I sat down to sketch out some notes for the next week of Schlock Mercenary (by “next week” I mean “the next week I need to draw,” not the next week you get to read) and realized two things:

1) the story appeared to be reaching one of the important arc-points I’d slowly been building to.
2) the next week of scripts to be written is for the last week in September.

In short, Schlocktoberfest 2007 seems nicely poised to take place exactly when it needs to, in spite of the fact that I wasn’t expecting this particular plot-point to be the one that fell on that most hallowed of months.

Hopefully everybody will look back at the current storyline, and think I’m some kind of a genius, the way I write these things so that everything falls into place. I’m here to tell you that I’m not a genius. I’m a hack who regularly prays for a miracle, and sometimes gets what he asks for.

On a related note: “Schlocktoberfest” is the most difficult piece of writing I do all year. Ordinarily I begin a book or an arc with an end-state in mind, and a few notions of how the characters will reach it. The “last page” of that book or arc is an indefinite thing, appearing only when I feel like I’m done. With “Schlocktoberfest,” however, the last page and the first page are 31 days apart (though I can fudge a little with the starting point), and whatever notions I may have about moving the story must be made to fit in that space.

It ain’t easy. I didn’t even TRY it in 2000. I screwed it up in 2003, and decided that the story I’d picked was too big for 31 days. In retrospect, I made the right decision – scary though dark-matter monsters are, they were too important to try to squeeze into a one-month arc.

In 2004 I did something new, and played a very ordinary story that ended darkly. In 2005 I had fun with a Really Big Fish (one of my favorites, though the first Schlocktoberfest is still the best IMO). In 2006 I had a great time using the whole month as a setup for a pun. But all of these were really difficult to write, and would probably have been better-written as stories if the 31-day constraint were lifted.

For 2007 I think I’ve got a great set-up, a solid place for the story to start and finish, and a fun concept. But I can’t deny that it’s going to be hard to do.

Back to work with me. These things don’t write themselves…

I know, I know, they won’t notice. But I’m done doing business with them.

(Note: If you work for Qwest, please read on, and feel free to respond. After all, it only takes one person to completely destroy your company’s image. It’s possible, though only remotely, that one person can save or restore it.)

So… I’m hard at work trying to bang out the last two pages of Bonus Story for the next book. I have seven more rows to color, the flooding is done, and I’m painting. My music is blaring, the house is empty for the next three hours, I’m in my happy place…

And the phone rings. Number Unavailable. Private caller.

I pick up.

“Taylers’, this is Howard.”

“Are you Howard Tayler, of Blank Label Comics?”

Sounds like a salesperson, but he might have legitimate business with our little collective.
“I am.” I say, with that practiced inflection that says if you have legitimate business with me, now is the time to get to it.

“Has anybody from Qwest talked to you about lowering your small-business calling rates?”

“No, they haven’t. Please put me on your no-call list.”

And I hung up, cranked the tunes, and got back to work.

The phone rang again. Number Unavailable. Private Caller.

Ohhh-kay. This is either ILLEGAL (No-call means just that, and there are legal ramifications to calling in spite of it), or accidental, or it’s a coincidence.

“Hello?”

The same voice I spoke to before begins, as if we were old friends who had been cut off accidentally:
“Why would you want us not to call? We’re trying to lower your rates, not raise them.”

I let him have both barrels.
“You are quite possibly the rudest salesperson who has ever called me. When I-”

“I’m not a salesman,” he interrupted. “I’m trying to lower your rates, not-”

“And I said put me on your DO NOT CALL list.” (Note: I may have actually raised my voice at this point.)

“-lower them. And you’re the one being rude. Maybe we’ll raise your rates instead. How would you like that?”*

And then he hung up.

Had I the presence of mind to get his name (and had he lacked the presence of mind to refuse it) I would be on the phone with Qwest right now demanding an apology. Or maybe I’d be contacting an attorney, trying to find a way to sue these people for what has to be the most flagrant violation of “do not call” I’ve ever experienced.

Regardless, I don’t currently do business with Qwest. Our land-line is provided through my ISP, Comcast/AT&T. If this guy had my phone number, he also had the ability to look that information up, and could quite easily have determined that “lowering my rates” also required him to sell me something. In fact, I doubt he’s calling existing Qwest customers. He’s calling FORMER Qwest customers, trying to get back their business.

Hey, Qwest! At this point if you want to get my business back, you’ll beat AT&T’s best rate by 95% or more for a period of no less than two years no, wait… screw that. You want me as a customer? Fine. Free phone service for two years, no strings. If I’m satisfied come August of 2009, maybe I’ll decide not to switch back to the folks who are currently taking pretty fine care of me.

These folks, after all, are the ones who provided me with high-speed internet access back in 2001 when you said it couldn’t be done. You whined and made excuses about how the line between my house and the switching station was too long for DSL. AT&T came by and laid new cable — no excuses, just great service.

In fact, now that I think about it, I still have quite a bit of loyalty towards my current provider. Forget it, Qwest. You could offer me free phone service for life, and I’d tell you to offer it to one of my fixed-income neighbors who needs it. But I’d warn her that your salespeople are pushy, and should be hung up on at her earliest convenience.

(*Note: The conversations above were not transcribed real-time, nor do I have recordings. I’ve paraphrased as accurately as I can, but rest assured, I’ve made nothing up. This guy really did threaten to raise my rates.)

Usually when we leave for a vacation we take care to clean the kitchen.

This time around it just got too hectic. We did decide to NOT leave the A/C running, though. I’m sure that saved us a few bucks. Of course, our return would have been infinitely more pleasant had we NOT left two packages of fresh, farm-raised catfish in a shopping bag on the counter.

This afternoon at 4:00pm we returned to a house that was eighty-nine degrees farenheit, and that smelled like sphincter.

Specifically, the sphincter it smelled like belongs to a man who has been dead for three days, and whose last four meals were fish-head soup, orange roughy, baked scrod, and a nice anchovy-and-limberger pizza.

So… stop on by my house this evening. We’d love to have you. After all, every molecule of putrescine that you inhale is one more I don’t have to breathe. Oh, yes, I WILL use my friends as air filters…

“What’s that?” you say. Schlock Mercenary is only starting year eight!

True. But today Sandra and I celebrate the fourteenth anniversary of our wedding, and kick off year fifteen.

Sandra dealt out enough mushy stuff for both of us, so I’m just going to link to her post. She said it better than I can.

When I started this comic project in March of 2000 (three full months before posting anything online) we had been married for about seven years and seven months.

With Schlock now two months into year eight, I think that sometime soon we will have spent half of our married life as the proud parents of a comic-strip universe. Oh, how the time flies.

(Note: we are also the proud parents of four actual CHILDREN. I spent a good chunk of this afternoon snuggling them on the couch while watching an Animaniacs DVD.)

Here’s to another fifteen years. Or fifteen million.