I’m Really Still Here, Honest

July 12

I’m pretty swamped with Butterfly Mosque edits, AIR and Another DCU Project, so by the end of the day I cannot bear to look at my keyboard anymore. If I owe you an email, this is why you haven’t gotten it. It’s also why I’ve been updating the blog so infrequently. But I am still here, and I hope--I keep saying this--that things will calm down soon.

Quick updates: I’ll be at the San Diego ComicCon starting the afternoon of July 24. I have signings at the Vertigo booth every day, so if you’re coming to the Con and you’d like to say hi, stop on by. Bring your copy of CAIRO, OUTSIDERS, COMIC BOOK TATTOO or whatever else you’d like me to sign. I’ll probably be at the Image booth for the COMIC BOOK TATTOO group signing as well.

Though I’m not blogging a lot, I am still very much On The Internet, so if you’re looking for casual intellectual chit-chat, go to TalkIslam. I participate in the discussions there most every day.

Speaking of COMIC BOOK TATTOO, COMIC BOOK TATTOO! Order your copy now! It’ll also be in big music stores and comic shops. I like my story less now than I did when I wrote it, but it’s a fantastic book, Neil Gaiman writes the intro, and if you like Tori Amos, you’ll never have another chance to experience her music this way. I got my first Tori album at thirteen (fyi, this is too young to be listening to Tori Amos), so I was really excited to participate in this anthology.

That’s about it. More soon. Promise.

Tagged!

June 19

The music meme is making its way around the blogosphere: Renegade Evolution tagged Natalia Antonova tagged Parallel Sidewalk tagged moi with the following:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

Parallel added:

I think she should include notes on what she listens to while working, like Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan do

I don’t typically listen to music while I work, but I listen to a ton of music at the gym in the morning while gearing up to work. What I play sets the tone for what I write that day, and as a result I closely associate certain songs with certain projects.

Right now:

Coldplay: Viva La Vida. Yeah, I know, it’s Coldplay, but this song could be a rock opera.
Delerium: Consensual Worlds. Minute 5:25 through 6:43 is a musical analog for AIR #1.
Imogen Heap: Hide and Seek. Sad for sad moments.
Iggy Pop: The Passenger. This is one of my personal anthems.
Wolfsheim: The Sparrows and the Nightingales. German gothpop.
Dead Can Dance: Ullysses. This is a good song for transitional moments.
Massive Attack: Teardrop. You’ve heard a sample of this song if you’ve heard the House theme music.

I tag Aziz, Fatima, and Borbor-Chan. It’s not seven but it’ll do for now.

I Have So Arrived

April 30

Jason Aaron, writer of the excellent and much-admired Vertigo series SCALPED, has with Brians Wood and Azzarello (DMZ, 100 Bullets, and a host of other stuff...if you’re coming from the comics side you know them well) offered me my own forum on their consolidated Virtual Machine of Power, Standard Attrition. That’s right. You don’t really write comics until you’ve got one of these babies. I am so pumped to be knocking around the internet with these guys, all of whom are well on their way to being cult legends.

Where the internet is concerned, I have now achieved market saturation. You can’t hide from me. I m in ur blogz, writing ur content. If you’re literary, I’ve cornered you at RedRoom. If you’re a hipster, I’ll get you at Standard Attrition. If you’re Muslim, I yak at you on TalkIslam, if you’re conservative I’ve probably fought with you on Dean’s World, and if you’re here...you probably know me.

I sometimes don’t know when to be a respectable print maven and when to be 25 and living in a world of unstuck content, the meme-driven Gen Why interculture, the New Society, whatever you want to call it. Today I’m the latter. The revolution will be podcast. \m/.