As of late, I’ve been a very Bad Artist. No, I’m not painting any velvet Elvises or anything,
I’ve just been colossally unproductive.

I could make excuses all the livelong day, but that’s not going to change the fact that I’ve got very little
done on the next Vögelein book lately. Fortunately, that trend has seen a dramatic turnaround in
recent days, and I got 2 pages fully pencilled, and started painting another, since the weekend. That’s progress.
Progress is good. So far there are about ten finished pages; this batch of three will make thirteen done.
Of a two-hundred page book. So no, there won’t be a new book anytime soon. I’m hoping that after the wildstorm that is this autumn
passes by, I will pass a long, hopefully uneventful winter of painting away in my ivory tower.

But in the meantime, I have accomplished a whole lot of Important Real-Life Stuff. Like, I’m now a homeowner. I actually own a house.
The house is a hundred miles away from me, and is full of other people at the moment, but I still own it. Gots the paperwork and everything.
I have also just about completed our wedding plans, in less than two months. Yikes, but it takes a lot to throw a wedding.

Fortunately, Paul and I are both in the exact same mindset when it comes to weddings (Shoutout to our Deejay, Mister TiBook iPod,
who will never ever ever play the chicken dance), and the plans are going
far smoother than I ever could have hoped for (Look! The perfect dress, there on that rack!),
especially since we’re going to be married five months after getting engaged.

Things have finally calmed down and levelled out a bit, and I’m hoping to keep it that way over the summer. Sadly, in order to enforce this calm,
I’ve cancelled my table space at
both Wizard World Chicago and SPX (the latter of which is my favorite show ever), but it was time for tough choices and this girl
picked her sanity over driving to Bethesda the weekend after her wedding. Look at it this way — I’ll sure miss seeing
everyone, from Carla and Catboy to StanYan and Neil Kleid — but if I stay home and work, as I desperately need to, V2 will come
out a whole lot sooner, it’ll look a lot prettier, and my tiny brain will not snap like a twig. All these things are good, so
I’m just gonna run with that. I sure hope everyone else will understand!