Working on this leg of Diamond Eyes has been really fun.  Each night I sit at my table for at least an hour, sometimes more, and if my teeth sinks in deep into the drawing session, jaws like a pit-bull,  I sit for several hours. I love the long sessions, several vinyl records played (Tangerine Dream, Swans, Keith Jarrett, Prince, Loscil) in the back ground as I plant myself on my stool and sketch, but these sessions don’t come as often lately. Sometimes I worry if it’s because I’m losing interest in the project, but usually it seems to come down to knowing that it will get done, so there is no need to pound away at it. It’s a nice feeling, trusting myself.


So the next chapter, which I’m sure will be titled, Goddess of the Sister Worlds is cooking up, many of the initial sequences plotted out this past winter as I recovered from an abysmal round of cancer related surgeries (more on that later).  Looking on the bright side of a literal pain in the neck, during my time off, I penciled out the next series of movements related to the Goddesses of the Diamond Eyes universe.

Goddess Ashuta and Paen of Eastern Genia, pencil and some inking

Any how, yes It’s nice to trust myself a little more and to not grip the wheel, white knuckled and super possessive of it. During periods of time off, recovery periods and now from the pandemic, I have enjoyed the given space to learn to let go more, to allow for other avenues of expression to come forward.

I plan to enjoy more than just the visual comic-book-thing that the Nadthsade Dragon is, the long play the novels are, and all the tortured phrases I jam into dialog and narration balloons of comic pages. What could I write in… well… a post?! Yikes. I have to breath and let the blood drain from my face with the thought. Well Let’s see. Yeah, I’ve been a bad… ‘blogger’ really.

I white knuckle my drawing table during the months of March through October, not only because I love to draw and feel reunited with the long lost love that she is, but because I am also social media averse. Consequently, I miss the opportunity (or avoid it) to write  posts. I’ve been wanting to write some for awhile. So here we go, three years later i might be able to wear another hat for this project.

Santosha Ma once said to me, “What you don’t express in (your comic) can always be expressed in other ways.”

Through Santosha  Ma, I get a better sense that the medium is not so much the point, but in reality it is me– standing where I’m at — doing everything I can to express my deeper truth.  The story can seem long winded, broken, cracked, and incomplete, but I’m discovering that the true depth of Self, the richest timbres of heart, is what really matters, cutting across all story lines,  beginnings, endings, and blending with all mediums– The Great One Land.

Pencil sketches for Goddess Ashuta.

So there! I’ve scrolled back, and it seems I’ve braved a few paragraphs that don’t have me hiding behind the medium of plot and characters. It’s just me, Neil, saying hello.

Until next month!?