Author: Cynical Woman

Cartoonist, Artist, Geek, Evil Crafter, Girl Scout Troop Leader and Writer. Also, a zombie. I haven't slept in I don't know how long.
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Episode 20 – Sudden Death

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Oh my god, I think I just gave birth to twins.  Twin strips that is.

Please notice that while this week’s strip is THREE WEEKS LATE, it is also TWICE AS BIG.  And I got railroaded by a butt-load of work and the Princess’ kindergarten stuff.  For details on all of that, see my other blog here.

But at last this episode is done, and I can honestly say I still haven’t figured out how I want to draw this.  Manga Studio or Adobe Photoshop?  By hand or on the laptop?  All options have their advantages and disadvantages, and I’m seriously wishing that Smith-Micro would hurry it’s ass up and put out Manga Studio 4 so I could test it and see if the new version solves my current problems. But noooooooo! That would be asking a bit much I suppose. I’m only a heavy consumer of computer graphics programs after all.

So about the cartoon itself. This is something that has happened all too frequently to me.  I get a great idea while I’m out with the kids but when I finally make it home, ‘I got nothing,’ as Orziel would say.  I have learned to keep a notebook with me as often as possible, and I even have a handy little folding keyboard for my PDA, but none of those really gives me the freedom to write the moment the inspiration strikes.  Because I’ve always got to keep an eye on the kiddes, see? I look away for a few seconds and the next thing I know they’re tattooing someone else’s darling child with purple and green Sharpie markers.

But the writing does eventually get done and the inspiration is never completely gone.  It just goes into hiding.

The bastard.

To learn more about Orziel and his lovely boy-toy Jarresh, visit Mojocastle Press at http://www.mojocastle.com/demon/byday.html and BUY A COPY OF MY BOOK, DAMMIT!

Going to bed now…

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October nearly killed me…

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And November doesn’t look much better.

I got trampled by kindergarten and doctor’s appointments and Michael’s business trips last month, which is why I wasn’t around much.  For some reason, the simple world of kindergarten exploded with homework and class projects at the beginning of October.  It started with the Letter Notebook, which requires Cassie to practice writing the Letter of the Week and then finding pictures that start with the Letter of the Week, which she has to cut out, paste and label in the Letter Notebook.  It’s been taking us half an hour a night to do this project – one night for practicing the letter, one night for finding and cutting pictures, and one night for the pasting and labeling.  This is ON TOP OF any other homework that walks through the door, like more practice writing on worksheets and books that she’s supposed to read for her Reading Log, plus art projects and Things She Must Bring In For Class (like an empty water bottle, a white adult t-shirt, an egg carton, etc.).  It’s been killing me to keep up with all of this.  And the ON TOP OF all this, I volunteered to chaperone field trips and co-host a class party.  Lots of work, I gotta tell ya.

But Cassie loves that I’m active in her class activities, so it’s not a bad thing.  But then I had a bunch of medical appointments ON TOP OF that.  Two of these appointments were for me – my annual pelvic exam and my annual mammogram.  These are the kinds of appointments I prefer to go to sans children, meaning I needed a sitter for Sam those mornings.  Michael was supposed to stay home those mornings so I could get to my appointments, but then he had one business trip after another and I had to keep rescheduling my pelvic exam until I finally threw a screaming fit and he told me when he was going to be home.  And then the doctor’s office called me to cancel THAT appointment because the doc had to go out of town.

I eventually did get my mammogram and my pelvic exam done, and I even got a flu shot to boot (my gynecologist gave it to me, a nice little bonus to go with the speculum up my… well, you know).  Then I had to get flu shots for the kids and guess what?  The pediatrician was booked solid on flu shots.  She does them on specific days and you HAVE to have an appointment.  I finally ended up calling in to have Cassie looked at for something else, a rash on her face, and the receptionist asked if I wanted to get flu shots for both kids then, since we’d all be there.

“Was this all I needed to do to get a flu shot for my kids, have one of them come up with some weird skin ailment so I could make an appointment to bring them in?”

“Yes,” the receptionist replied.  “They’re going to be here anyway, so…”

So next fall, I’m going to scribble all over Cassie’s face with a green marker to give her another ‘rash’ and get our flu shots again that way.

Beyond that, I’ve been overloaded with work.  You can read about that at my work blog – http://www.helenehmadden.com.  I’m working to cut back in preparation for the holidays.  Don’t quite know how I’ll do that yet, but I will.

Meanwhile, it’s story time now with Sam.  I’ll blog some more later, I promise.

Unless November eats me alive as well.

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Writing and Self-Indulgence

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I apologize for cross posting this to here and to my writing blog, but I’ve been slammed for time, and I need to get a blog post up here anyway I can. 

I’m feeling horrifically self-indulgent today, or rather I feel horrific because I was self-indulgent today.  The local schools were closed today for the election, so I didn’t have to worry about getting to the bus stop by 3:15 to pick up my oldest daughter.  She stayed home with me and her little sister, who had a temperature of 102 degrees.  The youngest acted fine most of the day, but because of the fever she actually took an afternoon nap for the first time in almost six months.  A very loooooooong nap.

With the youngest sound asleep and the oldest happily drawing and playing in her room all afternoon, I was actually able to enjoy my old work schedule of three uninterrupted hours of work today.  I handled a few e-mails, battled it out with a horror story that refused to settle on a plot line, and wrote over one thousand words in that time.  I didn’t focus on the story that was on my to-do list for today – I was too obsessed with fixing and then writing the horror story.  But I definitely got something accomplished.

And I feel horrible about it.

Should I have knocked off at 3PM like I usually do on school days and spent more time with my eldest daughter?  I know she was perfectly happy in her room, working on an art project for her kindergarten class (an art project that is due on Thursday and was going to require a lot her time to complete anyway, I might add).  I just can’t believe I had so much time today to write!  I haven’t had such a luxury in ages, three uninterrupted hours.  At best, I manage to get an hour in the afternoon to write most days because one child comes home from school at 3 and the other refuses to go down for a nap anymore.  I need this kind of time to write, and my taking it and using it didn’t hurt anybody, so why do I feel so crappy about having spent the whole afternoon doing what I love?

Maybe I ate too much chocolate today.  Damn Halloween candy…

But seriously, I need to do something about my work schedule, about my daily schedule.  I need to find a way to get back those three hours of writing time, yet still tend to the needs of my kids.  It simply kills me that I can’t do this anymore.

Anybody else feel horribly guilty when they get time like this to work?

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Episode 19 – Napkins

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I swear, I thought I’d never get this one done.

In an effort to find a more effecient way to do these cartoons, I tried doing the pencilling and inking the old fashioned way, on actual paper.  Both stages went very quickly, and I was extremely happy with the results.

Until I scanned in the inked cartoon, that is.  It did not look good when I went to clean it up.  Manga Studio gives me a very nice, crisp pressure-sensative line.  My pens do to, but they also bleed a bit on the paper, and that showed up very quickly on the scan.  So it took me a while to fix that little problem.

Then there was the matter of adding the screen tones to the cartoon.  You know, those little shades of grey I color with?  Yeah, those were a bitch.  I had to make them all by hand in Photoshop, and then the pasting in took lots more time than I would have prefered.  I did learn a few things in the process, which was nice because I’m still feeling my way around Photoshop, but man I was not satisfied with those tones.  Manga Studio has some very nice tones, and they look great when I paste them in.  My handmade ones do not measure up, I’m afraid.

The lettering and adding of word balloons did go much quicker than it would have in Manga Studio, and that has led me to the following conclusion.  For the next episode, I plan to do the pencils on actual paper, scan them in, import the scan into Manga Studio, and then ink them there.  Then the cartoon gets exported out to Adobe Photoshop for lettering and word balloons, because that’s one area where Manga Studio really falls short.  At least Debut does.  Not so sure about EX.  I’ll have to see.

And about what’s going on in the toon itself?  Those screaming kids in panel one are all part of my “mom posse” playdate group.  Patty and Mary of course are there with them, and yes, I have wandered off to capture story ideas on whatever paperlike surface I can find.  Writing on cheap fast food restaurant napkins sucks, by the by.  I know.  I’ve done it.

See you in a week, hopefully!

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Some Mornings

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Some mornings, I get up waaaaaaaaaaay to early to do stuff. Like today, to work on the podcast. My knees are killing me and I’m dead tired. Do I go back to bed, or do I tough it out?

Like that’s a hard decision.

Zzzzzzz…

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Episode 18 – Coping with story ideas

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Episode 18

At long last, episode 18 is here! This week you get to meet Patty, another one of the moms in my posse (I don’t do MOMMIES GROUPS!).  Patty is pretty practical and has a solution for everything.  While she never said this line to me (actual credit goes to Alessia Brio, I think), this is something she would have said.  Her solutions are great, it’s just me and my freak life that makes them impossible to use.

This week, I handled the pencils the old-fashioned way – with an actual pencil and paper!  I found a drawing pad that was 24” by 8”, which equals a long, skinny sheet of paper perfect for sketching out four panel comics.  I’m still experimenting with the inking.  Will it be quicker to ink in Manga Studio or to do it by hand as well and then import everything into Photoshop or Illustrator for lettering and word balloons?  I’d stick with Manga Studio because it’s so much easier to handle toning and the pen tool gives such a nice dark line, but honestly, Manga Studio Debut sucks at handling text.

Manga Studio 4.0 comes out sometime soon, so I’ll check that out and make a decision then.  But I think I’ll stick with actual paper and pencil for the initial sketching.  That happened much quicker.  I’ve already got next week’s strip pencilled and ready to scan.

Enjoy the cartoon!

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Randomness – Pass It On!

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Okay, can anybody tell me exactly what the hell a meme is?

Sparx over at Notes From Inside My Head is doing one and by virtue of reading it I have apparently become infected with it.  Willingly though, because I could just pretend I didn’t read her meme and thereby not have to pass it on to you.

Okay, so Sparx’s meme (meme… me-me… meeee-meeee… what kind of weird ass word is that anyway?) is to write 6 totally random things about yourself, or myself, although if you read this, you have to do it to now because I said so and we all know who’s in charge around here, don’t we?  That’s right, the kids.

1. Seriously, I don’t know what a meme is beyond some form of internet cooties, and I have no idea why people on Twitter keep writing “I can haz…” What is that?  Bad grammar disease?

2. I love soft boiled eggs. I just finished eating a soft boiled egg on toast for breakfast. It was gooey and yummy!

3. I also love coffee, but I think the General Foods International stuff is just as good (if not better, at times) as the real thing.  That’s because I’m lazy and if I’m tired or I don’t feel like it, making real coffee is a pain.

4. Speaking of coffee, when I was at Camp All American in Fort Bragg, my junior year of college, all the female cadets would get sooooo tired that we would open up the packets of instant coffee crystals and tuck the coffee inside our lower lips.  It tasted nasty and we got in trouble for it because our TAC sergeant thought we had all started doing snuff and you know snuff is only for boys, but that raw coffee sure did help us stay awake.

5. By authority of me, there is no number five today.

6. Sometimes I miss being single. It was waaaaaaay easier for me to take care of my tiny one-bedroom apartment and my three cats than it is for me to take care of this big ol’ house with husband and two kids.  But I didn’t think so at the time. I thought cleaning the apartment and feeding the cats was a heck of a lot of work.

And there you have it. Six — no wait, five (because I have decreed 5 illegal today… but wait, if I decree five illegal how can I have only five random facts… Oh hell…) – six random facts about me today.  And now six of you who are reading this have the internet cooties known as ‘meme’ and must pass it along or your dog will go bald and you will grow a third arm.

Which, if you have kids and a house covered in dog fur, might not be so bad.  I mean, a third arm to help out and no more dog fur.  Not a bad deal, right?

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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The Official Blow Off Day Theme Song!

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I cannot tell you how many nights I’ve lain awake pondering a question of the utmost importance and greatest magnitude.  And that question is…

If Blow Off Day had a theme song, what would that song be?

Well, today, after pulling an all-nighter to finish off the 1–year anniversary episode of the Heat Flash erotica podcast, it finally came to me.  Yes, I was lying there in bed, drooling just oh-so-slightly as my youngest kicked and screamed for Dora the Explorer… no wait, she wanted Wiggles instead… nope, no she wants Charlie and Lola… whatever.  Anyway, as I lay there contemplating the bleak aspect of having to spend all day dealing with a cranky, snot-filled toddler after less than three hours of sleep, the lyrics for the Official Blow Off Day theme song popped right into my head!  It was amazing, really.  I mean, one minute all I hear is kicking and screaming for Dora/Wiggles/Charlie and Lola/Scoobie Doo, and the next I’m humming happily along to this perfectly bouncy little song.  And I knew right away I just had to share it with everyone.  So without further ado, the Cynical Woman blog proudly presents the Official Blow Off Day Theme Song!

(Sung to the tune of ‘Camptown Races’ (better known as the Foghorn Leghorn song))

The house is dirty, I don’t care!
Do-dah, do-dah!
Gonna lie around in my underwear,
Oh-de-do-dah day!
I cleaned the house last night
And the kids destroyed it today
But it’s Blow Off Day and I don’t care
Oh-de-do-dah daaaaaaaay!

And there you go, the Official Blow Off Day Theme Song.  Feel free to share this little ditty or to make up your own verses and hum them mindlessly throughout the day.

Now I’m going to lie down on the couch in my undies.  See ya.

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Episode 17 – Supporting characters are so much fun!

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Oh my freakin’ god!  I thought I’d never get this one done…

Notice that there are FOUR characters in this week’s episode.  Notice how they are all be-YOO-tifully drawn and inked.  Notice how late this week’s episode is.

*Sigh*.  I’m working on ways to get these done faster.  Really, I am.  Meanwhile, this week’s episode features Jarresh (the young hottie in the loin cloth), another character from my e-book Demon By Day (http://www.mojocastle.com/demon/byday.html).  Yes, it’s shameless self-promotion.  Self-pimping, even.  But this week’s ep is also very true to life.  I spent many a play date pondering what I was writing while chatting with my best friend.  What can I say?  Mary is a fellow freak.  She understands my need to write porn.

Anyway, enjoy this week’s episode.  Hopefully, the next one will arrive a little quicker.