Anyway, the gears of my brain and time and space and the vastness of the interwebbings are working in tandem for the first time in a while.  What’s that, you say?  Well, I’ve been busy at work on this here graphic novel for the better part of three months.  Reading, researching, crying, writing, crying some more, outright weeping, and now, success.  Problem is, I can’t tell you about it yet.  It’s a secret.  For at last the next month.  Then I’ll tell you all about it.  And you’ll all be happy in your little happy hats.

With that said, I can offer up the following information: the book hasn’t been halted, it’s been transformed, in a manner of speaking.  Also, there has been a vast change in the production, people translating and lettering it.  It went from a book I was concerned would never be penciled, inked, colored, and birthed into something that, at this very moment, looks incredibly pretty.  Oh.  So. Pretty.

So yeah, more will be disseminated in the coming weeks and month.  Maybe little pearls of awesome will find their way onto this very page.  Who knows?  I don’t…probably.

Bye!

I am, however, David Faroz Precht.  And, while I am half-German, I am not this gentleman.

That’s not to say I’m not impressed with Richard’s status.  Today, for the first time, I decided to look him up on wikipedia and read some lovely things about how he’s written two novels and three pieces of non-fiction and even the incredible fact that we were in the same city when he did his fellowship at the Chicago Tribune.

It’s simply that I wanted to clarify my presence here on the internets.  Also, because nearly two years ago I received an email from a great admirer of Richard Precht’s.  After Lindsay decoded the German it was in, I found that the letter was a heart-felt thank you to Richard for writing a book, the title of which we couldn’t figure out.  He talked about his childhood and how reading Richard’s book reminded him of his former life.  The problem was that Lindsay and I were reading it and not Richard David Precht.

There’s no doubt that after I responded, explaining that while I appreciated the letter I was not him, he might have been so timid as to blush or, as so many German’s do, bury his shameful feeling (it’s not shameful) inside.

So, again, I am not Richard David Precht but David Faroz Precht.  I’ve decided to use my middle name for this very reason, to differentiate us.  To make sure this sort of event doesn’t happen again because while I appreciated the email, I felt odd knowing that such confusion were possible.  Also, since I’m also a writer, this sort of thing will undoubtedly happen again.  So why not provide some kind of fail safe?

The next posts will deal with the writing of a graphic novel…I promise… (Since we moved to Seoul, I’ve used emoticons much more…Koreans love emotions)

This derailment doesn’t mean I won’t be writing about the book I’ve been working on or the process, it just means that I’ll be focusing on getting healthy – I’m on the road – before dedicating myself.  It’s not what I wanted, but what ever is?

With all that said, I just want to tell whomever it is that reads this blog that I’m doing better and should be blogging consistently this week; also, writing a script for a book.  That’s it for now.  Night eastern hemisphere!

We’re in the Denver area, hanging out, attempting to not count our chickens before they’ve hatched, and look for work.  As it stands we haven’t found much on this continent aside from one offer for Lindsay that she’s not keen on but will probably take on the short term.  This has forced us to think “outside the box” and really “utilize other corporate speak” to “maximize our creativity” or something.  I don’t know.

On the writing front, now that I have time, I’ll be focusing more on some comic book projects.  My goal is to have at least a single-shot book done by the time we leave here, perhaps a week or two, and ready to send to an artist.  At least then I’ll feel as though I’ve done something creative.

On that same front, however, I finished up a spec script for “The Office” and am attempting to shop it around.  Problem is, I’ve never written a spec before and probably got a lot wrong.  Like, a lot.  Based on the response so far, it’s not bad but needs quite a bit of work; which is great.  I’m all about feedback.  And while comments from family and friends have been great, it helps to get some from people in the business or who might be more critical then those  with a vested interest in saying such glowingly wonderful things.  So, maybe I’ll work on another spec, an hour-long drama of my own devices or something already on air, and see what I can do with that.  It’ll be a back burner thing, so I don’t expect anything, if ever, to happen from it in the near future (this year).

Going in a direction that I haven’t gone in a while, SoulPancake.com has announced that they’ve signed a book deal and will be putting out their first tomb next fall.  Check out this Entertainment Weekly article for more information on the book to be written by Devon, Golriz, and Shabnam’s incredible minds; their fingers will remain attentive to the SoulPancake site.

With all those updates made, I wish to end this transmission with an awesome image Lindsay found earlier today.
There’s a lot of octopus art out there, including Henry Warren’s beautiful work on the header, but few are as epic as that black and white wall print.  Take care, y’all!

As it stands, my soon-to-be wife and I fly to L.A. for a week of “relaxation” and “fun in the sun”. Or, as I like to call it, not missing a beat. We’ll be looking for apartments in the Pasadena area, checking out the senior student shows at Art Center and Otis, and convincing Hollywood’s peoples that I am not the bad kind of fool. It’ll be a difficult time for a new couple, yes, but its something that needs to happen. We’re ready to move on. To start that next chapter in life. And this reporter thinks its about @%^#ing time.

After all that rambling, I’m off. To get married. To a wonderful lady. And then we’ll move. To California. If you don’t wish us luck my agents will find you.

Take care, folks!

Yeah, disappeared. When the media and his staff asked his wife if they had seen him, she told them that “he was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids.” All right. Fair enough. Why didn’t he (the governor) or she (his wife) alert his staff to this when he made this decision to bound through the Appalachian Mountains?

So, then the police find the governor’s car, abandoned in an airport parking lot and the insanity gets more insanitier. Check out the timeline here to ensure your head gets thoroughly exploded.

Then, he issues a press conference to tell us “I’ve been unfaithful to my wife…with a dear, dear friend from Argentina.” …yeah. He explains how they met at the bottom of the above linked page.

Be sure to watch these videos as well. He’s like a confused puppy. A confused, stupid puppy that was having an affair with a woman in Argentina and doesn’t know what a segue is.

Honestly, the best part is watching the faces of the people behind him during his press release.

Obviously, twitter has been incredible. I’m following some tapped in folks, all relaying information the second they receive it; I’ll usually retweet was fascinates me.
Aside from using the twitter hash-tag search, twazzup does a fantastic job of aggregating all the pertinent tweets, minute-by-minute.
Another great aggregated source is The Lede from the New York Times. They’ve updating their feed every few minutes with comments, quotes, and information. An excerpt:

As we noted on The Lede last week, a source in Tehran told us that of 20 people surveyed at a large opposition rally in south Tehran last Thursday, not one of them said they had heard about it through Twitter. For all the discussion by bloggers and journalists outside Iran of the way the micro-blogging service has helped to inform the rest of the world about opposition protests over the past two weeks, the tool seems to have been less important inside Iran, where many people have heard about rallies through text messaging on cellphones or simple word of mouth.

Still, since so many bloggers and journalists have been glued to Twitter feeds that appear to be coming from inside Iran, it is interesting to read this analysis by a company called Sysomos, which concluded that, of Iran’s 65 million citizens, “there are now 19,235 Twitter users in Iran, compared with 8,654 in mid-May.”

If you’re looking for some interesting reads from various sites, I’ve been adding links to my del.icio.us stream (found on the bottom right of this page), so watch that as well.

The New York Times and CNN are reporting that Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been approached about the vacant Surgeon General position by President Elect Obama’s Transition Team.  Why does this matter?  There are two reasons: the position of Surgeon General, as well as the Secretary of Agriculture, has been mostly overlooked over the last nearly 10 years, and the man is Indian.

Care of CNN.com

First things first, the Surgeon General’s position has been largely ignored by the public and, more importantly, the media for as long as I can remember.  Not since C. Evertt Koop took a stance on cigarettes and the tobacco industry has there been a face the public can latch onto, and the reason that happened was because of his staunch belief that tobacco products were, in fact, killing people.  Now, with the possibility of Dr. Gupta, you have someone who has made it his life’s work to seriously address issues of health across the board.  Several times he’s reported on the escalating cases of both type-1 and -2 diabetes among young people and the continued growth of odd or long thought dead diseases.  Not to mention his obvious charisma and celebrity as a CNN journalist and writer for Time Magazine.  In Dr. Gupta we would have someone the public is familiar with, trusts, and might be able to focus the voters to push their state’s representatives to look into the health concerns that have been gallingly staring us in the face.

Second, and this is the big deal, the man is Indian.  INDIAN!  We would not only have a black man whom everyone recognizes and respects, but an Indian man of similar caliber.  This would be a quite a step in the right direction.  In fact, if this happens, President Obama would have the most diverse cabinet in Washington’s history.  That’s something to be proud of.  Not only for him, but for us, the voting public.  Look what we did!  We made progress.  Thank God we’re finally ready for this to happen.

So, I started outlining this short comic about, well…it became about terrorism and extremists, and I started getting scared at the prospect of writing a story about such things. The thought that I could write something that could invite the further persecution of Muslims, the fear that any extremists could use what I wrote to hurt my family, and, most importantly, how such rhetoric and fictionalized story telling that could, negatively or positively reflect on my own religion and beliefs. After all, no matter how arrogant it may sound, a lot of people don’t know much, if anything, about the Baha’i Faith and my exposure could very well shape their first impressions.

Again, I’m left pondering and weighing my options. Thinking about how this one piece could both break me into the business and solidify my belief that we should, as writers, examine and discuss the current environment. Emblazon the news and educate as best we can. Because, really, comic books continue to be a form believed to be – and while this has changed a bit by the vast and far-reaching comic book movies, the general thought remains – based almost entirely in the fictional telling of boyhood longing to belong or fulfill some misplaced and long-dying male stereotype, and we can change that. I want to change that. I’m just a little wary about the consequences.

P.S. – Please excuse the spelling and grammatical errors above. I wrote this entirely on my iPhone, and the screen and keyboard is limiting.