Are you nervous signing with a heavy block hanging over your table? I am!
But the worst situation was witnessed here, at the 2008 Paris bookfair. (Yes, it’s me under the triangular sign!)
And to think the British brought their cannons up in pieces!
I ran up the Wolfe Trail, 1,5 km of slope, to train for my upcoming marathon, along with my cousin who is an experienced marathoner. It concluded a 16-km run…
We ran from Anse au Foulon, and went through lots of little signs that explain in detail the operation of passing by this trail to attack Quebec defended by Montcalm. Obviously the trail was not paved …
Nevertheless, I thought about the soldiers wearing those heavy loads and equipment, and about the defenders of Quebec who risked (and lost) their lives.
It’s always easy to say in retrospect, long after the lost battle: “Montcalm should have done this or that, he should wait for reinforcements to Bougainville and Levis instead of an exit …”
But without cell phone, while the besieged Quebec residents lacked everything (Wolfe had burned the fields and razed villages up to 100 km downstream of the city), the Marquis de Montcalm could not actually * know * if his allies and volunteers had not themselves been decimated, or whether the British allies Iroquois warriors would not come later join them to form an unassailable mass.
So he ordered a sortie against an enemy superior in number.
(The two leaders were killed in this battle, which was rather short as columnists reported it: about 15 minutes, for the French engagement.)
*
I am really feeling the exhaustion of the training for the upcoming marathon, hence this shortened comic!
It seems that my marathon training is getting in the way of drawing!
The event is in three weeks…
When I began my first science fiction series, the first novel of the space-opera was a self-contained story, quite straightforward to write. The second felt more difficult, and I thought the third would be the last, but the story arc spilled out and I wrote a fourth (and last!) of the Jules-Verne saga series.
It felt like my training running hills. The first time is easy, but by the fourth time, my legs were almost quitting under me! That fourth and last novel of the series was the most difficult to write, since I had to wrap up the leads to complete the neat story arc.
Posted in Art, BD, Comics, humor, Science-fiction, Society, Writing
Tagged art, Comics, humor, novel, Running hills, Science-fiction, space-opera, Writing, writing a series
Books are like boats.
Readers swim from one reading to the next, and some boats are more easy to access than others.
(I hear it often: How come my genius novel cannot find any readers? ) For my science fiction novels, I often add lexicons! But there are other ways to lower the bar for your readers, by shorter chapters, for instance, or not crowding too many characters in a scene, etc.
Your writer’s task is paradoxically to help your readers to get on board!
Posted in Comics, Event, humor, Science-fiction, Society
Tagged art, books, books as boats, Comics, humor, Science-fiction, Writing
.
The cover – Le gant (The glove).
My 17th novel and a bad cold (or flu) came together this week!
Summary: A bullied teenager, Julien, finds a solitary glove. Everything changes. For the better? A story about the subtle roots of power and corruption, in a mid-high school setting.
So no complicated comic today. Yesterday snapshot: author down with cold and some guilt from not even being able to read.
Our bicolor lady cat has very irregular white markings on her fur. And she always nestles where I would put my legs!
Giving big sums to charity via our own Foundations can be rewarding… and it helps evading taxes. But most of us do it with any recognition.
So this demo tried to follow me as I strive to found my small company offering something, but eventually ending up only speculating. Speculating is needed to render exchanges more efficient, like oil lubrifying the mechanic. But too much wealth in speculator’s hands begets a sea of oil in which float a few services/goods. Hence a relative scarcity of money for most valuable endeavours (education, health, transportation…) and new jobs.
I don’t have a billion in my pockets to create jobs. But I am training myself to put every profit dollar to good use; invested away to make other work for me.
(The French words aura de respectabilité means “appearing respectable”. )
Posted in Art, BD, Comics, humor, Science-fiction, Society
Tagged art, Comics, creation of jobs, Creation of wealth, Game of Thrones, humor, poverty, Science-fiction, Writing
As your business grows, you reach a point where you stop creating wealth, and jobs.
Posted in Art, Comics, humor, Society
Tagged art, business, Comics, Creation of wealth, Economy, Growth, horizontal integration, humor, vertical integration, Webcomic
.
This is a particular problem in French language, and many French-speaking locutors are unconsciously copying the English usage of the word problematic.
The adjective form is the same in both languages.
A problematic (noun) is a thing poses a problem; the word problématique in French means an ensemble of problems linked by a common root cause.
In English the usage is in plural form only: the problematics are the uncertainties or difficulties inherent in a situation or plan.
Example: Something that poses a problem or difficulty: “[a book that] poses the problematics of memory in another light altogether”
So translating this comic has posed a problem!
Posted in Art, BD, Comics, humor, Society, Writing
Tagged English usage, French-speaking, humor, problematic, problems, Writing
Echoes of a Sunday artist 