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Sometimes I’m Quiet, Sometimes I Talk A Lot

Hello, my fabulous friends and conspicuous confreres!

If any of you would do me the honor of reviewing my by graphic novels on Amazon.com, I will send you the download links free of charge. This way, you can read these books as PDFs, CBZs, or Kindle books (which have the wonderful guided-view function and look great on your tablet computers). Email me at scottstory@yahoo.com, and I’ll get you the links. Amazon reviews are terrifically important to authors, because they increase our author’s ranks and help convince would-be readers to purchase our books. It costs you nothing to write an Amazon review, after all.

Now, on to our regular blog post:


Hi, Folks!

All my blog posts lately have been a bit impersonal, focusing only on my publishing ventures. That’s all well and good, and I do plan to cover that here, but today you get a little bit of extra content—you get me.

On the publishing front, I’ve got a lot going on. I just made “Spire City Noir” no. 1, aka Hauntings, available as a PDF and CBZ on Drivethru Comics. I’ve ordered physical copies at Ka-Blam, and it won’t be long before this new comic is available in hard copy form on Indyplanet. I’ll submit it to Comixology right away too, although there is no immediate plans to sell it on Amazon.com.  (I prefer to not sell single issues through Amazon and focus there on tradepaperbacks and novels).

The long-spoken of and rarely seen “Spire City Noir” no. 2, aka the Black Dirigible, is also advancing quickly again. I’m polishing the script, Steven Doty is ready to draw more pages, Mike Vlasity has been doing a bang-up job as an inker, and we have two colorists interested in this project. It is going to feel amazing seeing this project come to fruition!

I usually like to report what media I’ve been enjoying since I wrote last, but I’m sad to say that the only book I’ve read lately is Mike Wolff’s excellent “Guiding Council of Myths and Urban Legends.” I just can’t seem to make the time to read fiction as much as I want to these days. I have, however, watched the entire backlog of the CW’s shows The Arrow, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, the Flash, Constantine, and Riverdale. These shows have been enlightening for me as a writer of genre episodic fiction, and I have whole list of lessons, good and bad, that I’ve come away with from these series. In terms of art books, I’ve purchased “J. Scott Campbell: Time Capsule,” the “Art of Marc Silvestri,” and “The Art of Todd McFarlane: The Devil’s In The Details.” These are real treasures to me, because art books are among my favorite things in the world.

In closing, I’d like to talk about something very personal: Depression and Seasonal Affect Disorder aka S.A.D. This is a very serious and debilitating illness, and I lost more than two months to it this time. The only thing that pulled me out of my hole this time was a multi-spectrum light, aka a “happy” light. I don’t understand the science behind it, why sunlight is good for fighting of depression, and lack of sunlight leads to depression, but it’s true. Depression is a killer, and it is perhaps the only mental illness that can go terminal, ending in your death. If you have it, you need help. Maybe that’s drugs prescribed by your doctor, or counseling, it’s likely that you cannot pull yourself out of your tailspin. You need help, and your life may depend on you getting that assistance.

There are some tools that you can use to fight depression. For example, exercise is great, getting plenty of hydration is important, getting good and sufficient sleep, sunlight, and predetermined replacement thoughts to go to when you are getting really down. For example, my favorite happy thoughts are of playing with kittens. Even when I’m emotionally trashed out, thinking of active kittens frolicking about makes me smile.

Most people hide their emotional troubles, and I used to as well, but I’ll be honest: If people hear about my struggles and it prompts them to get help and perhaps save their own lives, then it was a worthy sacrifice on my part.

 

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