Made a little run of these prints for FREE THE BOOKS: A Print Exhibition. It runs through the month of March at the Evanston Public Library in Illinois.
One of these prints did not come out super great (lots of extraneous markings). I have five on this thin paper and a couple more on thicker paper, before I changed papers and brayers (and before they extended the deadline, so I had more time to make a nice one to send in.) I'm going to try to get the shop part of the site set up by March, but if you want to buy one of these guys they're $15. Shoot me a lil ole email at royalmontgomery [at] gmail [dot] com and I can let you know what everything else in the run looks like.
0 Comments
I re-read a lot of The Sandman last week or so. I skipped a couple parts ('Brief Lives', 'Fables and Nocturnes'), but my favorites are 'The Kindly Ones' and 'The Wake', anyway, so it was fine. I really like how interwoven the characters are - Barbie from 'The Doll's House' reappearing in 'A Game of You', Ken from 'The Doll's House' now in Sandman: Nightmare Country.
I found Sandman: Nightmare Country because I found Sandman Special: Thessaly and needed to know what happened. The ways that DC have tried to lead the reader through these books is very poor. They sent me from Thessaly to Nightmare Country #4 to Dead Boy Detectives, and that is not the reading order at all. The reading order is Nightmare Country, Thessaly, Nightmare Country: The Glass House. Whatever is happening in Dead Boy Detectives I don't know and I don't really want to find out because 1) it's super boring 2) the continuity does not make sense based on the events of the books that actually are telling the story I want to read. One of the things that is terrific about The Sandman is that the writing is great. The story is not always satisfying. It does not always come to an end that is just and wrapped up in a bow and everyone is living happily ever after, but Neil Gaiman tells it in such a way that it doesn't matter. There are a lot of messy stories with messy people, gods, and every kind of being in between, and it's just told so well that it's very real. When I saw that James Tynion IV had written the Thessaly one-shot, I was super excited. I've been reading a lot of his other work and so I knew I was walking into something good. Unfortunately, the art in the Thessaly one-shot is poorly done - the same artist did Nightmare Country #6 and the already sloppy work is even worse in that issue. (Tynion IV also wrote the two Nightmare Country mini-series.) The art for the rest of the two mini-series is mostly well-done, and the cover art is lovely, as seen above. I think it would be difficult for a new reader to fully grasp the storylines in these books, because they're very heavily steeped in the Sandman lore. But for people who know the characters and their origins, it's a terrific tale that is still unfolding - the next installment is coming out in April of 2024. I definitely have a new appreciation for Morpheus' re-made nightmare, Corinthian, and I'm happy to see more of Thessaly and the new incarnation of Dream. I went back and read The Sandman Presents: The Thessaliad as well. I love reading about this clever, calculating witch and how she moves through the world. The thing about bad art is it motivates me to get some work done. So I have been plugging away in the studio, much to the dismay of my sleep schedule. Not sure when I will get the time for the non-Murder of Crows comics I've been thumbnailing in my sketchbook, but we'll get there. Another year, another chance. In my review of last year, I found that things had gone...pretty well, actually. There were some bad things, but there were a lot of good things. The good things edged out the bad things for the first time in a long time. For that, I'm very grateful.
I have a hard time focusing on a whole year's worth of resolutions and so I have been doing these monthly challenges. The sketchbook challenge was okay. I think it was good. The drawings themselves are not good, but having myself do this whether I wanted to or not was a good exercise. I even felt weird on the first day of February when I realized I didn't have to fill a sketchbook page on that day. My goal for February is to buckle down and finish the first issue of Murder of Crows. Click on the "Read More" button if you want to see the sketchbook pages from January. I was thinking about reading the first John Bellairs Johnny Dixon mystery, which is called The Curse of the Blue Figurine, but I logged on to Hoopla and now none of these books are available anymore. So I went on eBay and bought a bunch of them for $30. I didn't buy all of them - I think The Trolley to Yesterday has a really low re-read value for me personally, and I don't think I bought any of the ones that Brad Strickland wrote. I've been working on upkeep on a Substack which is sadnightcrimes.substack.com, it updates on Wednesdays and Sundays. I draw a little illustration for it. I got hit by a truck two weeks ago and it made me a little sore physically, but mentally and emotionally it really knocked me down. I mean, it physically knocked me down also, but the effects were more emotional than anything else. This series is really fun and I have been telling everyone about it. It's set in 1920s New York City, and the first book follows Evie O'Neill, who has been exiled to New York by her parents after one of her "party tricks" reveals that a high class boy - who is of course engaged to a high class girl- has knocked up a lower class girl. Evie can read objects - psychometry - and she winds up in the care of her uncle, who runs the fictional Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. The first book involves a supernatural murderer, the second a sleeping sickness that affects people who are dreaming, and the third examines what Diviners are and how they came to be. Turns out that there are more Diviners than just Evie, and they all have similar origins - what can her uncle tell her about the mysterious Project Buffalo?
These books are quite long - the first one was a bit of a slow burn but I ran through the last two very quickly. I'm waiting for the library to pull the last one for me - if they don't hurry up I'm going to pop down there and pull it myself. I'm not sure what happened after the first one, but I haven't seen any of the sequels have a cover style like the image above - the design of the covers changed and I don't really like them that much. This one is a little more mysterious, I think. The next book that I'm waiting for, The King of Crows, is the last book, and I'm a little sad about it! I'm not really ready for the end of these fun flapper friends. Usually I never say this, but this would be a really terrific tv series. The rights for a movie were already acquired, but the last book came out in 2020, so I don't know if a project never got off the ground or if the pandemic slowed things down. I don't know if anyone reads my little old blog anymore, but it's useful. I like having it. I think I'm going to leave Twitter pretty shortly. I'm on Bluesky, LiveJournal, and substack. And here. I didn't realize this until I opened weebly to write, but I read the remaining five books in the Johnny Dixon series after the last post. I just finished the final book, The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost. I'm very very grateful for Irwin Terry's blog Goreyana, which is still active! Mr. Terry has posted all of these dustjackets for the John Bellairs books that were illustrated by Edward Gorey. (The new covers are so plain in comparison.) I've been reading these books on Hoopla, and they all have the new ebook covers: All right, let's see. - The Chessmen of Doom: Classic Bellairs in that there is some weird stuff happening that is never fully explained. Suspension of Disbelief Dept.: Prof. Childermass gives up on a $10 million dollar inheritance because he doesn't want to deal with the hassle of contesting his brother Peregrine's will. (Is tenure THAT good? Maybe it was.) Loved the witch at the end and the mention of Hecate. - The Secret of the Underground Room: Johnny, Fergie, and Professor Childermass have to rescue Father Higgins, which entails a trip to England. Johnny Dixon truly gets to go all over the place and Professor Childermass foots the bill. I'm sure the idea of Johnny and Fergie running around by themselves in a foreign land would scandalize parents these days, but this is the 1950s, so of course these thirteen year olds are on their own for most of the day while the Professor is in the library finding clues. I was going to finish writing about these other books, but Weebly just logged me out as I was writing this post and I lost about half of what I had just written. So I will do that another time because now I'm irritated.
Also, while I was writing this post I found that there is another book? I'm not sure how I feel about that, though. I actually haven't read the first book in the series! Maybe I will go back and read that one. Well, I knew I said that I wasn't going to buy or check out anything new until I cleared my backlog, but my willpower was not strong enough. I am obsessed with these little Johnny Dixon mysteries. I don't know why! It's like a craving for food. That's the only way I can describe it. I read this time-travel one even though it did not have the most interesting premise and it was VERY silly compared to the previous installations. Not silly like humorous, although I did appreciate Brewster's once-in-a-thousand-years magic trick, but silly in that it was over the top. It was still fine, though. I'm on the next one now, which has a much more interesting premise: Professor Childermass' brother has died, leaving behind a huge estate (both monetarily and in property) - but his will has some Mysterious Conditions! I hope this one has some haunted house action. I like these little friends. Daryl Surat reports that Wikipedia describes this series as "children's Gothic horror", but I wouldn't consider them horror books. Maybe "children's occult mystery."
Job hunting is becoming depressing, but also kind of infuriating? Starting to make me feel kind of: Why are these people wasting my time, energy, and sometimes money? I just had an interview and the start date they quoted was a week away from the time they informed candidates of a decision. At that point I kind of figured there was an internal candidate for that position, because how is anyone going to relocate and get settled in a week? So...why are you wasting my time? And getting my hopes slightly higher than off the ground? Same kind of deal with my friend from LPL: she applies for a position, they have someone in mind, everyone tells her that they have x person in mind and she says, well, I'll withdraw my application and they say oh no no you shouldn't withdraw. So we're just living on pathological hope over here and very little money. Even though we have master's degrees. Okay. I am a member of the American Academy of Religion which is nice because it gives me JSTOR access. They had a little career exploration thing and I went to log in to that but it's for people who have PhDs. I do not have a PhD. I wish I had a PhD. Just a little. I think about getting a PhD. Then I think about all the work that I did to do my bachelor's degree at 30, and all the work I did and the trauma I went through with former friends and family I no longer communicate with to get my master's degree at age 40, all of which was to better my job prospects so that I could buy a fuckin' house & stop moving around like a backpacker. And here I am with a terrific education and I do not make enough money to rent an apartment on my own. I do not own a bed. Most of my belongings are in storage. Meanwhile, everyone I know who is making good money has a BA, if that. It's really, really depressing. So I'm sad because I want a PhD, I want to study and know and read, but it doesn't seem like it's going to make my life any better and will possibly make it worse. Although I don't know if it gets much worse. I guess in 2018 I had seventy-five cents in my bank account. That was probably worse. Yesterday I put on the Confessions Special Edition for my little studio soundtrack. Confessions came out in 2004. In 2004 I was waiting tables and had no college education but I had my own apartment. Maybe I can get a book deal out of all these restaurant stories. I tell you this shit has got to stop. My thing about this blog is I will not write a bad review of something terrible that I read. Bad things that happen are, for whatever reason, more memorable than good things, and so I would rather promote good things and try to re-wire my brain to remember the good things.
HOWEVER. I am going to use this blog, which no one reads anyway, to write my petty blog post about Lexington Public Library, because I have not worked there in over a year but my friends still work there and I am so tired of hearing about my friend getting consistently passed over for promotions, whether that's being interviewed for a position that admin already has someone in mind for or not being interviewed at all. When I was at LPL, I was a part timer. I was like, this is great, I have my foot in the door, I will get my MSLS and they'll promote me! I loved LPL. I worked at Northside and I LOVED Northside. The vibes were immaculate. My coworkers were all delightful and helpful. The patrons were mostly hilarious and nice. Of course there was the occasional rude person, but overall? It was a great place to work and I wanted to stay there. When I first moved to Kentucky, I was so so homesick for Florida, but after I got a job at LPL I was like, you know, I could stay here. I like Lexington (and still do). I saw myself settling down and being in Kentucky for a while. In retrospect, that was a mistake. I put all of my eggs in LPL's basket. I applied for a full time position and didn't get hired. I told myself that was ok! I didn't want to be a full time Library Assistant, I wanted to be a Librarian I. I told myself to be patient. My bestie at LPL also was a part-time LA with her MSLS. Kickoff to Summer Reading was coming up. This was a huge deal. It was like, petting zoo, outside activities, Scholastic Book Fair, just a very busy day for the branch. The branch manager asked me to come in on my day off to help. I went in on my day off to help and she told me, after the whole day was over (of course), that it was hard to move up from part time to an L1. That I needed more experience in programming, or this or that or the other thing. (It was always some flimsy excuse.) I just sat there in shock. I couldn't even speak. My classmates had just graduated and were getting L1 positions at libraries they'd never set foot in, but I couldn't get an L1 INTERVIEW at a place where EVERYONE KNEW ME? Now, I have programming experience. Any kind of non-academic thing I did in undergrad was RUNNING PROGRAMS. Movie nights, dinners, workshops, dances, Lavender Graduation, bonfires, you name it. I can run programs for adults, I can run programs for teens. I had just come out of what essentially had been running programs from 7am to 4pm for four children under the age of nine. So again, a flimsy excuse. They interviewed my work bestie and she did not get this position. The person who got the position was someone we worked with, who is a fine person, but they did not have the MSLS AND the reason they were hired was because the branch wanted someone who was bilingual. All of that is fine. I have nothing against this person who was promoted. I just think that 1) if being bilingual is the difference between getting hired for something and not getting hired for it, then that should be in the posting and 2) all I ever heard was that this person, who was hired on the basis that they can speak two languages, would only speak the second language to a patron if Literally No One Else Was Available. Otherwise it would be, "Ask _____". One of our managers was retiring and the other manager was managing two branches, so even if I did all the programming every day no one would be there to witness it. Because I had, in fact, not applied anywhere else due to pathological hope that LPL would appreciate me, I had to extend the lease on my UKY dorm because I was about to be completely screwed. My program was up, I had to be out of the housing, and I had no full-time job or the prospect of one. The person who was hired as the replacement to our previous manager listened to everything I told them about LPL, programming, how unfair they were being, and just did jack shit. (Well, not jack shit, because I've noticed that the programming that I wanted to do that I talked to this manager about wound up being programming at the library, just I wasn't leading it or getting the credit for it. As you can see, I have good programming ideas.) (I also emailed someone at Central about having a staff art show in the central branch's gallery, which, of course, happened after I left.) So now here I am a year later and I'm still mad as hell at LPL for shafting me. I went to HR after two days of not sleeping because I was incandescent with rage and all HR did was tell me, basically, You Have Not Because You Ask Not. "Is it poor leadership? Yes," the HR guy said. "But it's not illegal." I also told my work bestie to go to HR about LPL's bullshit and the HR guy looked at her calendar and kept trying to schedule a meeting for the times she was not available. She just got passed over for another promotion, AGAIN, didn't even get an interview. "Part of me just wants to cancel or stop all my programs and leave the library," she said. And I get it! But I don't think that would do anything, I don't think LPL would give a rat's ass, because they don't seem to care about the people who work for them. We would get emails about people being promoted after ten years. Ten years!! I was so alarmed. You were an LA for TEN YEARS and then you got promoted to an L1?? Here's what would happen if my friend packed her shit and left: it would mildly inconvenience everyone for about two months or more or however long it took HR to write and post an opening for her job. No lessons would be learned by branch managers or HR or LPL admin. They would add an item to their yearly meeting plan about how to retain people and prevent turnover (just like they had an item on their yearly meeting when I was there about not relying so much on part-timers, and then every month or so there would be a part-time LA position on the UKY listserv). There's nothing we can do to make them act right. They don't give a flying fuck as long as whatever they're doing isn't legal discrimination (thanks for letting me know, HR guy), and it sucks. I'm mad as hell at them on my behalf, I'm even angrier on my friend's behalf, and it's so frustrating to know that it doesn't matter. So I bought the pink diamond ring. It is orange-pink and changes colors in the light. I measured my finger incorrectly so it fits on my middle finger. This is fine because it means I can go to a jewelry place and measure my ring finger and get another fancy ring. This is the last book I read. I have a lot of books happening right now and I'm cutting myself off until I finish my backlog and return all my library books. I started this as an audiobook. Audiobooks are VERY difficult for me to deal with, as are podcasts. I almost did not make it because it's very difficult for me to concentrate on listening to something; I will either a) zone out and not realize it until a few minutes later or b) fall asleep. However, I managed to listen to a good chunk of this book at work and then after a while I figured it would be useful to have around so I ordered it. Daryl Surat now thinks I will be summoning demons on the back porch, which I think is very ambitious. I feel like I don't even have enough time to fit everything in a day...yesterday I wanted to clean out my backpack...but I was too tired after exercising, making the very easiest of dinners (spaghetti! it took maybe ten minutes!), and having studio time. I had to go get into a lavender baby bath. So I don't know if I have time to cultivate relationships with the demons of the Ars Goetia. (I do like the bird ones, though. They're cute.)
I told this to my bestie and she said that her daughter tried to plead her case for summoning a demon in her room. My bestie was like, No. The daughter tried to bargain with summoning an angel. I just think this is so hilarious, probably because I am a Gen X-er and I feel like due to the influence of the Poky Little Puppy, we tend to err on the side of asking forgiveness rather than permission. I am trying to imagine either of us asking our parents in 1994 if it was okay if we summoned a demon as long as we did it in our room. I don't really think I believe in "demons" in the way other people do & I definitely did not believe in demons or the devil in 1994. However, everyone thought I was some kind of Satanist and I would be happy to go back to my high school and summon a demon in the cafeteria and leave it there. Go nuts, buddy. With all that said, I will consider making some time in my schedule to consort with the spirit of Michael Jackson. I can't say I am entering my ____ era, because I feel like I'm always on the cusp of entering an era but I can never fully commit. I thought I was about to enter my punk era but now I am threatening to enter my unicorn princess era. I was thinking about starting to punctuate all my tweets with pink emojis and also exclusively use cursive twitter fonts and see how long it took someone to ask me if I was okay or if my twitter had been hacked, but i think at this point the people who follow me would mute or unfollow me and move on.
Recently I had what i thought was a terrific idea to turn a She-Ra palace into a lamp. I used to have a She-Ra palace. I bought it for $11 or $12 at the flea market. There's no way you're getting a She-Ra palace for that price now. Another She-Ra item that would make a good night light is the horse, because they made a version of the horse that was clear pink plastic. The internet knows that I am casually flirting with the unicorn princess aesthetic because now it's suggesting that I buy pink diamond rings on etsy. I'm sure that girls and women who are into this kind of thing nowadays are having a much better time than being a princess was in the 1980s. I support their dreams and their Selkie dresses. When I was a kid every ballet girl was an insufferable snob so it's been interesting to see the change in girl's girls and what is considered "weird" and also what is considered "preppy". I have never been preppy but I have always been weird and I guess I will always be weird. To other people. Not to me. When I was in college I did a diptych about girliness, for lack of a better word. I went to a women's college and I was so so sick of hearing one of my classmates complain about things being "too girly". You knew what it was when you signed up. Girly is fine. Ain't nothing wrong with it. So I did all the girly things in black and then the other side of the diptych is all the girly things in pink. HOWEVER, even though it is on my college campus, I do not have a picture of it online. I will have to add it to this post when I get home, if I can remember anything by then. It's okay to be girly. It's ok to love pink. Anyone who wants to diss you about it can eat shit. I am absolutely exhausted! I did not do anything yesterday after work except take a bath and read this book. Man, they really should have kept these Edward Gorey covers, I mean REALLY. I forgot that some of them had these back images and I found this on Google image search today. The thing about these John Bellairs books is that someone in the ebook sector has really gone above and beyond, because the ebook doesn't end at just the end of whatever book you've just read. There's at least three chapters of the NEXT book following the ending, so then you'll get enough into it that you have to go get the next one. (I have also fallen for this trap because it will not mark the book as finished until you read the excerpt from the next book in the series). I have to say that I was not intrigued by the title of this book. A killer robot? I'm not interested. This is not just your run of the mill killer robot, though. This is a robot that is also a golem?? A killer golem robot? Golem might not be the correct word, because it's not like the scientist slash magician who created the robot blew the breath of life into the robot - he killed someone and used the eyes of the dead man for the robot, which also animated the robot and made it appear to humans as human. The robot could also be stopped by a magical key called the Key of Arbaces, which is more dynamic than just wiping the word off the forehead. Also this robot was created to pitch baseballs. I am not making this up. As with most John Bellairs books, the ending is not super satisfying. One of the villains dies a very convenient death at the end, after Professor Childermass pokes the golem in the back of the neck with not the Key of Arbaces, but a sword that we find out is enchanted in the final chapter. There's a contest here for $10,000 and mention is made of Johnny's family being poor even though a cereal heiress wrote the Dixons a fat check two books ago. Johnny Dixon, who spent most of the previous book in the hospital being possessed by an evil ghost, gets kidnapped TWICE in this book and I have no idea how this kid is keeping on. This was probably the scariest of the books, though the next one is The Trolley to Yesterday and I haven't read the beginning of that one just yet. Here's the full dustjacket to The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt: Full dustjacket to The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull: And the full dustjacket to The Revenge of the Wizard's Ghost: I don't know if YA books still end like this these days, haha. I guess I feel like people are more discerning in terms of wrapping up stories and you can't just be like, the cane sword we got from the pawn shop six chapters ago is actually an enchanted sword! Surprise! I know for sure that no one is letting their kids go on harebrained adventures in which they get kidnapped all the time and then listen to their neighbor when they tell them not to call the cops. Johnny Dixon has so much ptsd at this point. HOWEVER, if you do like occult mystery solving youngsters in the style of John Bellairs, you will love Friday by Ed Brubaker and Marcos Martin! I don't know when the next book comes out, but I am impatiently waiting for this one! It's so good. Anyway if you like John Bellairs, Harriet the Spy, and mystery solving friends with fun names, you should check this out!
|
AuthorArtist, essayist, divinity school dropout. Here for a good time, not for a long time. Archives
February 2024
Categories
All
|