My 2 Weeks of Rest and Relaxation

Great news!!!!!!! I no longer feel crazy. I've had 2 weeks off Gay Persuasion and a week off work at my day job because my mom came to visit me from the States, and, who could have predicted this, it was soooo good for my menty h. (Autocorrect just tried to change that to 'meaty h,' yuck.) Here's what I've been up to!

​I got my fingers tattooed!!! They're literally sooooo cute what the HELL!!! They're still healing, so they're kinda gross right now, but I'm so happy with them. I love my hands and I love making them look pretty, but I get annoyed wearing jewelry and nails sometimes, so I just wanted to have something permanent. I feel positively bejeweled they're so CUTE!! I went to Katy at Daydream Forever in Liverpool for these, most of them are from her flash and two of the little flowers are custom. She also took this very excellent photo. Everyone say thank you Katyyyy

My mom came to visit! She would not appreciate me posting any photos of her online so here is a lighthouse and the afternoon tea we went to. 

We went to Paris!!! We had a buck wild 2 days in some of the hottest temps of the year and saw allll the things including Ollie's sister and my extremely cute baby niece

I tried oysters for the first time. I expected to completely hate them cause I'm not a big fan of mussels or snails but I actually...... really liked it???? Obviously the lemon and the fun sauce were doing some extremely heavy lifting but it was nice!!! Now I'm having a crisis because we wrote a villain in Gay Persuasion whose main villainous trait is being a freak for oysters. I have to take a long hard look in the mirror. 

I also finally got some time to read again! First I read Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, which completely and utterly destroyed me. Climate crisis, parenting, grief, ghosts, whales, seed vaults, seals, and love vs. nihilism on a rugged subantarctic island. Would 100% recommend this for anyone who likes a wet setting and wants to get their heart ripped out and stomped on. I devoured this in a day. CW for historical animal cruelty, lots of death (inc. suicide), and sexual abuse. 4.5 / 5 ​☆

This morning I finished reading Sangliers by Lisa Blumen, a bande dessinée I found at Chantelivre in Paris. Ollie and I spent about an hour browsing the comics there and I cannot stop thinking about it. I have almost no experience with BD but I don't know why I assumed it would be like... the same stuff you'd find in the anglophone world??? It's so different!! Even just looking at the covers and seeing how different the production and design is in BD and euro comics blew my tiny mind. I can't get over how much bigger the books are (like, in terms of page size), it really feels like they want to give the art space to breathe. And all the design felt so considered and all the art was gorgeous and aaaa it was just so good to look at something completely new to me. Anyway, this book:

might have actually altered my brain chemistry??? I know some French (I took it in high school and college) so I wanted to try to read the books we got, and that became such an unusual reading experience for me. Normally I'd read a GN like this in 2 hours, but it took me 3 days because of the language barrier. I wanted to be really thorough so I Google translated about half of it, which meant I was spending 5-10 minutes on each spread instead of 45 seconds, even though it wasn't a very text-heavy comic. It didn't hurt that the art was so gorgeous and interesting that I really wanted to stay there and linger on everything. I mean, look at this!!

It's about a makeup artist turned popular beauty blogger who is not having a good time. This book was so meaty. it had a lot to say about real world & online misogyny, the artifice of social media, and what being constantly watched will do to a person. AND it turned into kind of a psychological thriller which was an unexpected delight!!

​I thought it was just a brilliant example of comics as a form. I could talk for ages about this book but I'm still chewing on it and honestly I have a lot to do today so I'd better wrap this up. 5 / 5 ​☆

I'm gearing up to start Gay Persuasion inks next week. I feel good about it right now, but it's easy to feel good when you aren't actively working on the thing-- I'm bracing myself for the inevitable panic. But for now I'm going to enjoy the rest of my weekend and try to figure out why my washer/dryer isn't working properly.

​Byyyyyyye!