The Night Was Moist...

I decided to start this blog as a way to follow share/vent/chronicle my delve into writing. As an infant writer, I thought that my mistakes and (hopeful) achievements could provide people with useful information and inspiration on what to do and not to do.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Patrick Mallon (as you may have guessed from my blog’s name and url). I am a part-time artist and humorist who ran a mildly successful webcomic called Milk for Dead Hamsters between 2011 and 2012. It was a very fun time in my life making jokes and comic strips on a semi-weekly basis, but I got burned out when children came into the picture. I couldn’t keep up. Since there were only 24 hours in a day, I had to decide how to best use my time between the job that paid well, family, and the cartoons that consumed a lot of time gave back little in return. It was an incredibly hard decision, but eventually I decided that the cartoons couldn’t make the cut.

Soon after that decision came, I still had an itch to create. All of a sudden, I had too much time. When the kiddies went to bed, I had nothing to do. Yeah, TV’s nice, but you don’t come away from it with anything. I needed something to work toward.  I had always wanted to pursue a grand topic that spanned longer than just 4 comic panels. I thought about spinning off m4dh with a comic completely dedicated to Killbasa, a 6-ft tall Polish sausage who has super-powers. But then I would have just painted myself into another rut that I didn’t want to be in.

After putting some more thought into it, I came up with a story for a book that I felt I could handle slowly on my own time. The idea of not having a twice-a-week deadline was very appealing. When I had ideas, I jotted them into an outline. I used scrap paper, my laptop or cell phone. Whenever inspiration hit, I inputted the words. By June of 2012, I had a full working outline of the novel that I saw in my head. I was very proud that I developed funny, engaging and admirable characters that I could invest some time writing about going forward. I put the pen to the paper (but really, my fingers to the keys) and started writing away.

By October, the first draft was done. 60,000 words spilled out onto a Word document. That might not seem like much for the time I invested to some of the pros out there. But I used most every chance I had to complete this draft. (I’ll talk more about this book later).

After the rough draft was complete, I needed to free myself from it so I could re-read with a fresh mind. I picked up my art kit again and worked with Cecilia Potts on some stories she was working on. My experience in illustrating her books has given me some insight to the self-publishing world that will hopefully help me when it comes time to publish my book.

So that’s what I’ve done and that’s where I’m at. I made comics, I currently write and draw books. I also sunlight as an engineer, father to three and husband to one. My dream is to write and draw for a living and maybe someday this blog will be a fun read on how that came to fruition.

Now I’m going to shut up and write.

~Pat