The Frog Bag: Looking Back and Looking Ahead

One of my favorite images from Betrayal of the Planet of the Apes

Yeah, I missed doing the whole New Year's wrap-up blog post thing. But this week marks my birthday. That's kind of like a personal New Year, right? I'm going with "yes" and so, without further ado, here's what's going on with me, past and future.

2011 resulted in some big transitions. The largest happened when I left my position as a zoo keeper. I loved my job, the people I worked with and, most of all, the animals I cared for. But the commute was becoming horrific and left me with little time to write. So I took the plunge last spring and became a fulltime freelancer. It's scary to work "without a net", but rewarding too. Since last February I've had a number of prose short stories published (check out the links on the right if you'd like to read any), done several non-fiction articles, and had my sci-fi story "Oceans of Darkness" reprinted in the Zahir Anthology 2011.

And then there were comics! I was thrilled to have a backup short in Fear Itself: the Homefront #2, with art by Lelio Bonaccorso, appear soon after I left my day job. Over the summer I had two shorts published by Double Feature: The Liar, written with my husband and partner Gabriel Hardman (who also did the art), and The Carpetbaggers, with wonderful spooky art by Kyle Latino.

My favorite project of the year was beyond a doubt Betrayal of the Planet of the Apes, the four issue Planet of the Apes miniseries Gabriel and I did for BOOM! Comics. We loved every minute of writing it and Gabriel really outdid himself on the art. We were lucky enough to get Jordie Bellaire to handle the colors too, a real coup in my opinion. The fourth issue just arrived in shops last week, but if you missed it there's going to be a trade paperback collection in July. In fact, you can already pre-order it on Amazon of from your favorite comic shop.

Big Sur!

We also attended what felt like a ton of cons (Emerald City, Heroes, NYCC, and Comicon, among others) and even slipped in a tiny 3 day vacation to Big Sur where I finally saw a condor in the wild. Sadly, we also lost our beloved cat Fredo in October. He finally succumbed to cancer, but not before living five years longer than anyone had dared hope.

And what of the future? Gabriel and I are writing a followup miniseries to Betrayal called Exile on the Planet of the Apes. The talented Marc Laming is handling the art this time around, with Jordie back on colors. The first issue ships in March and I promise there will be plenty of apes riding horses, apes arguing politics, and general ape intrigue. You can hear us talk all about it here. I'l also have a story appearing in Outlaw Territory Volume 3 later this year, as well as a short about hyacinth macaws coming soon from Bizarre New World. Not to mention the sorta secret new sci-fi OGN that Gabriel and I are hard at work on!

As to cons, we are planning on attending Emerald City again, C2E2 for the first time, Baltimore, Vancouver, and NYCC. Whew! To top it all off, we also have a new fuzzy black kitten named Vera, who was rescued from a parking lot. You can read her story here if you'd like. So that's the news. Never a dull moment when you're working freelance, apparently.