I started the month still on a high from attending the Cape Graphic Novels Mini-Con that took place at the end of June. Seeing a mix of debut artists and established figures like Bryan Talbot and Alison Bechdel filled my creative cup and I am so keen for that to be me in the future. My key takeaway was that I could embellish and make things up as much as I want, which after 6 months working on autobio felt freeing.
Yes, after 6 months of spending evenings and weekends chipping away at it I had finally submitted my comic I am Perfectly Normal to the LDC digital comics fair, and on July 1st it went on sale. I was both ecstatic and terrified! I’m an introvert with a communication disorder (autism) but I have tried my most best to promote the comic and fair as much as I can. I’ve posted on Instagram, Bluesky and Reddit, and cheekily tagged a few people and messaged others to encourage sales. Part of me thinks I should message both of my friends to buy a copy, but another part thinks cheerleader sales are a great way of showing support but won’t necessarily further my career in graphic novels. Plus, when it comes to the mortifying ordeal of being known, I’d rather it was strangers doing it (I assume this is part of my disorder).
My favourite bit of participating in the fair was getting a wonderful review in Broken Frontier (https://www.brokenfrontier.com/i-am-perfectly-normal/). Being reviewed is a bit like getting a school report, you hope it will be good but there’s potential for it to be bad, but I’m a massive nerd and I loved getting school reports. You’re telling me if I make more comics I can get reports again? Amazing. Love that for me. I am enormously grateful to Gary Usher for choosing my comic for one of his reviews. Being in the fair made me feel like a legit cartoonist, but getting a review made me feel a little bit famous.
The smart thing to do now is work on the next project, regardless of how it may or may not be published. I have a bit of a script for a new autobio, though the deep vulnerability of Perfectly Normal has put me off a little so I might sit on that for a while. I have a concept for a story about someone who receives a message from the future warning her not to attend a certain event, but she goes anyway and meets someone really hot. And I have a couple of mini comics I could finish, which might be useful if I ever get brave enough to table an in-person zine fair. Decisions, decisions…
