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I've been meaning to tell you that I saw you over there at Gurney Journey! Woo-hoo! I'm not an artist, so I can't speak to technique, but I will say that yours made me laugh outright. Really. Visually, yours just works. Like a cartoon should. ;)

The cartoon?

Perfect.

Congrats on the compliments to your work! Pixar -- woot!

WOOOOT! AF, how cool! And your comic was recognizably yours, I really was deeply worried about the whole fruit basket thing after our earlier conversation about Wales, tuxedo cats and aliens... fortunately, none of the others had fruit baskets.

COOL. COOL! And you didn't even say anything!

Wow! Favorited by a Pixar Dude! That oughta last you through a couple of bouts of self-doubt! Huzzah!

Look at how cute you are at your computers!


A Happy Blogoversary to you two and here's to making the YAosphere a happier place. I'm happy to talk books with you both.

(It's my 3rd too this month! I'm not celebrating though, because I officially hate February.)

Thanks, Kelly, and happy 3rd to you, too! :)

Of course, I just now noticed that there's nothing holding up the desk in the cartoon. It must be one of those fancy mag-lev models...

Happy blogiversary to both of you!!! I'm so glad to have had the chance to get to know you. Great picture! I love the scenes outside the windows!

Happy Blogiversary, ladies! Your blog is one of my favorites. :)

Happy blogiversary!
Cute cartoon!!

Dudette, I don't know about yours but my desk DOES float!

Can I be any more jazzed about being a cartoon? And I even have a SCARF! It looks even and non-lumpy so I'm guessing D. knit it...

I love my hair. It's so sleek and ...neat. Since coming to Glasgow, my hair is one big ball of frizz, it's hilarious the effort it takes to tame it to go outdoors. Many, many times I just cram a hat over the whole thing and hope it goes away...

Thanks for sticking with me for three years of me garrulously exclaiming over every little thing. It's been fun! Here's to three more indeed!

Cheers!

By the way -- I'm thinking my next flat? Will be next to a castle... with sheep...

I love the way your blogging names are on the back of your chairs. It makes you look like the celebrities you are!! :)

Happy Day, you two.

Great cartoon! A belated happy blogiversary to you! (Mine will be three in May, if I remember to celebrate this year - last year it went by completely unrecalled!)

Happy Blogoversary.
And many more!

I think the desk is floating on the waves of creative power.

Happy third anniversary!

Happy Happy Happy! (One for each year!) Here's to three more and three x three more after that.

It's been great getting to know you both through Poetry Friday and the Cybils and good ol' Google Reader.

Happy 3rd blogiversary to both of you! It's been wonderful talking books and reading with you since I started up, and I hope that we'll meet in the real world one day.

YAY!!! Happy Blogoversary To You-u-u-u! You both look fab in toon form. I may commission you to toon me and Jules, too!

Thanks, everybody! Eisha and Jules, I'd be honored to toon-ify you guys any time.

Belated happy blogoversary!

As you see, I'm scrambling to catch up.

Ooh, I definitely vote for Zeitgeist Malone, that speaks to me (and says lots of things like this *&$&%@!).

Hemimingmouse: boy, the teeth!

Oooh - the second one's got it, though: you must throw in some apostrophes if you're going to do fantasy, right? Just so nobody could hope to ever pronounce the names, and so that it'll have that exotic feeling. Hah!

And flagrant displays of man-flesh in wet clothing are bad because....???

Toon Thursday is great!

I never said they were bad. Especially not Colin Firth in wet clothing...

I want me some gratuitous pond-jumping, too.

Sometimes I get an idea and before I can write it down, it's gone. Now I know what's happening! Thank you for revealing the truth about this underreported menace.
;-)

Hee! Thanks! Yup, next time you're stumped just look around for a writer cackling gleefully and fleeing the scene...

Thank you for this cartoon, a.fortis! I've been waiting for it, I'tell ya.

Good one, Little Willow, and O Clever Cartoonist.

Does "that guy" run a special on "Newbery winners?"

Thanks for the laugh this morning. Now off to find "that guy."

Thanks, a. fortis and Little Willow.

Recently, I was talking with some other writers about, "Where do you find time to write?" Another possible contest instantly suggested itself. (hint, hint)
;-)

Yay! Thanks, guys. Great idea, liquidambar--in fact, it occurs me to me that a lot of questions about writing habits would be good fodder for cartoon contests...I will have to think on this some more...

You're hilarious. Thank you. It is not often that I see my ideas brought to life by other people!

Love this! I know I'm biased, but LOVE IT, LOVE IT! Right down to that fab martini glass.

For the record, I don't drink nail polish, but if I did, it would be L'OREAL's "Thrill." Although I suppose OPI's "Strawberry Fields" would produce better pink elephants.

Thanks!!!

I was wondering if the color of the polish is important. According to Sara, apparently so!

Don't try this at home, kids.

My husband recently heard part of an interview with Philip Pullman. Pullman was asked where he got his ideas, and Pullman replied, "My ideas show up at my desk. If I'm not there to take them down, they go away." I thought of you, a.fortis, and how you would draw that cartoon.

Thanks, guys!

I totally should have included a "don't try this at home" message. That would have been hilarious.

Alkelda, I am so TOTALLY going to use that... It's a mix of Butt In Chair and the Idea Factory: if your butt's not in the chair, well... the ideas go home...

Thank you, a. fortis! It's a thrill to be illustrated.

You captured my kitchen drawer without even visiting my house. How spooky is that?

We must think alike, since it's modeled after my kitchen drawer! :) Though, to be completely accurate, my drawer is just about overflowing with crap. (Please note: that is "drawer" without an S. Crucial difference.)

Thanks again for entering the contest!

Hee! Falafel Hut?!

I used to have a kitchen door like this. Theoretically, we cleaned it out when we moved; I think now it's just all in a box...

It's in a box, unfortunately, I'm sure.

At least your drawer has one of every kind of battery. I always seem to have fifteen AAA's and no 9V or whatever it is that will make the smoke alarm stop beeping at me.

Maybe I need some writer batteries in there, too.

Can't wait to see the rest in this series!

I dunno about this -- the hair is way too tidy for MY writing style. Try the 'just-rolled-out-of-something' look, and it's a bit closer...

Frankly, I think a personal assistant would annoy the heck out of me. There would be someone to LOOK at me drinking juice out of the pitcher in the fridge...!

Hey, a personal assistant would be mighty handy to help you answer all of the fan mail!

Yay, indeed -- good luck!

Funny how the only thing in the chart that actually does take as long as you think it will is the revision. Even if few things actually change, figuring out what those things are is no small task.

Dividing up the pie chart was surprisingly hard! I had this silly one-liner of a joke in mind involving the difficulty of writing the query letter relative to the difficulty of the writing project as a whole, and then I had to make judgment calls about the proportion of the rest of the pie slices. And here I thought I'd picked an easy cartoon for this week!!

Thanks for posting this - and reminding me about the Zoetrope. I MIGHT try... maybe... you?

Oooh, I think I've had several of these. And yeah... the 'difficult to dislodge' bit? Too, too true...

Congratulations on the Pig Farm gig!

And I'm feeling your pain on the ending, but, like those first three-to four paragraphs, if it isn't right... it ruins everything...

Ah, Perko's. Clogging the arteries and the brains of this fair state, one diner at a time...

*singing the Perkos Cafe jingle*

Poster, please? I need this for my office!

I saw your wonderful illustration right after reading "A Book is a Book..." on Life as I Know It
http://scruffynerf.wordpress.com/2007/08/16/a-book-is-a-book-is-a-book-or-is-it/

What are your thoughts on the nature of a "book"?

I'm not a fiction writer, but I have a feeling that "miracle" occurring is a long, crazy-making process for you writers! Great 'toon. Thanks!

You know, I read this thing about the nature of the book -- I believe that from the writer's perspective, the copyrighted text is their book, regardless of format.

The real question here seems to be what or who determines the meaning of a word: authors or publishing /marketing? Many authors I know have tried to protect by copyright their eBooks... it's not yet possible, as publishers and agents tend to work in a bloc; no one else is doing it, so individual authors concerned about their electronic rights in the future just have to wait.

Interesting discussion, Diane.

The pictorial version of The Publishing Whisperer: Decoding A Rejection Letter... but better.

LOL! I love it.

Hoo-wee. These are a writer's inner nightmares, for sure.

So glad the toons are back!

BRILLIANT
This is my brain.
Add heat to the revision and late night fireworks and too many people coming to visit, and yep... you get the melting clocks again.

It feels like clocks are melting. I swear I missed two days somehow this week.

Hang in there... this WILL be done...

Hang in there, and good luck . . .

Very funny!

Good one!

AH! Most Egregious Uses fodder as well! I love the editing marks!

When I saw the description of crazy cat ladies in the original article, I nearly cried because I don't HAVE any cats any longer, and how dare they remind me of that. Seriously. Sigh. I'm sad.

When we lost our kitty when I was a kid, Mom said "no more" and so we switched to hamsters.

Don't do that.

No matter how sad, don't go with rodents. That way madness lies...

You know, there are prodigies in the world ... and they are children. When they grow up? Well ... Danny Bonaduce a.k.a. Christopher Partridge, anybody? Oh, yeah. You remember him - all cute and stuff. Washed up drug-addict these days; peaked too soon; no life since.

The "prodigies" in the book world are those which are in the culture - deeply entrenched the culture of this minute. Their books probably won't continue into another couple of years, much less into a new generation, because they are so "now" that they will be left behind.

Not that you need all of this reassurance or anything, no, not at all.

Dude, it's a HIGH horse, a high horse. So, it's not going to look... natural.

Seriously, though, it looks great. And I'm unbelievably annoyed by this yammering on and on on this topic. A lot of ASSuming is going on.

I try not to think about it too much, but I know what you mean. Love the cartoon! It does all boil down to free speech, and people trying to defend an elitist old guard that others don't care about.

I had dinner with a friend last night who struggles to find good books for his three kids to read, because he wants them to be readers. And he said that reading my blog helps with that. And that's really what it's all about, for me.

That's great, Jen! I love to hear that. I always feel like I'm doing someone a service when I can point them to great sites like yours, or Edge of the Forest or any of the other great sites out there, when they're looking for reading material for their kids.

GREAT cartoon, Sarah! It's perfect.

BTW: I grew up in Hemet, believe it or not :) It was great when I was a child, but has gone downhill since! I then went to Berkeley for undergrad and UCLA for grad school. Now I'm in IOWA. Ah, the academic life. It's a lot like the military in the sense that you can't always choose where you live.

Oh, how funny! My stepdad used to work at an optometrist's office in Hemet.

Coincidentally, I also went to Berkeley for my undergrad. It was a nice change from Riverside, let me tell you!

Cool, Sarah! He didn't work at Dr. King's office did he?

Berkeley was a nice change from the old Inland Empire--though the first guy I dated could tell "I came from a small town." Sigh. I thought I had them all fooled :)

No, I think it was Dr. Scruggs, but that was a long time ago so I'm not sure...my stepdad's career has gone through various incarnations and since then he has become a high school science teacher! (At San Gorgonio, which you probably know of!)