Hello, finny friends! The merfolk, Sami, and I have been exploring the deeps of a new kind of ocean: the Sea of Improved Eyesight. I won’t go into the details here; if you’re curious, you can read a couple of my blog posts here and here about it. Suffice it to say, hard on the heels of recovering from the month of bronchitis (and missing several conventions), I had cataract surgery/corrective implant in one eye, a month of very wonky eyesight, and finally the second one a couple of weeks ago.

I’m now learning how to draw again, with the aid of drugstore reading glasses; it will be six weeks before I can get prescription ones to truly even up my eyes. (I feel like I’ve passed another official milestone into senior-hood — got the discounts, got the cane, got the reading glasses, sheesh!).

I do have a small stack of Mermaid Music pages in pencil stage lolling about the studio, but as I’m trying to catch up with deadlines for two book projects (one of them another sea book!) right now, they are languishing in the queue. At this point, I’m projecting mid-to-late September to get the story going again. I find myself just wishing I were writing a novel — each page takes so long!

Mermaid Music pages, stuck in the plankton stage! 

The Zooly Art Challenge (rhymes with July) has been helpful in keeping me at the drawing board; I’ve had to resort to big loose paintings, not at all like my comics with the nice inked outlines and all. You can see the development in the posts I’ve been doing here, here, here, and here. If you’d like to get involved, we’ve decided to keep going beyond the month of July, and form a Facebook group with weekly instead of daily challenges. You’ll be able to find that through the main Zooly Facebook page for information on how to join. There are people of all levels there, from beginners to pros, so it will be a great place to hang out, wherever you’re at in your creative practice.

So thanks for being patient with my fits and starts — Mermaid Music will return after the summer. *cue music* See you… in September!

PS: I know a lot of you are receiving this by email, but if you’d like to get a heads-up on all the things I’m doing, and some cool digital goodies, I now have an email newsletter you can subscribe to:

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