Episode 28 - Misadventures in Sex

This cartoon originally ran over on the Oh Get A Grip blog, where I post every Friday on various topics of sex and writing. Last Friday was my turn to talk about sex and humor, two things I know nothing about. If you want to know the details behind this particular cartoon (it's a TRUE STORY!!), check out my post at OGG.

This particular cartoon marks the first time I've drawn a toon on my desktop computer as opposed to my laptop computer. Manga Studio Debut 3, the first version of the comics program I use, wouldn't play nice with Vista (which is to say, it wouldn't work AT ALL!). But MSD4 works quite nicely on my desktop, perhaps even better than it works on my aging laptop. And with my Bamboo Fun drawing tablet hooked up to the desktop, that made for a really nice clean drawing experience. Hell, I didn't even have the usual crash and burn problems I've been having with the word balloons! I may make a permanent switch and draw on the desktop from now on.

It's been busy as usual over at la Casa de Madden. I went to EPICon and returned, more or less in one piece, and was totally freaked out by the number of people who saw my name tag and shouted, "I know you! You're Cynical Woman!" In fact, I wore my devil horns on Thursday night to the EPICon mixer, and then got scolded for not having them on during the day on Friday. I made sure to correct that error and wear them all day Saturday.

The most interesting thing to come out of EPICon 2009, for me at least, was a chance to sit and talk with Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts, Inc. I managed to snag a consulting appointment with her, and confessed to her that I'm suffering from blog schizophrenia, i.e. I have too many blogs and can't decide easily what content I should put on which blog. The fact is, I have three blogs - one for the cartoons, one for my day to day life as a working mom, and one for the explicitly erotica stuff. My life as a stay-at-home mom is so entwined with my work as a writer, that there are only very rare instances when I can separate the two, and most of what I do day to day as a stay-at-home mom who writes erotica could easily go into one general blog. It's just that occasionally, I really do like to stray into the very adult territory. Some days I like to blog about how I create erotic artwork, and I want to use explicit images for examples. Some days I like to blog about very specific topics on sex that aren't really appropriate for the general, albeit adult, audience that I think frequents my day to day blog. But these sexually explicit posts aren't nearly frequent enough to justify me keeping a full-blown erotica blog when 95% of what I blog about would actually appeal to work-at-home parents in general.

So Penny advised that I consolidate the blogs, as much as possible, AND she advised that I go with the brand name I have managed to make for myself - Cynical Woman. It's good advice and I intend to take it. Over the next few months, I'll be setting up a new website over at www.cynicalwoman.com (and getting rid of the flash site that's currently there), and I'll be putting the cartoons, the mommy blog, and everything else over there. I will offer separate pages for the adults only stuff, like the art gallery and the free reads I have at www.helenehmadden.com, but everything will be coming under one roof, hopefully by June.

So if you see a little construction going on around here, you know what's up!