I don’t read this blog, but…


Sunday — November 27th, 2011

Hi Xyliacs!

Sorry I missed last week…but…. you know.  Well, some of you do.

I know that there are people out there that don’t get why I even update this site at all if I’m not putting up comic pages, but it’s really just for that handful of you who really seem to care what’s going on, and not just: ‘Where is my comic!  I want my comic now!  My free comic, that I somehow feel entitled to!!’ Oops.  Did I type that out loud?

Seriously though, there was another one of those comments posted on my last blog, and the thing that I found a bit frustrating is when people say, “I don’t read the blog, but why is there no comic here?”  And sometimes not in such friendly ways. (Those comments I don’t approve because I don’t have to if I don’t want to.  Nyeaah.)

In summation, to anyone out there who is going to ask this question again, here’s the deal- I’m a mom first and foremost- and as a single parent, I have to do that primarily on my own with no real support.  Granted, my kids are getting pretty self sufficient, but I still spend a great deal of time with and for them.  I run a household alone (if you don’t know what that means see taking care of home,  paying bills, taking care of cars etc…etc..).  I have my own freelance business which has become quite busy,  and work a second job.  My parents are older and I try to spend time with them as much as possible.  I also work out regularly (ideally 5 times a week) to ward off fat but primarily to keep my BP down and keep my health and sanity.  Additionally, I deal with occasional  bouts of depression that makes everything I mentioned above go slower at best – or completely shut down at worst.  Somewhere in all this, I do try to spend some time socializing with friends and dating too.  Cause, well…uh  I think I kind of deserve that.

Now. If you are coming here and asking “WHERE IS MY COMIC FIX?  WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THIS WOMAN?”   please read through the above and locate out of that the EXTRA 16 hours that I will need to get just one page of the Xylia webcomic up on the site. I’ve looked for those hours, and I have been having trouble finding them.

THAT’S why Xylia has not been updating.

Sorry for that rant, Xyliacs, but I wanted to post a blog that I could refer these people to in the future to read so they can get their questions answered without me having to work for it, since THEY aren’t willing to work for figuring it out.

So, where was I?  Oh yes.  I hope all of you here stateside had a very nice Thanksgiving holiday.  If you’re like me (and I really hope you aren’t ;) holidays are a real challenging time.  I forget that this is so sometimes, and then they sneak up and do a leg sweep and knock me on my butt.  Which is what happened this year.  The first half of my Thanksgiving day was an unpleasant one, but the last half was nice. Until I ate way too much and felt like the Goodyear blimp. But anyway.  I know some of you are dealing with difficult times this year, and I hope that you were able to find some support and love.

Enough on that, how about Xylia?  Well, my busy time has ramped up even further.  So much so that I am not getting to the gym or seeing friends as much as I would like.  As much as I WANT to work on Xylia, the back burner is where it stays for now until the holiday orders are done.  It’s a matter of me finding a schedule for it, but I just haven’t figured that out.  I am really anxious to tell the story- I think you will like it- I do. *frustrated…*

I’m sorry to keep everyone waiting so long, sometimes I wonder if I should just shut the site down so that people won’t wonder any more, and then bring it back when I finally can, but I hate to do that too.   What are your thoughts, Xyliacs?

Thank you again for visiting the site, and again I apologize for the way things are, but most of it is out of my hands right now.

————–Response to November 14, 2011————–

Miamistax:  :) your comments about the sketches made me smile- I think you need to go back and read chapter 1 of Xylia. ;)   Thank you for your kind words on the ‘chicken scratchy’ sketches of mine… and Happy Thanksgiving to you as well. :)

Meridian:  “can I ask what’s happened to this comic? I haven’t been here for more than a year, because it just wasn’t getting anywhere.”  My response to your inquiry is above. Since you ‘rarely read the blog’ it’s something you wouldn’t know, so I’m helping you out.  (Course if you don’t read the blog… you won’t see this, so why did I bother? hmm….)

Nathaniel: Sounds like you are getting a good work out!   I actually do several different types of exercise when I have the time, which I don’t right now. Alternating 4 mile jogs at 6.5 mph with sprinting interval days (going up to 10 mph. ) My knees can’t handle that all the time though, so sometimes I do elliptical training.  When I’m not so flipping busy, my weight training is an hour long class 3x a week (ideally) with high reps.  And I also try to get in a 15 minute pilates core workout- as often as possible. If I had LOTS of time, I would do yoga a couple times a week too.   But right now it’s all about my art jobs though, and it’s very hard to get the exercise in.  “…which will also make a healthier heart than running”.   Running is more for my mind than anything, but I’m not too worried about heart health right now: my resting heart rate is 42 (I’m shooting for 35) , my bp is 118/65. I had a complete heart work up a couple years ago (before I was in this kind of shape) and was told I had the heart of a 20 year old. Not shabby for 46.

Francisco: I hope your new job is going well!  And yes, that was Ambrosia in the pic. ;)

Skewered Viewpoint: I do hope Thanksgiving was all right for you this year.  I thought about you quite a bit. And yeah, the schedule is going pretty nuts. ;)

Canterrain:  thank you for your response to Meridian before I had time to blog.  And thank you also for the nice words about the sketch of Charlie- you are pretty much spot on catching the gist of the image.

Joe: Yeah, sorry this is late!  Bosslady had to be the boss of a lot of non Xylia stuff.. adnt heat will only continue…

Ayshara: Glad that your sister is doing well.  Sorry I misread your other post.

Julie: I hope you had a great Thanksgiving as well!  I am hoping that we can work together on some more of your characters in the future! ^_^

Jamming: but you ARE great as fans. :)

Thanks all, I hope to post more regularly soon, but I can’t make promises in December.  Is what it is.  :)

Hugs, B

eXTReMe Tracker

01/10/2010

Hi Xyliacs! Remember, this week we kick off the Wednesday update schedule with a Monday tease page!

Please help me in giving Kez a big round of applause for the site update! Despite being amazingly busy with graduate work, Kez found the time to get the site all spruced up. And- something I forgot to mention- if you haven’t been to Kez’s webcomic, War of Winds lately, there is a beautiful cameo featuring none other than Xylia and Claude! You have to check this out! http://warofwinds.com/comic.php?comic_id=328

Remember to come back Wednesday for the new page!
Watch for a very cool animated Keenspot ad by Canterrain and Julia too!

———————–XYLIATALES NEWS!!————————

I’ve been working very hard on the Xyliatales first edition of Book 1- getting the pages set up is a bit time consuming- some of the earlier pages needed a bit of reworking. But I’m excited to say that the Prologue and 1st chapter are done and ready to go! I’m shooting for mid February availability!

——————BARB NEWS & NOTES—————–

The first regular week in January was a bit of a challenge around here. Iowa was plunged into a frustratingly cold snap where temperatures never really got above -2F and the winds made it much colder. Then we were blessed with another seven inches of snow, so in the midst of this Arctic blast- more snow moving. -.- But the coming week promises to be a relief- might even get above freezing! Hooray!

My hip is still pretty painful, so I’ve had to limit what I do in the gym, but I discovered that the reclining bikes don’t hurt to use! Now I just need to get to swimming like I say I’m going to. It will get better.

After an awesome opening basketball game where she scored 14 points, later in the week, Miss E managed to sprain her ankle pretty bad in gym. We were worried it might have broken since she hurt it -snap-. But, fortunately she is recovering quickly. ICE ICE ICE!! Thank you to all my friends who said a prayer and a kind word for her speedy recovery.

I’ve been getting a bit more active in the music scene- sitting in on a song or two. Here’s me trying to figure out how to play guitar, while my pal Rosie B rocks on the keys.

——————–XYLIA GOODY BAG——————

Hugs,

~B

 

Wonderful News

Hello all, Canterrain here.

Barb mentioned wonderful news in my life, and boy is that ever the case. As anyone who follows my twitter knows, there is a very special and beautiful woman in my life. Someone I deeply admire, respect, and love. She is one of the many people who have helped make me the man that I am. We compliment each other perfectly, in that we have many similarities (we are both geeks at heart, enjoying episodes of Star Trek and Doctor Who together) yet also the differences that really help keep spice in life. (I’m a writer type person, creative in word. She is visually creative, designing websites, lego villages, and crafting art)

So this weekend I decided to show her how much I truly do love her… by presenting something I made with legos for her. It looks like this:

Legobox

A better view would be this:

Legoring

Yes that’s right. Canterrain proposed. It didn’t go exactly the way I planned, as plans seldom ever do. But one thing did go as I hoped! Namely..

The Ring

She said yes! As you can imagine I am quite elated. I would be tempted to count my blessings, but in her they may as well be more numerous than counting the stars. There is no date set yet, and no I don’t plan on going away. CT is here to keep helping with all of Xylia’s advertising needs. But CT is also one happy man.

And to my bride-to-be, who I know will read this. I love you. So very much. Thank you for saying yes,

CT

 

Who still can't view the comic?

The majority of technical issues seem to be solved. If you can’t view the comic, please try the following:

1) Change your RSS/Bookmark to XYLIATALES.COM. The subdomain at comic.xyliatales.com is no longer fully functional. The RSS link is in the menu.

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3) If you are using Norton or MacAfee firewalls, please add http://xyliatales.com* to your safe viewing list. There is a long history of keenspot comics being blocked by these programs.

4) If you are trying to view from work, and your network has a filter, please check the comic from your home computer to see if it shows up.  We really can’t do anything about web filters.

5) If you have disabled your referrers, you will not be able to view the comic. This is an anti-piracy measure.

If none of the above measures have worked, please post here to let us know. Include your browser and edition information.  Thanks!

 

09/20/2009

Hello Xyliacs,

Canterrain here to explain the unfortunate news. As many of you who follow Barb’s twitter are aware, she has been having very large computer problems for the last week. First Barb would like to send a shout out and huge thanks to Scascot for working tirelessly to fix these computer problems. Things were almost finally there… but unfortunately as of this night Barb’s computer has finally gone down for the count due to disk failure. Toast.

To add to the unfortunate news, she had finished the page but hadn’t had a chance to move it to her new external harddrive yet. That work is lost.

The ‘silver lining’ is this wasn’t hardware failure (cascading failure on the software end) and she is trying once again to get anything out of her mac as I write this post, -but- there is a good chance that her computer will not be up and running tonight. Even if it were, she wouldn’t be able to get the page redone in time for an update on Monday, and probably not even Tuesday.

As of right now, Barb is very very tentatively hoping for a Thursday update if she can once again get her computer to work. You can follow updates at twitter either through myself (canterrain), Kez, or Barb when she gets her computer working again. We’ll do our best to keep everyone in the loop where possible.

Xyliacs are amongst the most amazing people I know, and I know all of you will understand and wish your very best support to Barb. Thank you again,

Canterrain

EDIT by Canterrain: We’ve already had to remove one comment for being for lack of a better description, rude, childish, and falling into the trap of ‘on the internet I can say what I want’ (STUPID). The fact of the matter is, Barb was moving everything off the mac onto an external harddrive and just didn’t managed to get it all done before it died. It happens people.

If you are rude to people who give you free things, we will remove your post. This is Barb’s site, her rules. Please play nice.

Once again though, I am thankful to know that this is the exception not the rule, the vast majority of people who come here fall into the category of Xyliacs and are by and large the most awesome people in the world. Thank you for that.

 

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