The Sum of David

Wikipedia is the downfall of my productivity at work.

I will read about most everything with some level of interest, although history oftentimes wins out. Why? It’s the stories, made even more powerful because of the reality behind them. My genre of choice might be fantasy for entertainment, but I can’t ignore the human factor of our past — the actions, inactions, passions, and what people are willing to risk their life over.

I did some link hopping from a chocolate company to underground teaching and opened up a facet of WWII knowledge that I’d never thought about or been aware of; concerning a subject I most certainly take for granted everyday.

In 1939, the invasion and subsequent occupation of Poland marked the start of World War II. The Nazi doctrine determined that the Slavs would serve as manual labor to the Germans, and they did not require an education. All education in the country was banned. The punishment for breaking Nazi law was, as in so many cases, death.

However.

Those who escaped the deportation to concentration camps or the Nazi’s murder of the nation’s leaders, politicians, artists, and potential trouble-makers organized a network of underground universities. They arranged lectures in basements and crowded apartments. Underground printers were established to provide them with materials and books. In 1944, there were hundreds of teachers and thousands of students. High school students risked their lives to learn grammar, geography and mathematics, receiving certificates from their “non-existent” schools that they could use to enter “non-existent” colleges.

The moral of the story? Knowledge is power. The Nazis understood that, seeing as how they tried to take it away from the Poles; and the Poles recognized what losing education would mean and held onto it even at the risk of execution. Whether it’s formal or not, don’t take your access to information for granted — you never know when you won’t have it anymore.

So far, this is my favorite design that I’ve done for WearPittsburgh.

There’s no way I can describe it any better than Woy does on the website:

We’re proud to present the newest addition to the WearPittsburgh family: Mon Valley Mullet Reserve!

Mullets first settled in Pennsylvania in the late 1970’s becoming a prime breeding ground, reaching a zenith during the Great Camaro Upheaval of 1982 when the new model was introduced. As mullet numbers diminished nationwide, more and more mullets congregated in the lush, fertile Mon Valley. Their numbers are hearty and continue to flourish even today.

It’s business in the front and party in the back in Pittsburgh’s best kept natural preserve!

Get yours today!

What does our big planet spinning in the same place that it did 365.25 days ago have to do with self-improvement?

Well, nothing, of course. But I’m a big believer in goals and progress and productivity, and January 1st seems to be as good a place to start as any. Actually, I’ve been wanting to jump-start my creative stuff into a monthly project-oriented structure anyhow, as projects with a defined beginning and end, so I’ve set up a few goals.

1) Finish the second novel in the “Sum of” series. My soft deadline is actually May 1st, which will be the 2 year anniversary of the completion of the first book. And, reaching far into the future: conclusion of the series in Christmas of 2009. That second part might be kriz-azy, but finishing the 2nd by May isn’t out of the question. I’m about 20% of the way through it, and we’re just about to get into the fun, juicy bits, so writing will become more fun even as it becomes more challenging.

2) Design a font. I’m a graphic designer by trade, and although I really do enjoy my day job, I’d like to inject my designing life with some… well, life. I crave some adventure, some funkiness. I think the first step of that will be exploring some of design’s roots. Since type is such an important part of it, let’s start there. After seeing the Helvetica documentary and realizing that there really are humans designing those beautiful, wonderful tools I reach in my design pocket for on a daily basis, I think I should give it a shot. I am fully aware that the results won’t be Frutiger, but it will be a learning experience to cherish and I will get some real love for letterforms again.

3) Hop the pond. Josh and I didn’t take a honeymoon after getting married because we didn’t want to go into ridiculous debt to do it; but saving up for a trip is a different animal. I’ve been to Paris once before and loved it. It’s home of the Louvre and Art Nouveau, after all (c’est magnifique!). A couple of years ago, we picked up The Da Vinci Code on CD for an overnight emergency trip to Chicago, and Josh has been as equally enamored with the city ever since. It means passports and brushing up my poor francais (c’est tres mal!), but it will be an adventure to remember.

4) Fix the freakin’ dishwasher. This is not creative, but I’m tired of washing dishes when there is a perfectly good, if currently inoperable, machine inches away.

5) Read one young adult fantasy novel a month. Classically, I have a hard time reading while I’m writing, but I think the benefits of reading more in the genre I’m trying to get published in are too important to ignore any longer. That fact goes without saying, really, and now it’s time to really implement. Plus, I have a library card now, and I intend to milk it for all it’s worth. If I pick up a new book every time I return one, I should blow past twelve books, but let’s start small — I can always devour more later.

6) Finish Marley. I began a large-scale art piece for a character from The Sum of David almost three years ago. It’s digital, so it’ll cost some money to get it printed, but it’s time to close this project out.

7) Shadow Skull. This is an art project I’ve planned since I started the aforementioned Marley. It’s a good idea and right up my alley, style-wise, I just need to do it.

Send out 15 query letters. Or, rather, go until I am able to get representation for The Sum of David. 15 is a nice high number that should keep me sending them out.

9) Make some more hats. Mr. Baconpants is opening an independent store online in 2008 and I’ve got plans for making stuff. I like screenprinting a lot, and wouldn’t mind doing some more hats to sell to the public. Besides, it give me an excuse to do little vector drawings… and I heart Adobe Illustrator.

10) Make this site something worth looking at. Because let’s face it, she is not the prettiest girl on the bus right now. She’s not a three-eyed, multi-tentacled demon with fangs, but still: makeover! I need to get more of a handle on this web stuff anyhow - for instance, I have no idea why Goal Number Eight is a happy face wearing sunglasses. I should probably know why that is.

So there’s ten of them. I’m sure more will be added as the year progresses, but we’ll start here for now. Onward!

Seeya, 2007. Welcome, 2008. May your arrival shower happiness and success on the multitude of humanity. And me.

It seems my webhost has been behaving naughtily toward my human playmates, so we’ve moved; and I figured we’d migrate the blog to WordPress too, for good measure. I’ve moved last year’s posts into these archives, so you can still read all that 2006/2007-y goodness. I’m still figuring out some of the site’s visual formatting, but so far I like it!

And in light of the new year (and a new site/domain for this blog), I’m copping out the way many a television sitcom has: let’s take a look back at 2007.

The completion of a novel, The Sum of David. I’ve now refined this MS to the point where I feel comfortable submitting to agents for representation, but 3oo-odd days ago, it fulfilled it’s original intent — as a Christmas present for my teenage brother. It took 2 years and an immeasurable amount of coffee to complete, but I had a blast creating it. An interesting tidbit? Seth hasn’t read the last two novels I’ve written for him. I suppose this should upset me, but I honestly have so much fun doing them it’s not really an issue. Besides, he’s sixteen. There’s girls, clothes, video games, driving, Steelers and Beavers… generally, bigger fish to fry.

The second “release” of the above novel. I posted a chapter a week for most of 2007, along with some kind of insight into each chapter’s writing,  characterization or description. After copying and pasting the posts from Blogger to WordPress, I found the following conclusion to many of the 53 chapters: “This is was a fun chapter to write”. I think I said that on at least 15 of them, ha!

Josh and I did a Sketch-off. The rules were that we each had to post a sketch a day for two weeks. The wager? Niether of us can remember, but it must have been serious — we might have pushed the midnight deadline on a couple, but we completed all 28.

We (that’s you, me, and a large chunk of the world’s population) completed the Harry Potter series. I provided a spoiler-free review of the experience. It’s probably one of the best written posts on here so far, and involves only the tiniest amount of Rowling FanGirly-ness.

There was more excitement than the fun listed above, of course. I made a hat. I helped throw a righteous Halloween party, and we did a fundraiser for Big Brothers, Big Sisters. There were two Creative Marathons, two Doughnuts and Arts, and two Podcamp Pittsburghs. It was a busy, busy year. Here’s hoping 2008 is even better!

I’ve got some really great projects coming up in the very near future. I’ll be happy to post when they are complete and/or unwrapped in the hands of their new owners.

Recently completed: since we were very bare bones about our wedding in June, we didn’t spend any money on photographers. Instead, the photographers and contributing family graciously accepted beer in exchange for the pictures. As a result, I’ve spent the last 5 months gratefully sorting through the over 2,000 pictures. I finally whittled the number of photos down to under 200.

Mac’s photo software, iPhoto, is easy and convenient to use. It helps you organize all your photos and also allows you a drag-and-drop option for creating picture books. I’m sure there are other services online that will allow to do the same, but Apple’s proved so easy I thought I’d give it a try. We got one book for us and one for each of the moms.

The only thing that concerns me is the they wouldn’t take the photos as CMYK, which is the color mode I’m accustomed to using for photos for print. It rejected the images until I converted all to RGB, so I’m wondering how they will actually print… The examples I’ve seen at CompUSA looked crisp and bright and beautiful — hopefully there wasn’t any sort of mass production voodoo happening there and our books will turn out just as nice. If they look good, I bet I will be doing more of these picture books.

I’m also planning another custom book, this time as a compilation of my MySpace blogs over the years. I started posting on 2004, and even though MySpace has outworn its usefulness to me, I would hate to lose the memories from those frequent posts — I did over 400.

Lulu.com allows you to customize a book and print as many as you want, including the magic number: one. I’m formatting all those entries into a printed journal that I can stick on my bookshelf and laugh at in ten years. Or in five years. Or tomorrow.

There are a two ironies here. One, that I’m printing something that was originally in an online format. And two, that I am self-publishing two personal books… even while I am seeking professional representation for my would-be second profession. Hilarious.

My mother works at a women’s prison facility on the west coast, and asked me to make a couple posters of a painting I did in high school. There’s plenty of online resources for this service, so I snapped a questionable quality digital picture of it, uploaded it to zazzle.com and it shipped to my parent’s home.

She had planned on hanging one in the main area and one in her office, but in order to do so she must get the design approved. The painting’s initial reaction was positive, but she’s apparently having problems getting it past the boss, who has deemed the artwork too gloomy:

Okay, it’s not warm and fuzzy. But there is an interpretive value in conquering obstacles, right? At least, that’s how I meant it my junior year… We’ll see if it is allowed in. Personally, it doesn’t matter to me: I certainly wouldn’t want any real negative effects to take place from a painting I made ten years ago.

In happier news, The Creative Treehouse hosted a toy drive for Big Brothers Big Sisters last Saturday. Professional photographers took holiday portraits for everyone that brought toys out. I hope everyone that came out had as much fun as we did setting it up.

Me, Jesse and Bodnar testing out the set and props. One of those gifts is a Wii, the other is a two pound cheese dinosaur. Does it really matter who go which? (photo courtesy John Bodnar)

Josh and I looking festive in our official portrait. Don’t worry, we’re not really cold. It’s fake snow. (photo courtesy Tom Darby)

We had a blast working the event, and in addition to families and couples, we got a few pets too. So we spent much of our time hyper from cookies, hot cocoa, puppies and holiday cheer. If you missed the portraits, the Treehouse is still holding on to the toys until Dec. 13, and would be happy to take donations up to that time.

David meets those that are willing to fight at his side, and they make preparations to march on the Lurk and his army of Soulless.

Special Announcement:
Next week, October 15th, I will post the remainder of The Sum of David online. It will be available in its entirety until November 1st, at which point I will take all but the first three chapters down.

My plan to send query letters in September took a back seat to my obligations to the 24 Hour Creative Marathon. I don’t have any regrets about that - since the only time constraints at the moment are my own - but I would very much like to begin the journey of seeking representation. I think having a site for the novel is a good thing, and could conceivably be an added boon to a potential agent. However, I doubt it is in my favor that a complete manuscript is available, even if it is simply a working draft.

Nevertheless, there is a readership that returns each week to read the new chapter, and I don’t think it would be right to pull it all from the web without giving those readers the opportunity to find out how it all ends. In fact, I believe the lump resolution will ultimately compliment the ending. Hopefully, the two week window will catch everyone that has any desire to read it.

More on this next week.

Bricolage Theatre Company and Pittsburgh Filmmakers combined forces to produce In Service, a documentary/stage production that featured footage, still images and live performances from some of the people featured in the film.

It was excellent. The show was a mash-up of candid interviews, poetry and written word from Pittsburgh soldiers who have served in Iraq - what they did, what they saw and how they felt about all of it. I was somewhat concerned that there might be some kind of political spin about whether the war was right or wrong, but the production did a beautiful job of not preaching in one direction or another, choosing instead to focus on the effect the war had on its fighters. In fact, I particularly enjoyed the end, when the final speaker asked for the audience to participate in an army cadence. It would be easy for that kind of audience participation to be cheesy or silly - I assure you it wasn’t.

In Service runs Oct. 4-7 & Oct. 11-14. Go: it’s well worth it.

In other moving pictures news, I was interviewed last weekend while at the 24HCM2 by the talented Alex Landefield, who was gracious enough to ask all sorts of good questions in the middle of the night. I trail off about calling my mom at some point, I think, but other than that I do better than I typically do in on-camera situations. Enjoy!

A deeper look at Calemadestes, the world she inhabits and her neighbors.

I love strong female characters in stories, and Clam is one of my favorites. My main character is a boy, I know, but it’s the women characters that really drive a tale home for me as a reader. The most prehistoric form of tSoD began with index cards listing emotional/personality attributes and the animals/characters I associate them with — “Courage” was my word for what eventually became Clam. Some of the other ancient concepts are sprinkled through the crowd as she wanders through, along with symbols of David’s home (Pittsburgh) and past.

In other news, I helped Josh put on this weekend’s creative marathon. It was a long, sleep-deprived process, but it was a blast:

Oh yeah, that’s my handwriting.

Blackthir13en, me and Victoria. I was recanting the epic adventure of the turtle.

As you can see from the face of my companions, it was a rivetting tale - full of both tragedy and comedy. (photo by creative treehouse)

My piece in progress. (photo by Blackthir13en)

Mr. Baconpants making some… (surprise!) bacon on Saturday morning. (photo by creativetreehouse)

The gallery show on Saturday night after it got into full swing. (photo by mbfulk)

Josh (with the unseen Nathan and Shawn as the Jim Dandies) rocking out on the, ahem, keytar. (photo by luvsilk)

My finished piece. (photo by johnny treehouse)

It was so much fun. Every now and then you need to stay up until 5 am and do artwork. It’s imperative to the creative process. Josh and I learned a lot from taking the reins to plan this too, and we’ll be full-steam ahead in a couple months to set up the next one, probably in Feb. 2008. If you want to see more, check out the very extensive flickr stream.

Memories help explain the past, but sometimes they have a life of their own. David begins to recognize himself and what he’s there to do.Marley was one of those characters that lodge themselves into your brain and won’t let go. If I had never written The Sum of David, I still would have done something that showcased the Memory Dragon. I believe strongly that the past helps shape people, so a creature made of the junk of the past seems appropriate.

Pittsburgh’s second 24 Hour Creative Marathon is taking place on Friday and Saturday, and we’ve been hard at work getting things ready for everyone that might come down.

Basically, you show up at the Creative Treehouse beginning at 8pm on Friday, Sept 28. Sign up, find a spot to settle in, and get to work creating some art according to this marathon’s theme: “Lost and Found”. Everyone’s welcome, whether you’re an amateur or professional, regardless of medium. Artists have until 6 o’clock on Saturday to finish up, when we’ll begin set up for the gallery show starting at 8 pm. The gallery show will feature the freshly squeezed art, four bands, food, drinks (BYOB if you’re so inclined); all for $2 at the door.

It’s going to be a blast. Even if you aren’t interested in the “making art” portion of the event, the gallery is going to be really fun. Who doesn’t like music, art and food? If you’re in the Pittsburgh area, I hope I’ll see you there!