Indy Comics Writer

I always hate opening my newspaper on major holidays and seeing the artists on the comics page cheat. You know what I mean: Garfield and Odie will be sitting in front of turkey dinner and grinning back at the reader. Above them, a banner will say “Happy Thanksgiving.”

And that’ll be it. Not exactly a cartoonist flexing his creative muscles.

So I vowed to never do the equivalent with any of my blogs. (I don’t want to compare myself to Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield. I don’t think we have quite the same number of regular readers.)

Today, I shall break that vow. Why not? Why resist the urge to be thankful on Thanksgiving?

So here’s what I’m thankful for today. I’m thankful that I have a wonderful wife and two wonderful sons. I’m thankful that my wife supports me in all that I do (within reason!) and that our 9-year-old son is a sweet little guy with loads of imagination and creativity to spare. I’m thankful that our 14-month-old son has given our household a shot of energy this year. You see, we adopted this guy from Ethiopia. He’s turned our home upside down, in a good, good way.

I’m thankful that I’m able to make a living as a writer, even if I don’t always get to write what I want to. And I’m thankful that my first published comics — the four-issue mini-series GEARZ, pick it up today from Bluewater Publishing — hit the shelves this year. They even received some nice reviews from online comics sites. (There were a few reviews that weren’t so nice, too, but I’m not all that thankful for them.) I’m glad, too, that Bluewater will be publishing three more of my comics mini-series in 2009, and that six different publishers bought either my short fiction or short comics scripts this year. Hey, I even received a check today from one of the anthologies. You can’t help but be thankful for that.

Of course, 2008 has had its share of challenges, too. The rough economy has forced me to write more non-fiction stories than ever just to tread water with my monthly income. The publisher where I work as a full-time, part-time editor has struggled to fill its pages with ads. We lost a dear family friend to cancer recently. And my wife suffered a rather serious leg injury — though she’s A-OK now.

On the whole, though, there’s much to be thankful for. Heck, if all that we accomplished in 2008 would have been completing the lengthy, frustrating and incredibly expensive process of adopting our youngest son, the year would have been a great one.

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