A Journey of Seventeen Years, or Eight Months?

Reblogged from RoseCatherine.com

As I look back at the past year, I find myself asking 'how did I get here?'

I just sold my last copy of the first print run of Return to the Castle.  Just a few short months ago, my dining room table was covered in cases of books. I had a hefty little charge on my credit card and a looming feeling of dread.

I've been working on this strange endeavor since 1997.  Few people know I deliberately built my entire career around it, (which is a story for another day...).

Centernia, circa 1997, back when the story read like a Disney movie

In October 2011, after a series of serendipitous events, I decided to create a webcomic based on the story of Centernia.  I had wanted to release a novel, but after the stress of The Mathmagical Wish, another printed book seemed too daunting.

I was encouraged by my artist friend Jackie, who convinced me to join her selling art at conventions. I created a pile of art for established fandoms while quietly working on my own universe.  After over a year of prep work, I launched the webcomic in December of 2012, and ran a consistent weekly schedule until January of 2014. Angry and frustrated, no matter how much work I put in, the story was being told too slowly. By my calculations, it would take me seven years to tell the same story in Return to the Castle, and that was if I could produce a page a week.  So I quit the webcomic cold turkey, and promised my readers I would return soon.

What were the life circumstances?  I had been given a new job opportunity that came with a tiny pay boost.  That extra income became the budget for Centernia.

I refocused.  I threw away everything I had written (metaphorically....I still have every rejected piece of Centernia dating back to 1997).  For two weeks, I spent all my free time narrowing down the most comprehensive outline I had ever created.  I pared it down into two books, focusing on the life of Jessica, my main character, and her life from age 14 to 19.

I love me my spreadsheets

Once the story was outlined, I started writing.  From March through June, my free time belonged to Centernia.  There wasn't a lot of hours to spare, I was working 50 hour work weeks teaching, graphic designing, and planning a technology summer camp. 

People often ask me how I found the time to write. It's a combination of discipline, devotion, and a great deal of completely anti-social behavior.  My life consisted of no video games, limited television, and many sinks full of dirty dishes. I stopped baking, gardening, and only allowed myself the luxury of one weekly horseback ride. That last bit I wrote off as research.

I moved along at a happy pace until June when I got a surprising text from my friend Sonia.  She had a friend who had scored a booth at New York Comic Con, but they were looking to form a studio to split the booth costs.  She knew I had a webcomic and invited me to join their team.  After my struggles with the webcomic, I knew there was no way in hell I would have a good comic ready for a con four months away.  However, the first novel was nearing completion.  I decided to cease work on the second book and throw all work into editing the first.  I also began the process of hiring a professional editor. The Mathmagical Wish had taught me not to trust my own grammatical skills.

In late July, life threw me an emotional curveball. Muse, my brilliant feline charmer, was struck with renal failure caused by deadly FIP.  It sucks to watch a super loving creature waste away to nothing in the course of a month.  Muse became a chilling reminder that death is always on the horizon.  He was a two year old indoor cat, had the best health care, was only fed organic cat food in a household sworn off all toxic cleansers.  Statistically he should have lived until at least fourteen.  It wasn't fair, and my frustration and sadness poured into the last edits of Return to the Castle.  

Several weeks after we buried Muse, I attended my first fall con of the year, Roc-Con in my hometown of Rochester, NY.  Again, Jackie had a brilliant idea and told me to take pre-orders.   I practiced my sales pitch and honed my marketing materials.  To my surprise, 17 people ordered a copy.

Six heavy cases of books arrived a week later, covering my dining room table and filling my heart with dread. I was scared to look at a single copy for fear I would see a glaring mistake on the first page.

On October 7th, we packed up my little Jeep and hauled the books to the massive insanity of pop culture, comics, sci-fi and fantasy that is New York Comic Con.  I had a tiny two foot sliver of space in a room where I was competing with twenty foot dragon displays.  

Wednesday setup in the Javitts Center. The attendance of NYCC 2014 would be 156,000,
making it the largest con in all of North America.

I started selling on Thursday.  By Sunday, I received a message from a ravenous reader who had already finished the book, and loved it. That message, and several others that followed that day, were complete and total validation that I wasn't crazy.  

As a professional artist, people assume what I do is emotional.  It usually isn't.  Art school teaches you to separate yourself from your creations.  Centernia isn't like that for me.  It is the most emotionally invested work of art I have ever created. I printed my soul for the world to see and I was, (and still am), terrified of being called a fool.

In the following weeks, I started getting messages through different social networks, more messages than I thought possible, and more encouraging than I imagined. My friends can lie to me, but complete strangers have no obligation to be nice.  It is a ridiculous feeling of accomplishment to have someone spend hours of their life with something you created and be happy to have given their time. Even greater euphoria is to have that stranger tell you that you made them cry, and they still want to hear more of the story.

Halloween weekend, Youmacon, Detroit

Two weeks after NYCC, I brought Centernia to Youmacon in Detroit.  Again, Jackie was an instrumental force. I had never planned to attend this con, but she had a spare table and wanted a travel buddy. To my surprise, I sold every book I brought.  This past evening was my last con of the year, Minicon in Buffalo. I sold the last book of my first print run.  My house no longer is a book warehouse.

Now I sit, planning the road ahead.  I'm not arrogant to think the first edition of Return to the Castle was perfect. A few technical errors snuck through and I have a second edition nearly ready for print. Simultaneously, the sequel, though completely outlined, needs to be finished.  There are people asking me about cosplaying and I realize I don't a complete set of fully-detailed character designs.

Tonight, however, I'm not drawing, nor working through new dialog, or editing old text.  Tonight I'm just thinking about this little journey, whether you want to look at it as seventeen years or eight months. I'm really happy to have the opportunity to share Centernia with the world, I'm looking forward to hearing what else readers have to say.  I'm really, really exhausted but I feel like my career is starting to look as I had imagined when I was twelve years old.