"Art" inspiring art

Every once in a while I'll Google search "A Constant Suicide" to see where it's getting linked up, and to make sure the website is getting the right search results. Then Thursday, someone took my top spot on Google. It was for a painting titled "A Constant Suicide."

With one click, I found this:


Immediately, I recognized the window as the bar I work at on the weekends, Copia Martini & Wine. It's also where we had the release party, so the promotional poster was still in the window.

The artist, Brad Bisbey, commented on his blog, that the title of the poster "got me thinking about how we can sometimes commit constant suicide through negative thoughts, unforgiveness, lifestyle choices. Our thoughts can be as poison to our system as arsenic."

It's like through that one comment that he'd read the book, at least the way I see it.

Like me, Brad is on a mission. I wrote the first 50,000-word draft of the book in one month. Starting today, he's going to be producing a painting a day for the next 30 days for the Daily Painters site. As he put it, "more like 20 paintings in the next 30 days."

So there you have it. Art inspiring more art. Two people who have never met somehow end up connecting through their crafts, even if it's just in the Quad-Cities.

Either way, he said he's going to paint a larger version of "A Constant Suicide" and I'm making room on my wall.

Fun with comic books...

Weekends

This weekend was a blast. Myself and the rest of the WSU crowd shipped off another one of us from bachelorhood into the world of marriage. Good luck Joe & Tanya Gartner. You'll make some good-looking kids.

As long as I'm on the subject of weekends, I want to make sure everyone is invited to my first real book signing this weekend. Stop by Borders in Davenport Saturday, June 16, at 1 p.m. and I'll but my Herbie Hancock ("Tommy Boy" reference for those who think I'm an idiot) on a copy of A Constant Suicide for you.

Better yet, you can get my editor, Shawn Eldridge, the real brain behind the finished product, to sign the little guy as well. If there's time, we'll spew out whatever knowledge on self-publishing we were able to gain during our adventure and pass it on to any other would-be novelists.

Or, if you hated the book and the whole idea of it, stop by and punch me in public. You can't hit Shawn -- he's too nice of a guy.