Well, I received a lot of commission orders. I want to thank everyone who bought one. I will do my very best to make you a piece that you'll love
The list is pretty long, but I'll be working diligently on them. Thank you for your patience while I work my way down the list to your name.
I'll email you when I begin your piece, so that you will know to expect it soon
I'm also delighted at the positive response to my photos of Anya, my domestic fox.
I will have many more photos and videos to share in a few weeks. She is not living with me as of yet - I had to move to a neighboring city because my old city was telling me that foxes were not allowed (even though they had no actual, written law that said this and therefore no legal grounds to enforce this prohibition on me, but they did anyway).
So I bought a new house (with an acre!) and will be bringing her home to Michigan in early May (shes living with a friend in Florida at the moment). So when she's with me I'll have the opportunity to take lots of photos and videos of her ....prepare to be SPAMMED!
I still get a lot of people asking about my and Fable's comic The BBA.
BBA wouldn't be anything without you - the readers and fans. And for years Erin and I have had your support in all that we've done and because of that, I'd like to share an explanation of the situation with you.
A few years ago I decided to stop producing pages. I haven't been able to pinpoint the exact reason why I felt the need to do this - I actually think it was a large mix of things.
My mother passed away that year, 2009. I've always struggled with depression, but that really hit me hard. She had held the family life together (something that lent me most of my sense of security. ) and after she was gone it fell apart. I was lost for some time, as I tried to figure out how to manage truly being on my own in the world.
I look back and view that event as the day I grew up. I feel markedly different now than before that, in ways too myriad and personal to describe here.
A day after the funeral, I got a full-time job. In the past, BBA was able to grow and come to life in my mind because I would spend lots of time during the day just thinking and imagining the world. Now, for 8 hours a day I had to be focused on the project I was being paid to work on. It can be creatively draining. I come home and I don't want to get right back behind the computer again.
To be honest, other factors were things that were going on in the online communities. I found it hard to want to come online and deal with drama and negativity when I really had enough of that going on in real life. While I've always had supporters, it was hard for me to ignore those who went way out of their way to troll me, send me hate, etc. Im sure that, because most of you are artists too and we seem to be afflicted with insecurity, self-doubt and depression, you can relate. Even though in reality it was something like 5 or 10 supportive comments for every 1 rabid attack, I got tired of it all. It had been going on for years but I just didn't have the energy or spirit to deal with it anymore.
It was easier to just leave the internet behind and forget about everything.
Another factor was that the world and characters of BBA were things I dreamed up when I was something like 16, some parts even way earlier. That's over a decade ago now and my situation and my person have changed a lot in that time. Imagine the way you were 10 years ago... you probably don't feel anything like the same person! The story I was interested in telling then isn't the story i want to tell today.
That aside, I've learned a lot about story-telling, writing and character development by reading and watching and studying fiction during my hiatus.
I could have just pulled back the reigns, wheeled the story around and driven it in another direction. But if I'm going to do something, I like to do it right. It needed to be retired.
Initially, I thought I'd just hand it over to Erin completely and she could take it where she liked. But after a while I thought, well, I don't want to give up on it completely. I still like some things about what we did. I think we did something really original, we had fun working together, and it clearly vibed with a certain audience.
I've been intermittently working on a new story, script, and tweaking the world for a BBA reboot. I'm not working on it full time - I let it sit while I wait for inspiration to strike (which can be slow going when you have so many busy days..) then I write it down. I want to create something that has soul and depth and truth and isn't just pretty, action-y or "cool" for the sake of it. I want to create something that means something to me and that hopefully others will be able to relate to and find meaning in. I want to create something that I'm really proud of.
So, I can't give you a release date or promise they'll be more soon. But I can promise you that I haven't forgotten BBA, and that next time you see it, it will be something really good.
Well, that's about it for now. If you read all that....well...wow, and thank you! Until next time!
~K












