If I look at it closely, it probably,(but I can't be sure.) has to do with two things: the fact that at my core, I am an intensely private person, ill suited for public ramblings, and my need for total honesty in my dealings with the world.
No body is making me, no arm twisting involved, but I hesitate.
Forgive my waffling, and shuffling feet. I'll get there.
I have not been here in a very long while. I am sorry. Honestly.
Here's the thing: I have a lot of apologies to make. There are several very nice people who have commissioned work long done and just sitting here. The reason is that the last six months or so have been some of the hardest, most trying times of my life. Personally, not professionally. It has been so terrible I had plans a while back to top myself. I figured rightly or wrongly that I would be worth more to the people I loved dead rather than alive. I am not in the least being cute here. That is the absolute truth.
I am talking food shelf poor. Not even change to buy a damn soda. Foreclosure poor.
Okay? Enough?
The failure of my book to be real, the way I had planned it left me so depressed I simply couldn't work for over a month. It might have been longer, I tend to think it was. I wasn't really paying much attention. The color simply faded into twilight grey and the joy of simple work drained away I thought forever. I felt an isolation from the world so deep so acute that I was living in the vacuum of my head to the point it was an effort to talk. It also left me totally broke. I was counting on it being out there, for sale.
I feel ashamed of myself for getting that deep in. But it happened so slowly that I didn't notice until I was there.
But that changed. Very, very fast and I was completely unprepared for the acceleration.
As ever, work, ( I know that "work" is not the best word for what I do, but "career" is to mundane and "calling" to esoteric, so "work" it is.) pulled me through. I got a chance to showcase my work in a fine arts setting for the first time in my life. A non-comics personal kind of thing that shocked me out of me depression so fast and hard to tell the truth I am still A bit woozy from it. For nearly,(by one day.) fifteen weeks I worked seven days a week straight. Non stop art. I have done some of the best work of my life to be seen by the public this march nineteenth at Gallery Nucleus. I am still so desperately broke I may not even have a chance to be there on one the most important days of my life and it's really twisting my head around.
But then Ryan Graff of Eidolon Fine Arts, Came up with the idea to KickStarter my book Fracture of the Universal Boy a few days a go, and as I type it's already met it's goal and is showing very little sign of slowing down. I can release my book, to be debuted in San Diego this year, exactly the way I always meant for it to be seen. Frankly I was scared shitless.
Another massive failure would have done me in. But it seems very much to my disbelief that I am far more kindly regarded than I thought was possible. I am still trying very very hard to process this.
Without Eidolon behind me I was close to removing myself from life.
But I didn't and I won't, and I have a new book all ready to begin it's journey into life, knowing that I can now, for the first time in my life work without fear. This is huge.
And I owe it to Ryan, my dear Karen and to you all.
Now, back a bit to those poor folks with commissions sitting here. I promise that as soon as I don't have to choose between heat, or lights or food and shipping, they will be out to you as fast as I can get them to you. I have NEVER EVER not delivered on a commission in my life. This has been a point of personal shame for me that I can not emphasise enough.
I am truly sorry. I just had to do what I had to. My family comes first. Always.
I hope you can understand. That is all I can ask.
But the future is looking up. I have been freed from boundaries and I will not look back.
Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
M.Z.
