomics party at Balticon this past May. Just a quick little drawing in the midst of much happy madness 😉 The cartoon above was done by Brandon Danger Hill.
Cynical Woman cartoon at Balticon (picture taken by the always wonderful Chris Lester of the Metamor City podcast).
I will happily exercise my butt off over the holiday season, but Ah refuse, Ah say Ah refuse to give up my favorite holiday foods. In fact, I plan to discover some new favorites this year. How about you?
Holiday baking and other cooking starts in earnest this coming weekend. I don’t know what we’ll make yet, but I’m thinking of either a cake, candy, or some cookies. Whatever the kids and I decide on.
I love this time of year!
I know, I’m doing PerNoFiMo (Personal Novel Finishing Month) instead of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but this is about how it feels.
I spent Saturday cranking out 3000 words in the novel I’m working on, tentatively titled Whip It! I was feeling pretty proud of myself because that’s a lot of words to produce in just a few hours, so I posted an announcement to Twitter. Someone almost immediately came back and said, “That’s great! If they’re the right words…”
If they’re the right words? If they’re the right words? I said it last week and I will say it again. NaNoWriMo and PerNoFiMo are not about putting the right words down on the page. These events are about putting words down, period. A bad first draft can always be re-written, edited, cleaned up, etc. A blank page? You got nothing to work with.
I explained this, and the person who made the comment understood immediately, and I’m glad, because there are lots of people out there who would still insist that if I didn’t write the right 3000 words, then I’d just wasted a lot of time. Well you know what? Those people most likely aren’t ever going to succeed in writing novels. So there!
Have a great day! I’ll post my progress on PerNoFiMo tomorrow in my Writing Wednesday post 😉
Don’t forget to visit www.nanowrimo.org to find out more about National Novel Writing Month.
Also at Oh Get A Grip this week, we’re talking about what it’s like to live with a writer. Good stuff. Stop by for a look!
How hot is too hot? Is it possible to put too much sex in an erotica story?
Well actually, yeah. Most seasoned erotica writer realize that an erotica story has to be more than sex scenes strung together with a flimsy plot. Determining how much sex to put in, and determining how intense those scenes will be, can get tricky. It comes with practice though.
Still, it’s always a good idea to keep an extinguisher on hand. You know, just in case…
Oy, I hurt. I had this brilliant idea that I could do the text for the cartoon in Adobe, which would look much better than my own hand lettering. But then I got the cartoon scanned in and I thought, “Hey, if I can do the lettering in Photoshop, why not do the screen tones too? I know I’ve got a tutorial on that somewhere!” Several hours later…
I’m kicking myself because I should have just done the lettering and let it go at that, but nooooooo! I had to do the screen tones. And then I made the mistake of resizing the image down and then I saved it over the larger version of the file!! That hurts because now if I ever want to edit this particular episode again, I’ll have to start all over from the beginning, scanning in the line work and then adding the text and then adding the screen tones…
Ugh.
So anyway, I have a question. Right now, I’m resizing the cartoon to 1200×410 pixels. This is the size you see after you click on the thumbnail. I’ve got a giant flat screen monitor, so I have no idea really if this is too small or too large for anyone else viewing the cartoon. Let me know if you’d like to see the cartoon a little larger, or smaller, because the size I shrink things down to affects how the screen tones work (and yes, I’m just stupid enough to try that technique again, because in spite of the time I wasted this evening, I really like how this turned out).
Enjoy your Halloween!
Yes, this really is a problem around this household. Finding time for… well, let’s just say finding time for what’s important.
It’s hard for me to find time alone with the Hubster. In addition to the kids, we both put in a lot of hours at work, and since I’m usually up two hours before Hubster is, I’m usually out cold two hours before he is. We really do have to schedule sex if it’s going to happen. Oh, and buy a nice bottle of wine so I can relax, because between work and chasing after the kids, I’m wound tighter than a cuckoo clock by the end of the day.
Anyway, speaking of work, I have four new stories for sale with Logical Lust. These stories originally ran on the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast, they are scorching hot, and I think you will enjoy them. Check them out here!
One day, this is going to happen to me. It just has to. In addition to reading my stories aloud to catch mistakes, I also record most of them for the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast (which is a free weekly audio show I do that you can download to your MP3 player or listen to on your computer, and if you’re not listening you should be!). Most days I only write or record when the kids are in school or in bed. When they’re home and awake, I’m so busy taking care of them, I don’t have time to do anything else. But mark my words, one of these days they’re gonna walk in on me while I’m working…
You may have noticed that this cartoon is done “old style,” which is to say I did it on the computer using Manga Studio 4. I still love MS4, and much prefer the way the cartoons look when I do them on the computer, but the fact is, it takes too long to do the cartoons this way. This particular cartoon was penciled back in April, and then inked yesterday morning. Had I done this by hand, it would have taken me an hour at most to do the inking and then the cartoon would be finished. In Manga Studio 4, the inking takes longer, plus there are extra steps I do to add the tones and text balloons, which is part of what makes the digital cartoons so pretty. What to do? Continue drawing by hand, but draw better! It’ll come with practice. Meanwhile, I’ll just use Manga Studio for other projects, since I’d really like to do some Manga style artwork, and this is the best program I’ve got for inking.
Anyway, here is this week’s cartoon, and I hope you enjoyed it 😉
All I’m gonna say is, “Ugh. Urgh. Bleeeeergh.” It’s been that kind of week.
True story. Honest to god, Pixie came up to me one day and said exactly this. And it does not surprise me to hear this news, given the amount of stinky accidents we’ve had in the last couple months.
First, there was the poopie incident at the pizzeria in Chicago. Then we had an accident last week while she was home sick from preschool. Then yesterday, I hear a bunch of yelling coming from the upstairs bathroom. It wasn’t clear what was going on until I got halfway up the stairs and smelled that smell. Sure enough, there was a turd the size of a dinosaur egg sitting in the bathroom floor. Less than a foot away from the toilet. And there was a tiny little shoe print in it. With matching little brown shoe prints all over the bathroom.
According to Pixie, she did not reach the potty in time because it was dark in there. Yes, dark, as in the light was off. Of course, this happened in the middle of the day, which means the upstairs bathroom was dim, at most. Sigh. I just keep reminding myself that she will not be pooping her pants when she walks down the aisle on her wedding day.
I hope.
So how’s things with you all?
So, how was your summer?
Honest to god, I thought I would get so much more done this summer, but I feel like I barely managed to limp to the finish line. I was sooooooooo happy when school started and I finally had all day to myself. That was two weeks ago, and I am only now catching up on everything I didn’t get done while I was busy chasing after two kids.
I’m finally settling into a regular schedule, and I hope to be a little more productive with this cartoon. I also hope to start work on building a new website, combining all my various sites and blogs into one easy to find spot where you can get all the cartoons and blog posts and other goodies at once. There will be the usual Cynical Woman madness, plus maybe some new stuff (i.e. some ADULT stuff). So stay tuned. I’ll get that done. One of these days 😉