2003-05-30 1:38 p.m.
with a little help from his friends, er, family

I'm breathing easier these days.

The long weekend in St. Petersburg with L helped immensely. I had no idea it'd been so long since I'd had a vacation, not to be confused with visiting my folks in Miami. I think my last trip just for myself was a year ago in April.

Three days with her parents was much more relaxing than I'd expected. We sang karaoke at a white-trash, 2nd-rate Hooters called Mugs'n'Jugs and drank blue cocktails with no name. We ate grouper sandwiches on the pier and soaked up the sun. We made dinner for her folks, much to their surprise (not that we did it, but that we're both solid cooks).

And we both developed a hunger for traveling with each other. Gotta feed that soon.

The comic's coming together amazingly. Jeremy's just about done with 18 fully-inked pages (out of 24), D has 10 of them to letter, and L & I spent an hour or so last night talking about the cover and looking at art styles at Jim Hanley's Universe, passing comics back and forth, judging line weight, talking about what looks reminded us of...and I think we've got a lock on where the cover's going to go.

It's going to be a damn striking book for something wholly printed in black-and-white.

The title, incidentally, is "Styx Taxi: Pastrami for the Dead," and it'll be available for order (when I figure out how that'll work) in late July. I'd try to do it before, but I've got too much to do before San Diego as it is.

And to top it all off, JMS is going to be there.

Let's recap. I met Ray Bradbury at a mega-con back in 1998 after a big panel discussion.

I'd just graduated from Emory, just handed in my radio drama thesis project, and heard that one of my all-time writing/philosophical idols was going to be in town.

I heard him speak with a few other authors (including Harlan Ellison) and then waited outside where he was sure to pass by.

He did, surrounded by a mob (and surprisingly spry for 80-something), and I ran up to him and held a cassette of "Forever and the Earth," his radio play that we'd performed as part of my thesis, with a printed-up blurb on the project. He looked at me confusedly, asking, "you want me to keep this?" I said, "hell, yes!" He smiled, nodded, popped it in his pocket, and kept on moving with the crowd.

Three days later, I had a personal note in my mailbox from him congratulating me on the project and saying how much he enjoyed listening to the tape.

Granted, that was me as director/producer. To meet JMS with my own comic (not to mention play) in hand would be too thrilling.

I don't care about autographs or sycophantically kissing their asses; I just want to share with them the works that have come from their influence, let them know how much their words have meant to me over the years. JMS especially...he's the one who's given me faith in television again, despite the troubles he had with Babylon 5 and Crusade.

I also hope, in a con full of T&A and spandex-clad superheroes, the soul in my book seeps through into people's hearts. I'd love to bring that into a bigger arena.

L, if you're reading this, I couldn't have done this without you.

This warm heart's for you.