Monday, January 11, 2010

My Little Short Story, "The Shed"

I'm a little behind in posting this, but during last October's APE (Alternative Press Expo), a short story of mine was published in a comic anthology, SIREN. I collaborated with an illustrator and good friend of mine, Bret Hobbs.

Years ago during one of my productive writing periods, I wrote a short story about a young boy who became friends with a shed. Yes, that simple. It was always a story I wanted to return to and luckily for me Bret was in need of such a story. I revised it, handed it over to Bret and only yesterday did I finally see the finished and published product!


The book is beautiful, and I feel so lucky to have "The Shed" in the same book alongside the illustrations of really talented artists:



"The Shed" takes place in the small town of Los Arbolitos where a young boy named Tano leaves from school each day to visit a shed. He becomes friends with the shed in the sense that it's a place where his green toy army men can march into battle and rest when wounded, and where he can spend his evenings being the General before he hears the yells of his mother calling for his return. Sadly, the story ends with the collapse of the shed and the isolated death of Tano.

Here are just a few pages from "The Shed" that Bret and I collaborated on. If you want to see the rest and read the story, buy the book!

(Click images to enlarge)



The theme of each comic or short story had to deal with being lured and caught in a different way. "The Shed" was perfect for this theme as there was a definite example of little Tano being lured into going inside a shed that stood like "a viejo, waiting for the desert to collapse him down to his knees".

Again, the book is awesome and recommend anyone that's into comics and great illustration to grab a copy of SIREN. It's available through the website here.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Calaveras, Hearts, and Vinyl

This Christmas we were a bit tight on money so it was time to get creative. My fiancè, Andres decided to do a large 4' x 6' vinyl installation in his nieces' bedroom (He's kind of a vinyl guru). She recently turned 10 so I did my best to help him figure out what kind of design I would have liked to have if I were a 10 year old girl. He didn't want something too girly and with an edge. He hand drew the design, scanned it, vectorized it, then took it to the vinyl plotting machine to get cut. Once that was done he hand picked the vinyl, taped it up and that's what you see here:

Next came the application of the piece which became a little tricky because of the glossy paint on the walls. So I helped.
The final piece was applied:

And then the final product came out so awesome that we quickly turned it into a photo booth opportunity! Andres and the new recipient of a one of a kind design: