BOOK EVENTS AHOY!

I wanted to announce three upcoming book talks and signings for the release of the Mom's Cancer: Anniversary Edition so you can put them on your calendars. Heck, why not attend all three? (Nobody but me should do that.)

March 15 at 2 p.m. I will be at Book Passage in the San Francisco Ferry Building. That's next Sunday already! Book Passage is one of the great West Coast independent bookstores that big-time authors make sure to hit when they're in the Bay Area, and they've always been good to me. 

April 9 at 7 p.m. I will be at the Copperfield's Books store in Montgomery Village, Santa Rosa, Calif. Copperfield's is another great indie chain whose support has meant a lot over the years. They're a real champion of local authors, with terrific managers and staff. 

May 16 at 2 p.m. I will be at the Charles M. Schulz Museum, also in Santa Rosa, Calif. I've attended and participated in so many events at the Schulz Museum that it feels like my home away from home, and the ones they held after the 2017 wildfires are personal and professional highlights for me. 

The last two events are not yet on their respective hosts' event calendars, but trust me: I'm booked.

I have other podcasts and interviews in the hopper, which I'll be sure to announce as they emerge. I have no real book tour planned. Those are a lot harder to come by these days. However, if any bookstore within the sound of my electrons is interested in hosting a talk and signing, please let me know!

Career Fair Day

I just spent four hours at a local high school's Career Fair with my pal, cartoonist Lex Fajardo, who is the creator of the Kid Beowulf comics series and editor at the Schulz Studio. Here's why I think that was a good use of my time:

1. Talking shop with Lex. 

2. Offering an alternative. We were surrounded by cops, firefighters, soldiers, engineers, grocery store managers, and many other career choices that there is nothing wrong with except they aren't cartoonists. We had several students and even a couple of teachers who thanked us just for being so different.

3. Approximately 37 out of 38 students couldn't have cared less that we were there, but that one out of 38 lit up like a sun. I would move mountains for the 38th kid.

4. Related: Lex and I agreed that if two people like us has been at OUR high school career fairs, we would have rooted to the spot and absorbed all we could. When I was a kid, I met people who did things I dreamed of doing, and realized that it wasn't magic; they just worked hard and did the things. If they could, then I could. Now I get to be one of those people for someone else. 

5. Free cookies.

That's a good afternoon. 

Review: Near Mint Condition

Here's an extraordinary take on the new edition by a YouTuber who reviews comics under the banner "Near Mint Condition" (I know his name but am not sure he wants it public). 

In more than 20 years of having my work scrutinized, I don't know if I've received a review this detailed, thoughtful, and compassionate. The reviewer read the story closely and brought his own life experience to it. That connection is what writing and reading is all about.

Thanks to my friend Chris Sparks for bringing it to my attention. If you have 13 minutes and are interested, I think it's worth a look! 

A Book Launch Q&A

Timed nicely with yesterday's launch of my new anniversary edition of Mom's Cancer, here's an interview with the Substack pub Autobiographix. This was a Q&A I did a few weeks ago with Amaris Ketcham, who I thought asked some good questions on topics I don't usually get asked about, such as my origin story and stylistic development. For being relatively brief, it goes pretty deep!

Thanks to Amaris and Autobiographix! It's a nice way to mark the occasion of putting a new (or at least updated) book into the world. 

250 Words on Paths

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Countless stories explore the idea of paths not taken, and how different some other direction might have been. Life can turn on a single choice, particularly when it eliminates other choices. You can’t help but wonder.

Existence only seems like an inevitable chain of events leading to Now in retrospect. At the time, it’s chaos. I can recall many seemingly trivial moments that changed the course of my life in ways I didn’t understand until much later.

Once, when I was a newspaper reporter, my editor bellowed across the newsroom asking if anyone wanted to take a weekend junket to cover an electric utility launching a high-tech energy storage project. Nobody else spoke up so I volunteered, and wrote a full-page feature on it. No big deal. Many years later, I applied for work as a science writer, and that article was the only thing I’d published that was relevant to the job. That began a new career for me, which led to freelance writing, which led to full-time cartooning. 

If I hadn’t been in the newsroom just then, or if someone else had spoken first, or if I’d made other plans for that weekend, I might have had an entirely different life. 

It’s natural to speculate on where that untraveled path would have led. I wish I’d handled some choices differently. But the way I see it, I can’t regret anything before my daughters were born, because every decision led to them and any different path would not have. 

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T-Minus One Week and Counting

Friends, very rarely do I post for naked promotional purposes, but my new/old book--the 20th Anniversary Edition of Mom's Cancer--is being released in exactly one week, on March 3. If you have any interest in owning this update of my first graphic novel, now with 32 more pages of content including 22 pages of new art, this would be an excellent time to order it.

As always, I encourage everyone to support their local heroic independent bookseller. Failing that, it's also available from the usual multinational corporations, and I won't think less of you. Make sure you get the new one with the pink spine. 

By way of encouragement, I'll repeat my offer of mailing a free signed bookplate to anyone who asks. Just send me your postal address (brianfiesATgmailDOTcom should do it), tell me how/if you want it inscribed, and I'll pop it in the mail. Honestly, I haven't yet received the bookplates from my printer, but I will soon and they'll look like this. Meanwhile, I've started a list.

I have some book signings and podcast appearances coming up, and will be sure to mention them as they get closer. 

Many thanks!

250 Words on Squaring the Circle

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

“Squaring the circle” is a geometry problem so infamous that it became a metaphor for an unachievable task. The challenge: construct a square with the same area as a given circle using only a compass and straight edge. It’s impossible because the area of a circle is a multiple of π (3.14159265…), a number with an endless stream of digits that can’t be translated into a square with those tools.

Nevertheless, centuries of crackpots have tried to square the circle. Including me.

A similar problem is trisecting an angle: it has been proven impossible to divide an arbitrary angle into three equal parts using a compass and straight edge. 

I can’t tell you how much time and paper I wasted trying to trisect an angle until I satisfied myself that it was at least impossible for me. 

Perpetual motion is the ultimate futile challenge. No device, no matter how you arrange its weights, pulleys, magnets or gears, can run forever without putting energy into it. Friction and other thermodynamic waste grind every machine down until it stops. No system is 100 percent efficient.

I know that. I believe that.

And yet the number of times I’ve thought, “But what if . . .”

For as long as I can remember, whenever someone told me something was impossible, I set out to prove them wrong, or at least prove to myself they were right. At worst, it provides light mental exercise. At best, there’s a Nobel Prize in it for me.   

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Robert Duvall

I've seen many fine and touching testimonials to the late actor Robert Duvall, with mentions of his great performances in "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now," "The Great Santini," and more. But very few have mentioned this, my favorite scene of his ever, from the movie "Secondhand Lions." 

If you haven't seen it, it's a good movie with a great cast, and even a bit of artwork by "Bloom County" cartoonist Berke Breathed. Recommended.

When I began my "Last Mechanical Monster" webcomic back in, oh, 2012 or 2013, I thought of two actors whom I'd love to portray my old mad scientist, Sparky, if anyone ever wanted to make a live-action movie of it. First was Christopher Plummer. Second was Robert Duvall. Both are gone now, and since nobody's clamoring to make that movie I guess I lost my chance. 

Sparky in action. See if you can imagine Duvall in the role.

250 Words on Stuff that Isn't for You

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

One of the milestones of maturity is realizing that not everything is made or meant for you. 

Other people can love music, literature, entertainment, food, or sports that you find inexplicable, confusing, repulsive, inane. It’s fine! Believing that is a big step in accepting you’re not the center of the universe. 

Too many argue the opposite: “I hate it, it’s bad, and anyone who likes it is stupid.” How small-minded. 

Take Taylor Swift.*

Early in her career, I was dismissive. Lightweight pop. But as her career grew, so did my appreciation for her work and work ethic.

Swift’s songs weren’t made for middle-aged men like me, and I wasn’t living the lives of kids to whom her lyrics spoke. She was an artist for them, not me, and while I’ve come to like some of her songs, I could never love her like they do.

She also seems like a decent person, a refutation of the axiom that there are no ethical billionaires. Millions pay money to hear her sing. I see no crime. 

I try not to judge any art as “good” or “bad.” De gustibus non est disputandum. I prefer Roger Ebert’s standard: Does the work achieve its intended purpose? If so, it’s a success. The strongest criticism I’ll level publicly is, “It’s not for me.”

Of course, the corollary of “Not all art is meant for you” is “Your art isn’t meant for everybody.” Accept some audience indifference and trust that the right people will find you.

*Or Bad Bunny.

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Lost and Found on the USS Hornet

Here's a neat TV news story from my daughter Laura's aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum: a museum volunteer poking around some compartments of the ship that have been locked up since the Hornet was decommissioned in 1970 found a sailor's old high school class ring. The ring provided enough clues to identify the sailor and locate his family! 

Aside from the heartwarming story, I love the idea that there are still deep recesses of the ship that have yet to be fully explored. An aircraft carrier, even an old one like the Hornet, really is like a small city at sea.

250 Words on Thunder and Lightning

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Thunderstorms are my favorite meteorological phenomenon. The flash, the boom, the gut-thrumming rumble. The familiar world is transformed into something alien and frightening. You are small and nature is immense, but indoors you’re reasonably safe and can enjoy the show. 

Thunderstorms are rare where I live now, in northern California not far from the Pacific. We don’t have the violently colliding air masses and geography to create them. But I grew up in South Dakota, where the smell of ozone in the wind was a herald announcing their imminent arrival. You could see the front advancing toward you, black clouds gathering over the horizon, lit from within by arcing sparks. 

Ball lightning is an unusual phenomenon that scientists aren’t even sure is real, but my grandparents always swore they saw a cloud of sparkling light float down their chimney and dance around the living room before evanescing into the air. I’d pay good money to witness that.

Probably the most awe-inspiring natural phenomenon I ever saw happened one night I was flying out of Dallas during a thunderstorm. Our plane broke through a deck of clouds to find another deck above us, with rain filling the gap between them. Every few seconds, lightning flashed between the decks, illuminating distant funnel clouds connecting the layers above and below us, like pillars in a vast and empty warehouse. 

We quickly broke through the top deck into clear skies, but I’ll never forget that vision of Hell or Heaven, I wasn’t sure which.

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Viva Bad Bunny!

Bad Bunny with Lady Gaga

So I guess I'm a Bad Bunny fan now.

I'm not compelled to speak out on all the passing controversies of the day, but I had some thoughts on Mr. Bunny's Super Bowl performance I haven't seen anyone else express.

First, no, I don't speak Spanish. That's not a deal-breaker for me. I don't speak Italian, either, but I'd still go to an opera. Plus, the sound quality in Levi's Stadium was such that I doubt even native Spanish speakers understood many of his lyrics unless they already knew the songs. 

I was impressed by three things. First, the propulsive energy of Mr. Bunny's performance. It reminded me of Bruno Mars's Super Bowl show in 2014. Before that I was aware of Mars, of course, but he attacked that performance with such joyful intensity that I instantly became a fan. Same with Mr. Bunny yesterday.

Second was the stagecraft. He and his team built and then disassembled a Puerto Rican cane field, a casita, a bodega, an entire community of musicians and dancers and street vendors and power poles, in the middle of a football field during a break in the game. The choreography was astounding--everyone had to be in exactly the right spot at the right time, from a bartender who handed Mr. Bunny a shot glass to a kid sleeping on a bench (who a lot of people are saying was Liam Conejo Ramos, the boy in the blue knit cap who was kidnapped by ICE, but it wasn't him). 

Third was the storytelling. I didn't know the words but I certainly understood the story Mr. Bunny told of community, tradition, hard work, family celebration--you know, all the classic American values. The entire show was as wholesome and, dare I say, as conservative as could be, right down to the real wedding performed in the middle of it and his "God Bless America" (in English) at the end of it. 

I found it all much more interesting and entertaining than the usual band standing on a stage singing their greatest hits. As a storyteller myself I admire and appreciate masterful storytelling from others, and Mr. Bunny delivered for me. Your mileage may vary.

250 Words on the Secret

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Occasionally I’m asked to critique someone’s writing or cartooning, and give them advice on how to build a career.

I’ve learned to be wary.

First, nine out of ten people who ask my opinion don’t really want it. They want to be told their work is fantastic and they don’t need to change a jot. So the first thing I try to figure out is whether I’m talking to one of those folks, or to the one out of ten who genuinely wants feedback and is professional enough to take it.

Sometimes people want to know “the secret”: the password, the trick, the right person to approach with the right pitch. Once in a while, they’ll even ask me to do it for them—make the connection, grease the wheels, get them in the door to make a deal.

Of course the real secret is that there isn’t one, and I don’t have the influence they think I do. Even if I wanted to, there is nobody I can call who would offer them the “Standard Rich and Famous Contract” that Orson Welles gave Kermit the Frog. 

Every successful creative person I know has a different story about how they made it. Their way probably won’t work for you. Sit down, do the work, and put it out into the world however you can. If anyone likes something you did, do more of that. Get rejected. Get experience. Get better. Get noticed. Get paid. 

That’s the only secret I know. 

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PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.