BOYS ON DRUGS AND OTHER FILTHY THINGS.

Hhmm, bet that got your attention you that notice at all.

A quick word about "Fracture of the Universal Boy".

Imagine a walnut.

you hold it in your hand, and feel the smooth crenelated surface. You

fell it's weight in your hand, notice as it warms, it gives off a subtle nutty fragrance.

You might if so inclined, pop it into your mouth and roll it around a bit. Not very tasty, but

kind of interesting none the less.

But, if you do the work, crack it open you have the meat, the essence of the nut at your disposal.

"Boy", is like that nut. Nothing on the outside is worth anything. If, however you extend a little

effort, what's really going on parts like veils. And believe me there are a lot of them to part.

So.

Here is really why I'm here: today, September sixteenth, two thousand and eleven, at seven fifty seven AM, I officially started "Opium: variations for quill and vapor."

As I write this I have already penciled three pages of the prologue, and will have the rest finished by days end.

I have waited and planned for this day for over six months. Today. Exactly.

I may not, at the moment have a pot to piss in, but I have seldom been happier.

I have this rare and fragile thing, newly born in my hands and as the days go by, I will be there as it gets stronger and stronger until IT tells ME what to do.

So, mark this day well.

I suspect it will take about a year give or take, and I will undoubtedly suffer the torments of the damned from time to time, as well as flights of unbelievable freedom.

At least I hope so.

I will keep you posted, and if the whim takes me, a preview now and again.

M.Z.

TROUT.

Gods, (whichever you prefer.) what a day.

I spent nearly all day in the studio flopping around like a beached trout gasping for air for an IDEA, and idea. I started two different things only to very, very quickly dispose of them before they caused my eyes to bleed.

But, my dear old muse came back from Ikea with a brand spanking new IDEA.

I gotta hand to the old dear, she occasionally comes up with a whopper.

It seems I am not done with my run on subjects in, and around water. So, for the next week or so I will be sailing the stormy seas on a doomed clipper ship. What fun!

Then, oh yes, and then, I get to start the new book, "Opium: variations for quill and vapor."

Well, at least the prologue. After that, I need to wait a bit for some ship, any ship to come in, hell, even a leaky skiff, so I can purchase the needed paper. Then it's full sail for the next YEAR to get this monster out of my head.

Hey kids! "Graphic Novels" are fun!

What a life.

M.Z.

Done and Dusted.

Hello fellow travelers.

A brief studio update coming down the tracks.

For the last four or five weeks I've been painting as another person, and artist who died in 1907.

I needed to do two paintings one described in a novel, and another I need to make up in the same style but not described basically at all except in passing as "lost".

Funny thing about pseudonyms, They grow on you. I found myself actually feeling as if someone else was at the wheel, or leaning over my right shoulder from ectoplasmic otherwhere desperately trying to make my hands move differently and occasionally trying to force them to behave contrary

to the way I wanted them to move. A kind of artificial possession.

But, I finished them both this afternoon and so must roll up "Philip" and get back to being me.

Needless to say, it has been one of the more interesting things I have done in years and years.

Tomorrow I go back to the studio room and try and figure out what I need to do, as nothing looms on my creative horizon. I think I'll miss the dead guy. But I really wouldn't want to make a habit out of it.

Just chalk it up as "fun while it lasted".

Hopefully you will begin seeing them in one form or another in the next few months.

I'd like that.

But for now, I have to work my back from the twilight zone.

Thanks for listening.

M.Z.

The Drowning Girl: a Memoir.

Really just whipped today. So I'll just keep it very, very brief.

There are a few days yet to go on Caitlin R. Kiernan's and kyle Cassidy's kickstarter

Campaign to bring an amazing novel to a whole new level. I really urge you, if you can spare

a few bucks to get on board asap. I've been lucky enough to read it in advance of publishing

and since then, been personally involved with helping where my talents are the most use.

It's been a true pleasure so once again, if you can, get over there and give a little and get a whole lot more back. Okay?

Oh, I'd include a link but frankly I'm just not one of those people who gets how to do that sort of thing on the laptop I have. You'll have no trouble finding it, I am sure.

Carry on brave soldiers.

M.Z.

Dispatches from the front.

Before I go any further, I would like to sort of apologize for dunning

everybody for commissions. As I learned from my Rep, Ryan this morning

and it's not really news, but things are tough all over. Real tough.

But, as my father taught me, you'll never know unless you ask, right?

So, that's what I mean by, "sort of" apologize. I had to ask. And yeah, things are tough all over.

Consider the subject closed, okay? I get it. Or, don't as the case may be.

It's cool.

Onward. A great day painting. Discovered a problem I will fix tomorrow. That's good.

it's when you don't discover them that it's time to plan a Viking funeral.

Orders are in from comics shops for "Fracture" and I'm basically pleased. We made a good dent in the twenty five hundred books we ordered. So, that's just peachy.

Sorry for the lack luster post today, but art is a kind of lonely business and on a good day things kind of creep along and incremental changes accrue on a surface in front of your eyes until it's time to wipe everything down and call it a day.

Like watching paint dry you know?

Behave,

M.Z.

Really Zed.

Spent most of the day preparing the paper,( 300 lbs. hot press watercolor paper to be exact.) for painting tomorrow. Tomorrow.

Sometimes I get so damn impatient I could ram nails in my eyes or something. Granted if you are to paint one must ground your surface well, or goodbye painting. Basically I have no problem doing the grunt work when it calls for it, but dead god sometimes I really long for the days when I actually had a well stocked studio. I would just go over to the corner and pick out a fresh new Masonite panel,( I've always preferred panels to canvas.) and get right to it. These days I just have to adapt to current conditions as best I can. But it's just so fucking frustrating sometimes you know?

I could have spent all day actually painting something instead of waiting to paint something.

Oh, I hate it when I whine about these things. Just don't get me started on the conditions of the paint I'm using. Half of it are these ridiculous little bottle of "craft paint" as they are called. They cost $2.50 at the local hardware store. Probably have a half life of a week.

Ah, well, better than nothing I suppose.

Even the paper is cannibalized from a thing I started several months ago and stopped when I realized it was to stupid to go on with.

I should have been a writer. I mean, how much does a few Bic pens and a ream of paper cost?

Reporting from down there in Zedsville, yours truly,

M.Z.

At least it's not still August.

Just finished for the day. Really really painting again.

Which, is very much not like what I normally do, or at least what you all out there see me doing.

In the business I'm in, there has be very little if any real need to actually paint. Oh, I've used paint on things, but I'm talking about a completely different form of painting. This is more like honest classical work done in the 1880's or "90's. Not much call for that shit these days.

So, aesthetically speaking, no robots, no nudes with guns, or whatever it is I've done before.

I used to paint much like this thirty years ago before I changed my mind and decided comics were the to go.

I'm fucking rusty as hell, but the chops are still there. Oh, and as I remember, when I am finished for the day, I am nerved up to incredible levels and feel like I am missing a vital piece of myself.

Work like this stuff always leaves me somehow essentially drained. Badly. And a bit bitchy.

As soon as I wind down, it'll be fine, but for an hour or two, it's one of those, "don't try and pet the dog sleeping in the corner, he bites."

Okay, to answer a question or two from the last post: you will be able to purchase "Fracture" at any self respecting comic book/ media store late this month, I think. Um, not the store bit, the time bit. Please buy lots. I mean it. Since I finished it in '09, things have been really tight 'round these parts. That's all I have to say about that. I hate to sound like I'm whining. But it's easy to do when you owe half the civilized world a lot of money.

And, lets see, thank you for taking a rose. You know who you are. I like being wrong about shit like that. I have always thought of myself and my personal artistic territory to be that of a true romantic, not the kind that has been cheapened by modern media but very, very old school.

Like the night in Geneva when Shelly and Byron and company scared the crap out of each other and true Gothic literature was born.

THAT kind of romantic.

And while I am at it, The painting(s) and stuff I'm currently involved in with Caitlin and Kyle, I am basically doing for the shear love of art. The "Drowning Girl: a Memoir" is absolutely one of the finest novels I've ever had the pleasure to read. It's goddamn dangerous as hell and simply exquisite. This coming March, buy that bloody book as if hell hound were on your trail.

And the paintings are some, if not the single finest stuff I've ever done. Now, don't quote me, but I believe there are plans for multi-media events in the works for the book launch that considering the talent involved, will blow your heads clean off. I MIGHT even show up. You never know.

Okay, you kids behave, daddy has a headache.

Be back as soon as possible.

M.Z.

ps: where's that damn commission i asked for? seriously. you know you want to, right?

m.z.