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Friday, May 9, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Wildcat's Lair Returns Tomorrow!
knightbek at 8:17:51 AM EDT
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Monday, May 5, 2008
Frank's Back... in Two Days
knightbek at 1:06:01 PM EDT
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Sunday, May 4, 2008
Frank's Back... Starting Wednesday
knightbek at 11:38:11 AM EDT
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Frank's Back... Starting May 7th
knightbek at 8:22:55 AM EDT
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Two Weeks to Go & a Look Back
Yes, it’s true.
“Wildcat’s Lair” is getting active again. Some have probably wondered why I abandoned
it and what Frank’s been up to all this time.
While I’ll answer some of the questions in the course of the comic
strip, I’ll take a moment here, two weeks from the relaunch, to offer some
explanation.
A lot of things forced me to sideline Frank. The first culprit was the 2007 James River Writers Conference. I thought the last month leading up to the
conference would go by with little of my time required, that it should all be
in place, ready to go. More the fool was
I. After just one cartoon, the so-called
“Season 3.0” bit the dust. The good news
was that the conference, for which I was that year’s chair, turned out
great. Not only did it turn out better
than I’d hoped, but I met one of my favorite writers of all time, Kyle
Mills. Kyle turned out to be quite the
hoot. My wife and I also befriended
another married couple of writers, Eric and Victoria Lustbader. We acted as the Lustbaders’ hosts while they
were in Richmond to speak at the
conference, and we had a great time with them.
Well, no sooner had the fury of the conference passed
than a great opportunity presented itself.
My wife and I met an agent at the conference, and over the past few
months, she’s shown a strong interest in our book, The Last VanDaryn. The pressure was on to get it cleaned up and
sent to her, and that ate up quite a bit of time during the months that
followed. I’m hopeful that we might soon
be able to say we officially have an agent.
Then comes the challenge of finding a publisher.
Writing became my most important focus this winter. Not only did my wife and I finish The Last
VanDaryn, but I finished my solo effort, a fantasy thriller called The
Cold Shoulder. I’m excited to say
that Cold Shoulder turned out far better than any of my expectations. So with two novels “in the can,” I’ve been
busy on a new novel. My wife convinced
me to revisit some of my childhood comic book characters and take a stab at
writing young adult fiction. I won’t say
too much about that in this entry, but The Demon Riders resembles a
strange cross between the TV show “Heroes” and Norse Mythology. So far, my rough draft which is aiming for a
word count of 60,000 words, is just a few hundred shy of 50,000 words. As you can see, I’ve been very busy.
Of course, you might also wonder why I didn’t do
anything with Frank once Last VanDaryn and Cold Shoulder were
finished. You can blame my computer for
that. It went through a period where it
refused to stay online. I might get
online for a minute, and then it would be gone.
This went on for weeks. After a
lot of help from some of our best friends, we got the computer back online. The culprit?
Two too many firewalls. Who knew
having more than one firewall could be a bad thing? We were just relieved that our computer wasn’t
getting ready to die, as we’d started to fear.
By this point, almost half a year had gone by without
me doing anything on my blog, the last entry a rather somber post to honor the
passing of Robert Jordan. I thought that
might be the end of my blog, the end of Frank.
Plenty of other problems were taxing my time, and Frank, bless his furry
hide, just got kicked to the bottom of my priority list since he doesn’t bring
in any money (slacker cat needs a job!).
However, my wife and one of our writing group friends recently started
up blogs of their own, and my wife asked me if I was ever going to do anything
with mine again. Her question and those of
you who recently posted or e-mailed queries (thank you for those!) got me
motivated to return to Frank, especially now that I once again had some time.
The question was what kind of return would I
have? Would I revisit the idea of a
month on and a month off (which failed miserable with my busted “3.0”
season)? If not, then what? I felt I owed a little consistency to anyone
who follows these insane adventures of mine and Frank’s. At first, I considered doing one entry a
week, something like “Frank Fridays” or “Wildcat Wednesdays.” Both sounded like a fun idea, and I liked the
ring of both... so I decided to do both.
You’ll get a double-dose of “Wildcat’s Lair” every week. No seasons, justa guaranteed (I hope)
posting every Wednesday and Friday, and this time, I really do mean to makeit
stick. I already have three of Frank’s
new adventures put together. Hip, the
allergy-stricken dragon, will also return as a prominent sidekick to
Frank. I hope you’ll all enjoy. So far, I’m having a lot fun hanging out with
Frank and his pals again. And from time
to time, I’ll likely post an entry like this to let you know what I’m up
to and how my writing is going.
knightbek at 5:58:51 PM EDT
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Monday, April 21, 2008
Frank's Back... Starting May 7th
knightbek at 1:28:04 AM EDT
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Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Robert Jordan (1948-2007)
One of the best fantasy novelists of our time passed
away Sunday. Robert Jordan, whose real
name was James Oliver Rigney, Jr., might well have been my favorite writer, and
even though I never had the pleasure of meeting the man, not even at a book signing,
I find this news hard to take. As a fantasy writer, I would have to say Robert Jordan
has probably inspired my writing more than any other author. I read the first book in his “Wheel of Time”
series about ten years ago, and the skill of his writing and the reality of his
world sucked me in pretty hard. His
books offered a world where men and women held a certain equal footing where
power was concerned, and in many ways, one could view the series as an example
of how men and women struggle to communicate and work together… and how our
world suffers for the failures.
Certainly, it served as a major theme within the series.For my part, I also find a certain hope in Jordan’s career. Like myself, he was a native South
Carolinian, and that a guy from my home state could make it big within the
fantasy genre has always given me a confidence that I can do the same.
There are so many stories I hope to write, and just as
Jordan’s career has given
me hope, it now adds a hard reality to my dreams. I don’t know that I will ever be able to
finish all that I hope to accomplish, write all the stories I want to tell. Even at the meager age of 34, I can already
feel time working against me.
Perhaps the darkest irony is that my career is really
just starting as Jordan’s has ended. My wife and I recently finished our work on
our fantasy novel The Last VanDaryn.
The day after Jordan died, not yet aware
of Jordan’s death, my wife and
I finally mailed off a submission packet for our book to a literary agent.
Jordan liked to begin his
stories in the “Wheel of Time” with the following text:
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass,
leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long
forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an
Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose… The wind was not the
beginning. There are neither beginnings
nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.”
I suppose for fans such as myself, it feels as if that
wind has settled and the Wheel has stopped.
James Oliver Rigney, Jr.
October 17, 1948 – September 16, 2007
knightbek at 10:06:17 AM EDT
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Tuesday, September 4, 2007
"The Wildcat's Lair" Season 3.0 Begins
knightbek at 11:31:28 AM EDT
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