I completely finished the first page of the story on Sunday -- all its renders, the layout, all its dialogue. (The story is not really truly begun until the first page is done and I have positioned the title at the bottom of the page.)

I did no story work whatsoever on Monday. No renders, no layout.

I was worried I wasn't going to get any done today, either, but I finally got it together about nine-thirty tonight and I might manage four or five renders.

I might be having a little trouble focusing on the renders for this issue because I know it's going to have some scenes that are an enormous pain in the ass to do, and I don't want to do them. In general the renders are not really the fun part. The fun part's mostly in the plotting and writing; the pictures are what I do to get people to read the damned things, since it's so hard to get people to read words.

(And, let's be fair: working visually gives me the ability to do things I might find very difficult to convey in prose, which is one of several reasons why there will never be a "novelization" of Sleeper Squad, the way I plan to with Coldpoint and eventually Quitclaim. I'm just not sure I'm a good enough writer to verbally convey the sensation of a woman walking around turning people into giant bananas, for example.)

Anyway, I have a month, so I'm trying to shake the sensation that by not having more than one page in the can yet, I'm already behind schedule.