New Artwork Prints Coming Soon

So, this last half-year has been something of a whirlwind. As some of my close friends and relatives already know, my wife and I left texas for the Pacific Northwest. The main reason we moved was that the Texas summers, those humid beasts that suck the live out of your chest every time you walk out the door, was killing me - that, and the fact that we've always wanted to live in the mountains. Yeah, mountains...that's the main reason for sure.

It's amazing how different the climate can be without the high humidity. We arrived in the Western-Idaho, Eastern-Washington area in the middle of December and were wearing jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt and nothing else...it's just a different cold than what occurs in Texas. In Texas, like the scolding summer days, the winter's humidity has a biting effect on the skin. It doesn't matter how much clothing you wear; it seems to just crawl inside your clothing and gnaw at you like ants. It's completely different in the Pacific North-West.

Enough about the weather...lets talk about what I've been doing in the last six months. I'm still writing, but it's a slow process. I have three full-length novels in various stages of completion and a novella that's about half-way complete. I need to just stick with one book, finish it, then move on to the next, but I can't seem to make myself do that. I get an idea that fits one book, move to it, then a week later, think about something for one of the other books and have to switch gears all over again. I need to force myself to stop doing it this way because it's anything but productive, and I have a feeling the rewriting/editing process is going to be bogged down because of it too because I've allowed myself to get out of the groove.

One groove I haven't gotten out of is with my art. As you can see by the pictures scattered throughout this blog post, I've been super-busy. From pencil, pen and ink, marker, colored pencil, and oil paint, I've been bouncing from one medium to the next and unlike my writing, I've been completing art at a pretty quick pace. The only thing I haven't done yet is take these to a print shop and have prints made. So, as of this writing, only the originals are available to purchase but if you would rather have an original work of art than a professional reproduction, give me a shout and I can give you pricing details. Otherwise, I plan on getting these to the print shop within the next month. Once I have prints in hand, I'll throw them up in the shop and let you know when they are available.

If you have an idea or photograph that you would like to have memorialized in a painting or drawing, let me know...I'd love the opportunity to work with you on a piece of custom artwork that will bring joy for years to come.

Finally, with our move to the Pacific North-West, I've rediscovered the thrift store! And unlike where we lived in Texas, you can find thrift stores on almost every street. With this discovery, I've not only gotten back into collecting comics and sports cards, but I've found an exciting new business venture in finding vintage, out-of-print, and collectible books and selling them on eBay. I never knew there was such value in an out-of-print movie-tie-in novelization from the 80s. Take the horror movies Halloween and Friday the 13th...the novelizations of these movies are going for upward of $100+ on eBay! I don't know what it is about the horror genre, but these books are selling like gang-busters on eBay and it's a quick and easy way to make a little cash on the side...especially when you can find a book for $1 in a thrift store and turn around and sell it on eBay for $25.

That's it for today. I know I've said this before, but my goal - now that we've really gotten settled in to our new environment - is to post on my blog at least once a week. So, until next weekend my fellow readers, take care, and stay cool in this heat.

C.J.T.