Who am I? Just this guy, mostly.
But I do other stuff when I'm not working on web comics. I'm a cantor and play guitar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Newport Beach, California, for instance, and work part-time as a clerk a couple blocks down the street at the Balboa Branch of the Newport Beach Public Library.
I also do a radio program, The Darkling Eclectica, each Saturday morning from 6 till 9. You can listen to the music, the stories, the commentary, and the hi-jinks--over the air at KUCI, 88.9 FM in Irvine if you're located in south-central Orange County, CA, or right here on the web thanks to KUCI's streaming audio feeds. KUCI's Main Page will give you all the particulars on how to tune in. So stop on by this Saturday, and remember, all times are Pacific Standard.
I write prose stories, too, and here's a nice selection of them for sale: 12 short stories originally published in various science fiction and fantasy magazines and my novel The Blood Jaguar available in as many ebook formats as a body could want from the fine folks at Fictionwise.com. The novel's also available on actual paper from the ubiquitous amazon.com in both paperback and hardback. I also review SF books--kind of--in my role as Head Co-Ordinator of the SFWA Circulating Book Plan. It keeps me off the streets.
I've got a message board for the web comics and once had a poetry message board courtesy of Kent Brewster's Speculations magazine, though all its content now resides on the Poems from the Old Speculations Message Board page. See, for reasons I don't pretend to understand, I vowed only to post poetry to the Speculations board, so be forewarned if you decide to go visit. As Walt Kelly said, forewarned is forearmed. And four armed is half an octopus. And who wants to be half an octopus?
If you click on over and check out the story site, you'll see several examples of fine artwork from the pen of Marilyn Scott-Waters. She says we met in college, but I'm sure I knew her when I was in high school. Her site is filled to the brim with musical cats, scary clowns, flying cars, and somewhere over there, I'm sure, she has the picture she did of Jessica Rabbit dressed as Thor. She's got another fine web site she'd just started up called The Toymaker where you can print out paper toys that she's designed and build 'em yourself. Hours of fun; go on and take a look.
The artist I've known longer than any other would be my younger brother Tom. He specializes in what I'd call surrealism, but whadda I know? You can judge for yourself by taking the link back there, and I'll just sit here staring at Mr. Polymer, one of my favorite of his paintings, hanging here on the wall beside my computer. Tom also continues to be the catalyst behind that most dreaded of organized sports: Monkey Pool. And yes, it's a real game; trust me on that.
Another guy I've known for years and years and years--he's the guy who first told me about the San Diego Comic Con back when it was still called the San Diego Comic Con--is Dan Goodsell. As with most of us, he's not content with the regular, everyday world, so he's created The Imaginary World, a virtual theme park populated by loveable but peculiar characters such as the Drunken Carrot and peripatetic Mr. Toast. Stop by, see the sights, buy the t-shirt: you'll be glad you did.
Another fine message board is Bonobo Hill, run by one of my absolute favorite writers, William Sanders. I have very few opinions of my own, but the folks at Bonobo Hill have plenty for everyone, and they all express them in surprisingly civil fashions even when they don't agree. It's one of the few place on the internet, as far as I can tell, where discussions don't eventually devolve into people calling each other Hitler, and I've learned not only several interesting facts--did you know that you can sing most of Emily Dickinson's poetry to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas?-- but a lot of new swear words, too...
I read bunches of web comics, actually; now that I think about it, I've been reading them for just about as long as they've been around. I have this link page that I use every day--it lives over on the Darkling Eclectica site, so instead of creating a whole new web comics' page here, I'll take advantage of the internet's internettiness and just put up a link to it...
As a matter of fact, here's a site that lists bunches and bunches of online comics--including Terebinth, of course. As the site itself puts it: "OnlineComics.net: A Directory of Online Comics - Browse several categories of online comics including Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Manga, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Slice-of-Life, Sprite, Super Hero, and Suspense." So give it a look.
A couple more friends of mine come on my radio show ever couple weeks to present their perspective to the events of the day. Collectively, they call themselves Mojohaus, and their show is the MojoWire. It's entirely possible that you won't agree with them, but it's every bit as possible that you might enjoy what they do. Take a look at the site, and it'll give you an idea of what they get up to.
More to come, more to come...
This page updated March 10, 2008
Thank you.