I've just posted my four page story "Satellite of Love" on the blog. This is for an anthology to be coming out in January, but it's also the first "Wives of Vladu" story. I'm hoping to write a whole lot of them in anticipation of another series of stories "The Revenge of the Wives of Vladu".

Happy Halloween everyone! Bwahahahaha!

We waited a reasonable time before calling Doozy to see how his gig went at the Whiskey A-Go-Go. I think we woke him up, so I guess it wasn't that reasonable. Anyhow, he said the set went well but the promoter was all bent out of shape because Doozy didn't bring in very many people. He's got this extended circle of friends in L.A. which includes former high school buddies, co-workers and fellow Syracuse alum, many of whom usually make it to his gigs, but this time out, only his roommate came.

Doozy blamed it on the fact that he was performing early on a Friday. Everybody was still working, or just getting home from work. It didn't help that he was the opening act for a bunch of high school bands.

Stardom is a long, hard trek.

I'd say he definitely shouldn't give up his day job. Unfortunately, there's a writers' strike looming and he may not have a choice.

I perhaps should mention that Doozy works as a production assistant for CBS Television's Ghost Whisperers. There had been a big writers' strike last in 1988. It made life miserable for a lot of people. We can only hope they settle before the deadline.

My son, Doozy sent this picture of his name in lights at one a.m. our time. My husband's comment was that he never realized text messages could be so loud. In the morning, he thrust the phone in my face and told me to look. I didn't see anything. "Maybe I dreamed it?" But no, there it was, after scrolling past a few other pictures, our rock and roller son's name up on the Whisky a-go-go in L.A. He sent one to his sister, Julia, at about the same time. Being much brighter than us, and a wee bit nastier, she sent him back a reply text message at four a.m. L.A. time: Congratulations!

Why didn't we think of that? Anyhow, I can't wait to hear how it all went. In the meantime, I might just have a listen to his music.

The Whiskey A-Go-Go is near and dear to our hearts because when we were dating, we always used to listen to Frank Zappa's "Mud Sharks". Who'd have thunk that more than thirty years later, that's where our kid would be playing?

When you're a kid and you're caught doing something you weren't supposed to, your answer usually runs to the extremely creative "A large meteor fell in the backyard and started speaking to me telepathically" to the mundane "I don't know why I did it."

Anyhow, my apologies to my friend Mark for having named a Flying Monkey after him. It happened under the influence of a particularly large and unusually telepathic meteor. It was green and pulsated with space rays. I don't know why it was so important that I name the Flying Monkey Bilokur. It might have had something to do with the fact that the world might blow up if I didn't.

I'm supposed to be getting ready for a soccer game.

I got this email from my buddy this morning saying he had a restful night dreaming about Bobby Sherman, Susan Day, and Danny Bonaduce.

It made me think for a moment. I remember a time when those people were uber cool.

What the heck am I doing playing soccer? I should be looking for a nursing home.

Today marks the return of Heino to the strip. I finally gave in to the real Joey Zone's insistence that Heino and Oktoberfest are absolutely necessary for an October story line.

It's a bit of a problem re-introducing characters. Regular readers will jump right in, but others will be left scratching their heads. I opted to start off not so funny, just to start up the new storyline. I decided to use the flying monkey as a way in. He, like any new readers, hasn't got a clue.

Anyhow, it's Oktoberfest with the Goth Scouts...

I was solicited today to contribute to a comic anthology. It's a pretty illustrious group of contibutors, so though I won't be paid, I'll be in good company.

This solicitation comes at a rather propitious time. I've been working out the direction of the Vampire Bed and Breakfast comic book over the past couple of weeks. I've decided if I'm going to drop dead at my drafting table at some ripe old age, I'd like to die while drawing stories about Vladu. Specifically, I've been plotting out short stories (four to six pages) of backstory, that is, stories about how Vladu met and discarded his various and sundry wives. It's becoming almost an obsession about the obsession which happens when someone falls in love. In one way or another, it's a theme that's been knocking around in some of my work, most notably the Dinosaur Circus.

Anyhow, working on this anthology has pushed me to actually draw one of the wife stories. It's just a matter of finding time to do it. I should be working on it now, instead of writing about working on it.

I still have high hopes of finishing Jane Quiet in time to get it published through Lulu.com in time for Christmas. So much work. So little time.

Well, with better luck than last week, my cartoons should be appearing on ESPN's Monday Night Football during the Atlanta/New York game. I really like doing these. Caricatures are a lot of fun, and here I got to do ten of them.

My two daughters and I love Top Chef. While Lydia was here from L.A., we watched part of the season three contest. I don't exactly know the appeal. I have no idea what the food might taste like. We just take it on faith that everything is the way it is. It's not like a soccer game, where the winner is clearly the team with the most goals. Here it's some judge saying the flavors all mesh brilliantly.

For us Steier women, though, it's a bonding experience. We have our favorite chefs and our favorite dishes. We talk about them, we argue about them, then we continue staring at the television set.

Well, I was good and depressed today after hearing from dozens of people that they stayed up all night watching football, waiting for my cartoon to come on. I felt so inadequate. I'm just glad it was a good game. I finally got a well needed nap, then I forced Rod to drag me off to the grocery store just so I could have the illusion of having a life.

Not that this makes things better, but I'm posting the final cartoon in the series. Of course, it would look so much better in HD.

Yesterday afternoon, I got a call about my cartoons, that I had to fix them so they could fit the television format. This I did, no problem, at the expense of my scheduled nap.

Of course, I told everyone I knew to watch football. I can't believe I did that. Football. Anyhow, no cartoons. They didn't run. In retrospect, whatever the reason, it turned out for the best, because the gist of my cartoons was how the new quarterback for the Cowboys filled the shoes of the great Troy Aikman. First thing this young guy does is throws the ball to the other team which ends in a touchdown. And things went downhill from there. Dallas ended up winnning in a very exciting game, by one point. I believe the pregame analysis was that Buffalo was about to be ground into chicken wings by Dallas, but that obviously didn't happen.

Oh, jeez...I actually watched the pre-game analysis. Why do people watch this bloviation? Why not just watch a game without the "experts?"

Oh well. I'll have to find out what happened. I'd like to say easy come, easy go, but I'm living on minimal sleep right now, and I'm kind of grouchy.

I've been functioning on no sleep this entire weekend, getting these football cartoons done for ESPN.

The thirty hours I've put into this project over the past three days can be seen as a 45 second segment during the Columbus Day pregame show. I think that starts at about 7:30.

I think I brought the spirit of football with me when I dragged myself to my soccer game today. We had a football style pile up in the goalmouth and only discovered we had scored when everyone got up off the ball.

Playing on two hours of sleep is actually kind of fun. A challenge, really. Pitting my well honed soccer instincts against the overwhelming urge to indulge in a fit of narcolepsy.

Anyhow, since this job came while I had just worked through my backlog of Goth Scouts cartoons and about ready to sit down and do a few weeks in advance, it means a couple of days of reruns, alas.

Mush is what you say to a sled dog when you want it to go.

I went to the doctor's yesterday and stupidly let her give me a flu shot. I've been totally sick today as a result. Under normal circumstances, it would have meant Princess Elena parked in front of the television 24/7. However, on Thursday, I got a call about a rush job which means I have to buckle down and draw like crazy. Seven full color drawings by Sunday afternoon.

This is the second time these guys have called me. I like working with them. It's challenging and I get to draw sports guys. But man, am I sick.

Usually when I draw, I like intelligent noise. Books on tape, or news programs off the internet. Today, I've gone through four dreadful movies...Colossus and the Amazon Women, Sons of Hercules, Destroy all Planets, and Eegah. I think that's the level of background noise for a feverish Elena. If you ask me the plots, I won't know, except for Eegah, which is kind of a caveman version of King Kong.

Tomorrow morning, I teach cartooning until one p.m., then it's back to the drawing table.

Mush.

I was up in Boston today with Lola and Boris, my niece and my nephew. I took them up to a playground located on a hill which overlooks all of Somerville. It's a great little playground. Their imagination mojos took over and the large structure dominating the space became the batcave. Lola was Wonder Woman and Boris was Batman and I was Sneaky Girl.

I don't really know what Sneaky Girl does. She mostly sits on the park bench while the kids play and looks over the rooftops of Somerville.

Today, Sneaky girl was thinking about Vladu the Vampire. He had many wives over the span of his 400 year old life. One was an actress with a wooden leg. It's hard to think what the appeal would have been for either of them. I think the moment he saw her remove her leg, he was enthralled. She was probably snookered by his doing the Bela Lugosi thing. In any case, the entire thing was doomed. He left her to work in a Wild West Show. She, in the tormented manner of such famous movie flakes like Dr. Phibes, spent the next fifty or sixty years plotting her revenge. But when the day arrived for her plans to come to fruition, she didn't count on the Goth Scouts guarding Vladu the way Blackwater guards Condi Rice in Iraq...

Later, when we got back to the Church Street homestead, Boris insisted we play "Action figure". This was a game in which he jumped from bed to bed while I said "ready, set, go..." I'm not sure why he called it "action figure", but I think the point was that he was the action figure. He even sang his own action figure background music. Da da DUM...da da DUM...DA DUM!