8. and returns home, having changed

where i've been, and what i'd like to tell you about it

Joshua Tree, October 2021.

August. 

After a year and a half spent at home, the prospect of getting on an airplane looms once again. My day planner, a book that is more a personal totem than a literal reference for my schedule, really kicks into high gear about this time - each day planned out with as much exacting specificity as I can muster. It’s a form of confronting my fears about my own capability, a practice for when I can see the freight train of my schedule rapidly approaching a choke point. I start sorting the blocks of time and projects into train cars, making sure they move in an orderly fashion.

The train doesn’t go unless I actually do the work, of course. A bit of advice for those that need to hear it: organizing your work is not the same thing as actually working on it, but it does help. My planner immediately before this period contains only one note toward my health and mental wellness, and it’s quite succinct and helpful - feeling good and productive! Love playing tennis. Summer’s extreme Valley heat necessitates a break from daytime skating and hikes. The local tennis courts are well-lit and stay open late, long after the heat breaks, so we find ourselves there, playing some reckless but fun beginner’s games to shake off the dog day doldrums.

The trip to Florida is exhausting. It wasn’t a great time to go to Florida - COVID cases were extremely high in that area, but we are vaccinated and seeing family for the first time in a year and a half. Between understaffed airlines and it being the start of Hurricane Season in the deep South, the trip is rejuvenating emotionally - seeing loved ones again was really nice - but exhausting in a bunch of other, totally unplanned ways. Ultimately, a week+ away from home for the first time in a year is far more rattling that I’m prepared for. 

West Palm Beach, Florida. 2021.

I try and stay on my five page a day - shitty ones are better than none schedule, because I know that if I don’t, things will only get worse. I don’t really succeed, and the two weeks between my return home and Dragon*Con are packed. We come down with travel colds, and I add ‘extra sleep’ and ‘COVID testing’ to my already packed schedule. 

I turn in edits to the first script in which I’ve ever written one of my all time favorite characters. 

I work to stay on schedule for the book I’ve been writing for almost three years now. I know these characters and what comes next inside and out. I’ve been writing them so long that they talk to me and tell me where they’re going and it’s all I can do to keep up with the characters, to surprise them before they surprise me. But that doesn’t make the words come any easier when exhaustion looms, and I go to bed often feeling guilty rather than proud, as I move scheduled things (this newsletter, for example) back and back and back again. I cram in another script - one that I hadn’t planned for, that was pushed into this month suddenly, but it’s good. Part of why I let my work exhaust me - I’d rather be exhausted than do bad work.

There are a few notes in my planner that read things like “Worked all night on Excalibur.” I start and bury so many newsletters I intended to write. I am also putting together outlines for two entire books, and these ideas lay in my head like tangled skeins of Christmas lights, blinking enough to gain my interest from afar, but up close becoming simply frustrating to me.

I recover from my cold just in time to carve a day out to go roller skating with my friend Angélique. I know if I don’t, I won’t do anything at all. 

September. 

I’m nervous about Dragon*Con, but it’s wonderful. I have an incredible time, and get almost no work done, but people are kind. People are not kind online, especially to people who write X-Men comics. In person, masked faces with smiling eyes flicker with recognition and hustle to my table to tell my they like my work. They wait in line to talk to me and I forgot how very nice that feels, and how grateful I am for that kindness. Unexpectedly, I see friends. I cry on the show floor seeing a friend I haven’t seen since his wife, my friend, passed away. I see other friends and can do nothing but laugh, bright, surprised - the notion of running into someone unexpectedly is just so novel, now.

It occurs to me that they don’t check vaccine cards at the grocery store, but they do here. And everyone I see inside is wearing a mask. I’m reminded of how good it is to put on a silly outfit and drink vodka sodas, at least sometimes. To be surrounded by people, and let the energy uplift you.

Then the con ends, and I crash. I spend three days in a blur, putting together books, writing probably 80 pages just to get 50 good ones. I’ve developed a really comfortable way of working on my scripts and outlines like they’re paintings. I have a few going at once, I stand back from them and peer at the screen like an easel, I slap on a few coats. I leave it to dry, and work on another canvas. In this way, I manage to write several scripts I’m actually quite proud of. 

Three days and then it’s off to Portland for Rose City Comic Con, of which the highlight is my dear friend Casey, who picks me up from the airport and takes me to my hotel, where she sets me up a cheese plate she brought for me. (If these aren’t the kind of friends you have - I’m sorry, I don’t deserve her either.) It’s the first time traveling away from Blake, and the first spate of what feels like real con travel to me again - the empty hotel room scattered with my things, the local friends who pick your lonely self up for dinner, the newly vibrating quiet of the night.

I return - and an outline is due. Then a private signing. Another script - one of the ones I’ve been painting at - fights me, but satisfyingly. I fight it back. Three days of creative Zoom downloads with my Krakoan family. Calls and brainstorms with a dear friend as we finally plan the book we’ve always wanted to do and it unfurls before us. I back these calls with emails, apologizing to various people for the small things I’ve let slip here and there, (mostly emails) and a kind of false clarity emerges: I’m apologizing for not replying to emails, as I reply to the email.

All of the travel has afforded me a lot of time to sit and wait and read books on my phone thanks to Los Angeles’ robust online library service. Weirdly, it refreshes me in a way rest never can - there’s something about being stuck somewhere liminal with a book. It’s feels like carrying a home on your back, like a hermit crab. The world inside the book is my own retreat.

October. 

My favorite month - bringer of my birthday and Halloween, begins with little fanfare. This is highly abnormal in our house, and Blake encourages me to make time for decorations, candy, a horror movie or four. It helps - it’s time spent not curled in front of my computer like a freeze dried shrimp - but what really helps is the camping trip he booked months ago, back when I thought October 5th would be a perfect time for camping. 

And it was - because it was immutable. It was an appointment with some much-needed solitude. I sent in an outline the night before we left and replied to notes on it on the drive. But for 24-36 solid hours, I was out of the realm of work entirely.  I read the new Alison Bechdel book cover to cover, much of it in front of a campfire while drinking a mimosa at 4PM. 

It rained in the desert, followed by a rainbow. Glad I was there to see it.

The new schedule necessitates a lot of saying no. In the desert, I tried to come to peace with the nos I’ve had to say - some of them broke my heart and some simply broke my patience. I find myself saying no to things so often I find myself overwhelmed some days with manifesting polite nos. And what a ridiculous thing is that to feel? We can never know what the best choice would be. We can only follow our desires - a scary prospect, but maybe less scary, the more time we spend with ourselves.

What a strange few months I’ve had, a busy blur, fulfilling and exhausting, with absolutely mad ups and downs. I’ve had to politely decline offers that would have once been my dream, so that I can fulfill other dreams. Luck isn’t the word for it. Gratitude scratches the surface. 

Thanks for being here to read. Let’s talk more often, okay? 

NEW BUSINESS

Yesterday saw the release of Excalibur 24, wherein Marcus and I show our allegiances by sending our magical princess into vampire land so she gets a cool Halloween costume. Remember kids, ABC: Always be acquiring Betsy Braddock some Cosmetic upgrades.

Anyone else hear the SLAYERS NEXT theme in their head when they look at this Rian Gonzales Excalibur #24 variant? Just me?

Marvel also announced Death of Doctor Strange: BLOODSTONE, a 30 page one-shot where I return to the Bloodstone family for some Bloodstone Family Values alongside Ig Guera, with an incredible David Nakayama cover.

On top of that, I’m also writing a Nightwing and the Batgirls story in December’s Batman: Urban Legends #10, drawn by the incredible Christian Duce. This is pretty huge for me: Dick Grayson might be my all time fave, and Christian’s pages are just rocking my entire world. Actually, I can think of another Gotham character who is something of a personal hero of mine, but…we’ll talk about that later.

POTPOURRI

You been watching any good horror movies yet this year? Sound off in the comments. We’ve done a few so far - I loved The Haunting (1963) and the 2018 remake of Suspiria - both fantastic.

As always - I’m not on Twitter at all lately, so if you’re looking to check in or ask me about something, the comments are the place for it.

Stay weird. Talk soon. I mean it this time.

-TH

15:18 10.08.21