The Official Website of E. H. Lupton
To everyone who warned me that this would happen when I started using the clipless pedals: Thanks, you were right. The bruise that still lingers on my hip tells the tale better than I could.
File this one under: HE5736 .L86 2010, for:
Transportation and communications — Bicycles — General works
This one is dedicated to my buddy Ray, who is also kicking his novel around to agents, and has been doing so for far longer and with better humor and perseverance than I can imagine. It’s also dedicated to all the agents who have to spend their days wading through the barely literate queries they receive – having done some freelance editing, I know firsthand how well most people write. A lot of agencies will say, “If you don’t hear from us in 5 weeks, take it as a no.” I don’t blame them – they must get an awful lot of crap.
But if you could get back to me about You Can’t Make it Better, But You Can Make it Different, that would be great. Also, if you are, by some crazy random happenstance, an agent who is reading this comic and interested in a great literary mystery, drop me an email at ehlupton[AT]gmail[dot]com.
This comic is filed under:
PN163 .L86 2010
which is
Literature (General) — Authorship — Authorship as a profession. Ethics. Relations. Social conditions of authors, etc. — Literary agents.
So The Birds wasn’t really a scary movie by the time I’d saw it. The zeitgeist had moved on and people expected their films to look more realistic (and more realistically colored). But having a red-winged blackbird come down on your head? That’s scary.
Bryan: I would have paid money to hear that scream.
Emily: If you’d been outside, you would’ve.
RWBBs are about the size of robins and fairly aggressive between May and September (the nesting season). They usually don’t go after people in pairs, but they will attack a solo jogger. Bryan only runs with me, so he’s never been the victim of this sort of attack, and I think he thinks my enmity is a bit much. But then again, I have rather long, thick hair and he doesn’t. If a bird lands on his head, it will hurt, but there are no chances of…entanglements.
This comic gets the LCC number:
QL795.B57 L86 2010, for Zoology–Animal behavior–Stories and anecdotes–Special. By common name of animal, A-Z–Birds.
Watercolors are back. Hurrah.
I don’t really have much to say about this. Well, consider buying canned artichokes if you are making pasta with artichokes. It is a bummer to get the inedible parts of the artichoke accidentally mixed up in your carbs.
This comic gets filed under:
TX803.A7 L86 2010
For “Home economics–Cookery–Vegetables (Preparation) –Special vegetables, A-Z–Artichokes.” Wow.
I very rarely give any insight into the creative process behind my comics here. Of course Bryan gets to see my scripts, notes, and other various scribblings in their incomplete state, but he is in a privileged position – most of those are pretty dull and I wouldn’t want to inflict them on anyone else. But I thought this was too good to let it go to the recycle bin: after the jump, the original sketch of Em oi! #309: Sugar Rush.
B. noted that when he asked about Belleville, he was more trying to verify that I was naming a village and not, oh, a restaurant or some obscure rock formation. Wait — you, my dear readers, don’t know where Belleville is either? I guess this is a forgivable sin – according to city-data.com, the population was 2,265 as of July 2008. It’s somewhat southwest of Madison.
I headed out on Saturday morning to do about 30 miles. I am training for a triathlon and I thought I would ride part of the bike course (about 12 miles), then swing back to our house in time to shower and have lunch before I had to start cooking for a dinner party. I didn’t realize that when they say “a challenging and hilly course,” what they mean is hold the hell on to the handle bars.
I’d been out for about an hour and 45 minutes; the weather was chilly but changeable, drizzle one moment, sun the next, a wind from my right neither helping nor hindering my progress. I was trying to find County Highway A – I later realized it was unmarked and I’d passed it by a good four miles. But at the time, I didn’t know that.
I remember looking to my right across across a wide, green valley. At the far end were some tree-covered hills and a fine mist was beginning to form at that end of the valley. There were dark clouds above which seemed to be gradually dripping toward the ground – not in a tornadic sense, just the way that precipitation looks when you see clouds at a certain distance.
Great, more rain, I thought, and checked my watch. If I didn’t find Hwy A in 5 more minutes…
With a whoosh of wind, the mist caught up with me. It wasn’t rain at all, but tiny ice pellets – sleet or hail, I’m not sure which. I turned down the first street I passed and sprinted for a strand of oaks at the edge of a farmer’s field. In the lee of the tree, I pulled out my phone and called Bryan. He arrived twenty minutes later and the bike and I went home in ignominy.
It was good that I had service. Three or four miles earlier, I’d tried to use its GPS functions to figure out where I actually was, and it placed me in the middle of a corn field. Oops.
This comic is cataloged under:
GV1048 .L86 2010 (for Bicycles — Training for cycling)
796.6 .L966 (Cycling – General)
Subject heading:
Cycling — Training — Comic books, strips, etc.
If you’re super curious, I ride an old Bianchi touring bike (how old? Not sure, maybe ten or fifteen years). It is black. I got it on Craigslist.
When we had this conversation we were lying on the floor for some reason, so I decided to go with it when I drew it. The art came out well, but I’m not exactly sure how you draw carpet grain…
The look on B’s face made drawing it worthwhile. Also, don’t worry – I am neither quitting the internet nor the comic.
BF687.5 .S428 L86 2010
155.232 L866
Self-perception in authors –Comic books, strips, etc.
Self-doubt — Comic books, strips, etc.
We have variations of this conversation almost every single day.
Usually the person eating gross stuff is Bryan, and the gross stuff is, oh, a bacon cheeseburger or something that is only gross if you are a vegetarian who thinks eating dead things is weird/disgusting, ie ME. I burn somewhere between 2000-2600 calories per day, so I’m pretty much always hungry, so occasionally the stakes are reversed.
This gets 644.153 L965 for “Candy (sweets)” and the LCC number TX791 .L86 2010.
Subject heading:
Peeps (Trademark) — Comic books, strips, etc.
Part one is here, part two is here.
So normally in this situation I would have said, “Let’s get a cab and go find some ritzy place to have lunch.” But Bryan was on a diet consisting of a) bananas b) saltine crackers c) soup, so we couldn’t. Neither did we think that hanging around in the sun was going to be the ticket to a good time.
The Orlando airport, on the public side of security, is a giant mall. At one point we tried to find a travel chess set in one of the shops and failed, though we did find travel “Hungry Hungry Hippos ™” and about fifty different Sudoku books (alas, no Kakuro). On the non-public side of security, it’s a wasteland. Nary a *$ to be found (sad, since I wanted a chai latte).
Anyway, the flight home was fine and Bryan got better and we actually had a really good time, with the exception of that 24-hour period that Bryan was vomiting/unconscious (from the anti-emetic injection they gave him – it was a type which tends to make people sleepy as it acts on the brain to stop nausea – he slept in the cabin, I read The Satanic Verses on the deck and reminded him to drink a glass of Gatorade every hour or so).
Next week, a comic with fewer than 22 panels! I am excited.
With thanks to my special guest artist.
In case you were curious, this is the cafe’s business card:
Fantastic Italian food, beautiful atmosphere, French name, excellent service…just don’t get the seafood.
If you are looking for part one, it is here.