What does asbestos smell like?

Tiina and her father have had a good day of smashing our downstairs bathroom into itty bits and pieces as a prelude to...well, fixing it, one hopes.

The original idea was that they'd do this while I was out of town for the World Fantasy Convention at the end of the month. But the plaster dust cloud filling the house says the original idea got discarded somewhere along the way, along with the bathroom walls, ceiling and any hope I had of getting anything productive done today. I'd feel a little guilty about not helping out if my sinuses didn't try to explode out of my face every time I open the door to the office or bedroom.

All things considered, it's a good thing I'm not planning to cook anything involving flour any time soon.

***

Actually, it wasn't that bad a day. Not a lot of writing, but a reasonable amount of editing done. So that's something. THE WEST WAS LOST is almost done, just needs a cover and lettering (and there isn't a whole lot of lettering in that one.) ReBoot's more than halfway done. No notes on the corporate strip yet, which is promising.

I'd rather be writing.

***

I was the opening quote on !journalista! a few days ago, with my pledge to use Gary Groth's "undistinguished pap" comment re: C&A as a cover blurb someday. Actually, I should talk to T about getting that up on the website, now that I think of it.

I read Deppey's blog first thing every day to get up to date on the comics industry. So getting a !journalista! link's more satisfying to me than seeing my name in Entertainment Weekly or The Hollywood Reporter. Beyond that, I'm comfortable taking responsibility for what I said and Deppey quoted. There's something of me in Cowboys & Aliens, I suppose, but it's almost all in the page and panel breakdowns. I didn't come up with the characters, the story, or the tone; I reworked Fred's dialogue and my words were in turn reworked by others; I wouldn't even have written the first five pages (the part of the book I'm happiest with) if I wasn't told to. Getting congratulated for C&A's perceived Hollywood success makes me more than a little uncomfortable, because I don't see it as my success (very, very easy to do when I'm not getting any of the money out of the multimedia exploitation). I've always felt weird taking any sort of credit (or blame, for that matter) for a project that had so many people, credited and otherwise, working on it.

I also really hate the official C&A logo.

***

I wonder how hard it'd be to get Groth to call The Holiday Men or something else "distinguished pap"...

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