Well, it's THAT time of the year again. The time, when the call of the family reaches my ears and I find myself purchasing a flight ticket home. While part of me has always liked christmas - the smell of the cookies, the xmas tree, candles - the good things, some other part always dreads that time of the year.

The time, when I have to revert to the status "daughter". "Daughter" means, I have to be around my family and whenever I try to sneak away to pursue my own interests, I'm in for trouble. You see - my family has a hard time understanding that painting is work. That it's my life, it's what pays my bills. I love my family, but it's very, very hard to live with people who do not talk and who most of the time sleep in front of the TV. Initiating family-activities in whatever way is also bound to fail as they see it as a disturbance in their daily routine. For all that there is a reason and "age" is one of them as my parents are no longer young, plus there is my grandmother with her failing health. So yeah, welcome to my personal nightmare. I honestly thought about purchasing a netbook, just to be able to take some files with me and maybe a few movies so I can relax when it's curfew time. Well I won't, I just hope that my MP3-player is still working and I'll take my sketchbook and a bit of paint with me. Thankfully black and white paint, a pencil, an eraser and a black colored pencil is pretty much all I need!

Still have to buy some presents for my family, bake some cookies, paint two more pictures and I guess then I'm already off. Here is to hoping that my family's expectations and my own stubborn self don't clash too much and that we all have a merry xmas. Roast pork, dumplings and red cabbage included, yum. And the pug of course! I'll be plucking her fur out of my clothes 'til easter... little cuddlebug

Thank you guys for answering my poll. Your answers and suggestion were immensely helpful, they helped me with my plans a lot.

The webcomic will be the first chapter of my longtime project Dragonbones. I had hoped to start painting it a little sooner, but conventions kept me buys, I got sick and last but not least I scrapped the idea of painting everything digitally in Photoshop completely. I dusted of my watercolors instead, sketched a little, painted a bit and found it to be very relaxing and fast at the same time. The only problems were the colors! I decided to paint it in grey washes instead and publish that chapter in black and white - but I won't rule out coloring those pages in Photoshop later.

German readers will find Dragonbones on Animexx.de in the doujinshi-section and Deviantart readers will find the pages here in my gallery. Since almost everyone put emphasis on a regular update cycle - which is intimidating - I'll have to work on a bulk of pages in advance, so I don't miss out after 2 weeks of updates. Currently I have my sight set on february next year. This should give me enough time to work on the comic (script finally done!! no more changes!) and on commissions.

I haven't forgotten about those. The last 4-5 weeks were... great. My health has constantly improved, I'm currently pain-free and I can't believe just how much stress my body (and my mind) has had to endure over the past months. Little things like climbing stairs are easy now, I can eat whatever I want, no pain. I no longer have to listen inside, I can finally appreciate the outside. Truly - I hope this isn't just a phase, but something that will last a long, long time. Probably shouldn't write about that, but.. hey, I'm happy!

Hope you'll enjoy Dragonsbones once the pages start appearing in my gallery... and please: Give me a good kick in the A** should I go back on my promise. This comic means a lot to me, I want to see it out there!

Just a quick "poll".

What update-cycle do you like most when it comes to webcomics?

1. once a week
2. two times a week
3. a few pages a month, irregular scedule (meaning, pages can be published anytime once a month)
4. One chapter a month
5. don't care at all, just publish

Well... it was nice meeting my friends again, making some new one, but the convention itself was hell. Apparently the host "forgot" to promote the whole thing. At least this would explain why even people living next to the convention center didn't know what was going on and that authors like Wolfgang Hohlbein, Kai Meyer and Markus Heitz were attending as well. All of them have sold more than one international bestseller, so I really have to wonder what the hell was going on prior to the con and to say it all felt a bit "improvised" is close to a compliment. I shouldn't complain, after all I was invited to show my works, but it was a financial setback and one I can't afford right now *sigh*. I know it wasn't my personal fault, not the quality of my prints, not my charming personality.. it simply wasn't meant to be.

My friends were a lot of fun to be around and I manged to get a copy of Albae signed by Heitz, what a nice guy ^^.

I'll be attending Fantasydays from 6. - 8. November in Duesseldorf. You'll find me at my table somewhere on the second floor of the convention hall (Burgwaechter Castello). And my workshop is on the third floor. I'm teaching how to draw monsters, what a surprise! This is a first in many ways: First non-anime-con, first time I'll try to teach. I'm giddy and tired aaand I have to leave at 3 a.m. *cry*, it's a six hour train-ride to Duesseldorf from Berlin.

Wish me luck!

Fantasydays - Webpage also in english available if you're interested