What Have I Done?

I must be insane. I just submitted a picture book to an ageny that represents children's book authors. I am certain they will reject it, but I hit the send button anyway.

It should go without saying that the story doesn't have a transgender theme, but I'll say it just to be clear. IT DOESN'T HAVE A TRANSGENDER THEME.

Am I Getting Fired?

This blog is the closest thing I have to a secret diary. In that spirit, I need to confess that I am scared shitless that I will be fired from my job.

Recently, I got a voicemail from my sister asking me to contact a creditor of mine who has been harrasing her. She told them how to contact me, but they refused, insisting that harrasing her has been the only way they have been able to get me to contact them. I called them immediately from the break room at work. I was loud. I was angry. I swore. I even threatened bodily harm when the supervisor I spoke with got me upset. Getting nowhere with him, I hung up and finished my shift.

Later that night, I went home, called them back and managed to straighten things out with a manager that was both kind and very helpful. She made sure that I would be the only person contacted about my debt.

I thought that was the end of it. Instead, apparently there is a rumor at work about my being hard pressed for money. I have creditors hounding me for payment. I'm on the brink of financial ruin. All untrue, but that's the rumor. This rumor went from coworker to coworker's family to my father, then back to me. I had to do a lot of sharing to do to smooth things over with my parents.

Now I'm gripped by the fear that someone complained to Human Resources about my wrath and swearing, which will lead to my getting fired. Why? Because apparently, employees should never, ever, ever have to tolerate a "hostile" work environment. You simply can't show real, human emotion while at work without getting in trouble. If you let the facade crack, and someone complains, your job is at risk.

Irrational fear? Time will tell.

That Crazy Space

The whole self-publishing of ABS through Lulu is going smashingly ... as in I want to smash my computer to bits! (Extra points if you get the geek pun in that statement.)

Here's the glitch. Lulu is converting my Word documents as part of the publication process, so that part is fine. The problem is that the source document added a space at the top of each page at the beginning of the first line. This happened when I added page numbers, and can be easily fixed by removing the page numbers. Now, I am using an older version of Word (97, to be exact), but this is a real pain. Page numbers are kind of important.

So at some point this week, I will be downloading OpenOffice. Let's hope that lets me fix these annoying formatting issues so that I can focus on doing a final round of editing and purchase a proof copy!

Midnight Oil

Not last night but the night before, Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers .... ha ha. No. What I was really going to say was that I got home from Oswego Harborfest at one in the morning and ended up writing until 4:30AM. I was very, very tired after that.

On an upside, ABS - the acronym I'm using in place of my current project's title - is done. More precisely, the added chapter / section I wanted to write to flesh it out is done. I think the new section makes the ending seem less abrupt.

Now to decide what to do with it. Reluctant Press? TG Comics? Self-publish? I can't decide.

As much as I would like to support RP, they seem to be doing well without my help. Femur has big plans for TG Comics and I would like to support that. On the other hand, a straight story doesn't really fit in at TG Comics. As for self-publishing, I worry that I won't do well at all. I suppose the only way to find out for sure will be to try.

Dumb Move

Little background history on me: I was once fired from an IBM for "downloading pornography." What I was actually doing was using the internet to find images for people's wallpaper on their computer desktop. Apparently cute pictures of kittens, celebrities of both sexes and yes, a few women in bikinis (**gasp**) count as pornography at IBM.

Of course, the guy that actually did download pornography wasn't me. The same manager that fired me had previously asked me to discretely delete all the porn from the other guy's computer after he quit. Yes, he quit, and that wasn't his spin. They knew he downloaded porn, but didn't fire him for it. He quit to move to a better job.

So what have I been doing at my new job lately? I can't tell you, because I don't want there to be a public record of it, but let's just say that Google documents are far too easy to access from anywhere to not use.

Cruel, Cruel Irony

I was just doing a Google search to try and find an illustrator that would work with a TG theme. As a number of artists at TG Comics work on commission, the search I used was "TG comics illustrator hire."

The only relevant result was this blog!

I have, by the way, found someone that will work with me. His name is Ethan Young. At some point when my financial situation isn't quite so dire, I would like to work with him. Until then, the search goes on for an affordable illustration alternative.

No One Loves Me

*SIGH*

Not even a single comment here after putting up the morphs. Ah, well. I'm not in it for the glory, that's for sure.

I've got to go work on final revisions for A.B.S., or whatever title I end up going with. I promised Femur that it would be ready by 6/1/09. After that, it will be out of my hands. I havn't seen anything from CBlack yet, so I'm not sure if that leg of the tripod is ready to go. Judging by the "Road Trip" comic that just got put up, I'm guessing that my project is not at the top of his list.

Like I said before, time to go write now.