Cattitude - Episode 277 The Ghost Whiskerers: Cats, Comics & the Supernatural!

<v Speaker 1>Live.
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<v Speaker 3>Michelle Bourne. So if you love to read and you
<v Speaker 3>have kids, this is the best show for you. If
<v Speaker 3>you love to read them have cats, this is a
<v Speaker 3>great show for you. Even if not, this is going
<v Speaker 3>to be a super fun show. So stay tuned. I
<v Speaker 3>can't wait to introduce our guests today and we'll be
<v Speaker 3>right back.
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<v Speaker 3>Welcome back everyone. I'd like to welcome Thomas Zaler. He
<v Speaker 3>is a comic artist and writer. Welcome Tom.
<v Speaker 5>Hello, thanks for having me.
<v Speaker 3>I'm thrilled to have you. So let's share with our
<v Speaker 3>listeners your background and maybe give them some graphics through
<v Speaker 3>the airwaves possible.
<v Speaker 5>Well, I've been drawing all of my life. I can't
<v Speaker 5>remember ever not wanting to be a comic book artist.
<v Speaker 5>And I went to an art school in New Jersey
<v Speaker 5>called the Joe Kubert School, which is one of the
<v Speaker 5>few schools in the country that teach cartooning, which is
<v Speaker 5>why I moved there. I graduated after three years. I
<v Speaker 5>did caricatures. I worked in an ad agency, but along
<v Speaker 5>the way I was always doing comics, and about twenty
<v Speaker 5>years ago I finally went off completely on my own.
<v Speaker 5>I haven't looked back, even during some scary stuff during
<v Speaker 5>the pandemic. But I've been running my own company out
<v Speaker 5>of my house for the last twenty years, drawing comics.
<v Speaker 5>I write and draw for my Little Pony comic book
<v Speaker 5>on occasion. I've done comics for webtoon a lot of
<v Speaker 5>romantic comedies warning label Cupid Zeros. I have a superhero
<v Speaker 5>romantic comedy called Love and Capes. And then my latest
<v Speaker 5>one is for John Carpenter's comic company, the guy who
<v Speaker 5>wrote and directed The Thing and Halloween and Starman and
<v Speaker 5>all sorts of stuff, And it's the Ghost Whisperers about
<v Speaker 5>a boy and his two cats who see ghosts.
<v Speaker 3>Yep, and that's why you're on Catechy today because we're
<v Speaker 3>going to talk all about it. Thanks for sharing all
<v Speaker 3>of that. I really liked your book. There's a lot
<v Speaker 3>of underlying threads through the book. It's not just a
<v Speaker 3>comic book about a boy and his cats. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 3>mean there's a lot there. It's not a heavy book,
<v Speaker 3>but it's really interesting. So before we get into the
<v Speaker 3>details of the book, how did the ideas come to them?
<v Speaker 3>I'm an avid reader. I've been reading since I could
<v Speaker 3>read tons of books. My library card is my favorite card.
<v Speaker 3>I think more of a favorite card than my credit cards.
<v Speaker 3>So I love reading and I'm always astonished how people
<v Speaker 3>come up with themes and stories and then with when
<v Speaker 3>you're a comic artist, you're a writer, you're doing both,
<v Speaker 3>you're doing everything. So how does this come about?
<v Speaker 1>Oh?
<v Speaker 5>All sorts of ways, usually massive head but past that,
<v Speaker 5>I sometimes i'll see, Yes, I did a header out
<v Speaker 5>of a shopping cart when I was two and a half,
<v Speaker 5>and I think that that's how this whole path and
<v Speaker 5>a cartooning got started. Because I think you have to
<v Speaker 5>be a little not right in the head to go
<v Speaker 5>do cartooning. But yeah, sometimes I will take a story
<v Speaker 5>and I'll see something that pushes me in a different direction.
<v Speaker 5>Like I'll see a story and say, what if it
<v Speaker 5>were done this way? Or what if it were done
<v Speaker 5>a different way. The Ghost Whiskers Sandy King John's wife
<v Speaker 5>was looking for a young reader's comic, and I was
<v Speaker 5>pitching her a bunch of different stuff. When she told
<v Speaker 5>me specifically what she wanted, I really thought about it.
<v Speaker 5>I have two cats, I have a nephew, and I
<v Speaker 5>put all those things together, and I was very much
<v Speaker 5>trying to do a young reader's book. So it's very
<v Speaker 5>intentional that, like have you seen the movie up, the
<v Speaker 5>Pixar film No. One of the things I love about
<v Speaker 5>it is that it's very user definable, so it doesn't
<v Speaker 5>necessarily hit you with the heavy concept. As a parent,
<v Speaker 5>you could say that one thing was happening, but if
<v Speaker 5>you're really paying attention or you're an older audience, you
<v Speaker 5>know that another thing is happening. So it's not introducing
<v Speaker 5>concepts that kids aren't ready for or that parents don't
<v Speaker 5>want to talk about. So the same way in The
<v Speaker 5>Ghost Whiskers ghosts appear, but we don't say exactly where
<v Speaker 5>they come from or what happens to them to get there.
<v Speaker 5>They're just spirits that show up that have to go
<v Speaker 5>from where they are to somewhere else. So it's very
<v Speaker 5>much designed to be like just scary enough, but not
<v Speaker 5>too scary, because it's very intentionally done for young readers.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, interesting, So tell us about your cats.
<v Speaker 5>So I had past tense two cats. I now have one. Sadly,
<v Speaker 5>my cat Mal, I had to let him go recently.
<v Speaker 5>He had cancer. Oh I'm sorry, thank you, Yeah, that
<v Speaker 5>it was tough. They are my first cats. I had
<v Speaker 5>them for about ten years. Alloween is the other cat.
<v Speaker 5>She is still around for all I know, she'll hear
<v Speaker 5>me talking and try to make an appearance. She's a Calico,
<v Speaker 5>orange and black and white, which is why she's called Halloween,
<v Speaker 5>and Mal is named after the character from Firefly Mel Reynolds.
<v Speaker 5>They're both delightful and they have their own personalities. And
<v Speaker 5>then when I decided to do a comic about cats,
<v Speaker 5>I literally put them in the books. Part of it
<v Speaker 5>is because I just like, I know that they are
<v Speaker 5>not forever, and I wanted to have them memorialized in
<v Speaker 5>some way. I've actually put both of them in my
<v Speaker 5>Little Pony comic as well, but in this book they're
<v Speaker 5>actually the stars of the show.
<v Speaker 3>That they are. So we're going to talk more about
<v Speaker 3>what the Ghost Whisper is about and get into more
<v Speaker 3>details of it. But that aside and talking a bit
<v Speaker 3>about because whispers were low, but the cats in the
<v Speaker 3>Ghost Whispers can see spirits. Do you think that cats
<v Speaker 3>have kind of a third sense about them or sixth sense?
<v Speaker 3>I guess you'd say, or a lot of people think
<v Speaker 3>they're kind of mystical creatures and they're aware of things
<v Speaker 3>that like humans are not, which is in the book.
<v Speaker 3>But do you believe that.
<v Speaker 5>I don't. There's a certain amount of mysticism that I
<v Speaker 5>stay away from in my personal life, Like I just
<v Speaker 5>don't want to get my hand too close to the
<v Speaker 5>buzzsaw and all of a sudden be haunted by something
<v Speaker 5>like it may be there, but I don't need to
<v Speaker 5>find out. I think cats are very perceptive, and I
<v Speaker 5>think that they see things that we don't. I don't
<v Speaker 5>know if it's energy or I know certainly my cats
<v Speaker 5>had picked up on emotions that I didn't think they would.
<v Speaker 5>At one point when it was very stressful in my house.
<v Speaker 5>Now started hyper grooming because he was getting stressed out too.
<v Speaker 5>Like I appreciate that bond you have between you and
<v Speaker 5>your animal where they're picking up on your moods like that.
<v Speaker 5>I think there's more stuff in the world than what
<v Speaker 5>we see. I don't know how much of that cat see,
<v Speaker 5>but when I see them staring off watching, you know,
<v Speaker 5>cat TV, I always kind of wonder what they're looking at.
<v Speaker 5>And that's kind of where some of the ideas from
<v Speaker 5>the book came.
<v Speaker 3>Okay and cat TV. What is that?
<v Speaker 5>Oh? As someone use that as a term for me,
<v Speaker 5>it was actually the original title of the book. It
<v Speaker 5>was called kit TV. It's the thing that happened when
<v Speaker 5>cats are staring at a space where there's nothing, but
<v Speaker 5>they're watching it like there's something there. So I was
<v Speaker 5>kind of filling in the gap about what they were seeing.
<v Speaker 3>Well, my cats do that all the time, especially Molly.
<v Speaker 3>It's funny. I'll watch her, she's on the couch, but
<v Speaker 3>she stays in the cushion. There's something there. It's the
<v Speaker 3>cushion and she's just staring at it. So now I'm
<v Speaker 3>going to think there's possibly something else there. Because I
<v Speaker 3>believe that there's things that we don't always perceive. I mean,
<v Speaker 3>how do you explain when you get thoughts out of
<v Speaker 3>no place that just strike you? What is that about?
<v Speaker 3>Is that somebody sending you a message things that maybe
<v Speaker 3>you wanted to know for a long time, maybe your
<v Speaker 3>whole life, and all of a sudden you just get
<v Speaker 3>it then and there. And it could be in an
<v Speaker 3>obscure as you're driving to the bank or at the
<v Speaker 3>grocery store and you just get this thought and go, oh,
<v Speaker 3>that's how Why did that happen just then out of
<v Speaker 3>the balloon?
<v Speaker 5>I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of stuff
<v Speaker 5>that happens, like I think it bubbles underneath the surface.
<v Speaker 5>But I think there's also a lot of common stimuli
<v Speaker 5>that we all have, and I think there I don't
<v Speaker 5>know if it's completely a collective unconsciousness, but I think
<v Speaker 5>that people are more connected than we know. I don't know.
<v Speaker 5>It's one of those things where you can see the
<v Speaker 5>tips of the waves sometimes, but you don't know all
<v Speaker 5>the mechanics of what's going on underneath the water makes sense?
<v Speaker 3>Okay, So with the ghost Whisper, who's the main character,
<v Speaker 3>there are three.
<v Speaker 5>Really, there's malon Halloween, the cats, and then there's the
<v Speaker 5>boy Daniel and the cats wind up in a situation
<v Speaker 5>where they need help from the boy, and the boy
<v Speaker 5>is still young enough where the cats can talk to
<v Speaker 5>him if they want him to hear them, so he
<v Speaker 5>gets wrapped up in it, gets the ability to see
<v Speaker 5>ghosts as well, and then they help a number of
<v Speaker 5>spirits move from where they are when they get a
<v Speaker 5>little stuck to where they need to go. And part
<v Speaker 5>of the idea is that the spirit world is like
<v Speaker 5>one big ball of yarn, which is why cats get
<v Speaker 5>to guard it, so everything kind of clumps up. So
<v Speaker 5>he has a house that happens to be one of
<v Speaker 5>those big nodes where ghosts are going from where they
<v Speaker 5>were to where they need to be next, so they
<v Speaker 5>passed through the house. It was like from a production
<v Speaker 5>point of view, and from a storytelling point of view,
<v Speaker 5>it was a good way to have a six year
<v Speaker 5>old kid get involved with a lot of stories without
<v Speaker 5>having to contrive reasons for him to sneak out of
<v Speaker 5>the house. The biggest conceit in the book is that
<v Speaker 5>his parents sleep really well because he gets into a
<v Speaker 5>lot of adventures at night. That they don't hear. But
<v Speaker 5>I wanted to have reasons for lots of ghosts to
<v Speaker 5>come to this particular house. So his family moves there
<v Speaker 5>from Boston. It takes place in Tacoma, Seattle area, and
<v Speaker 5>their house that they're in happens to be one of
<v Speaker 5>these nodes, and the cats take over because that's what
<v Speaker 5>cats do. It becomes their thing to police. And then
<v Speaker 5>they get into the situation where all of a sudden
<v Speaker 5>they need to bring Daniel in as well.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, we're going to take a sharp break and we're
<v Speaker 3>going to talk about a few other topics that are
<v Speaker 3>I think really putting into chill. We'll be right back.
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<v Speaker 3>Welcome back everyone. We're talking to Tom Zalar. He is
<v Speaker 3>a comic artist and writer and we're talking about his
<v Speaker 3>new book, The Ghost Whiskerers. So in the book, we
<v Speaker 3>just talked about the characters. Daniels one of the key characters.
<v Speaker 3>He's a little boy, and you also brought in some
<v Speaker 3>interesting concepts because you talked about him. You know, in
<v Speaker 3>the book there's him at school, so at six years old,
<v Speaker 3>you know, there's always certain things you could learn and understand.
<v Speaker 3>Why did you bring in what you brought in, like
<v Speaker 3>the sharing with the crayons and some of the other
<v Speaker 3>themes that you brought in, is it teach children or
<v Speaker 3>have parents teach children? Or awareness.
<v Speaker 5>I wanted Daniel to have problems that would relate to
<v Speaker 5>the problems that the ghost we're having to keep them
<v Speaker 5>from moving on. So everything was kind of a learning
<v Speaker 5>experience for him, but he was still at the level
<v Speaker 5>where the things he was learning were going to be
<v Speaker 5>important to the adventures that he was having. I also,
<v Speaker 5>since he moved there, he's very out of place. He's
<v Speaker 5>trying to find his he's trying to find his rhythm
<v Speaker 5>with people. He's trying to merge in with this class
<v Speaker 5>of kids, but he's very much the outsider. So as
<v Speaker 5>a as a narrative technique, it becomes really interesting to
<v Speaker 5>make him see this world that he's not part of
<v Speaker 5>and isn't quite friendly to him, and figure out how
<v Speaker 5>to get involved with it. So the problems that he
<v Speaker 5>has with kids, worrying about sharing, or how they deal
<v Speaker 5>with their brothers and sisters, anything like that, those all
<v Speaker 5>become things that he learns that helps him move the
<v Speaker 5>ghosts from one place to another. Because what all happen
<v Speaker 5>is that they get when the ghosts appear, they're kind
<v Speaker 5>of stuck on something. So at one point a brother
<v Speaker 5>and sister appear and they're fighting, and it's they're fighting.
<v Speaker 5>They need to calm down so that they can move on.
<v Speaker 5>But Daniel doesn't have a brother or sister, but he
<v Speaker 5>sees enough other brothers and sisters having these kind of fights.
<v Speaker 5>That's what he brings to the adventure. And I tried
<v Speaker 5>to make it things that while the cats are very
<v Speaker 5>good at their job, and we see them actually take
<v Speaker 5>ghosts without Daniel's help, I wanted them to run into situations.
<v Speaker 5>For as much as we don't understand why cats do
<v Speaker 5>what they do, I don't think cats understand why we
<v Speaker 5>do what we do.
<v Speaker 3>No, they sure don't. This is a really good book
<v Speaker 3>because I think it teaches children certain like life lessons
<v Speaker 3>as much as they can get it. What is the
<v Speaker 3>age range for this book? Suggest to age.
<v Speaker 5>It's probably about five to twelve thereabouts.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, so yes, and I think we can get life
<v Speaker 3>lessons our whole life, but you know, especially children need them.
<v Speaker 3>You bring in something at the very end, You bring
<v Speaker 3>in adoption, which kind of heavy in a sense, you know,
<v Speaker 3>but and you know this day and age, and we
<v Speaker 3>were in mid twenty twenty five. There's all kinds of families,
<v Speaker 3>so I love that you brought it in. Why did
<v Speaker 3>you decide to bring in adoption at.
<v Speaker 5>The end, Well, thank you. My nephew is adopted, and
<v Speaker 5>I wanted to tell a story for him as much
<v Speaker 5>as for anyone else. So I took that and how
<v Speaker 5>I felt about him and all the things I wanted
<v Speaker 5>him to know, and I wanted to put that in
<v Speaker 5>the story. So like, while the story is for everyone,
<v Speaker 5>I very much wrote it for my nephew.
<v Speaker 3>I love it. It's personal like that I have a
<v Speaker 3>nephew that's adopted too. It's a very sweet ending without
<v Speaker 3>being sugary sweet, and I like that you brought in
<v Speaker 3>that concept and everything you did. Now we're speaking to
<v Speaker 3>all listeners here. We all love cats. A lot of
<v Speaker 3>us have kids or some young people in our lives.
<v Speaker 3>What makes your book different that they should buy it?
<v Speaker 5>I think that it has an awful lot of heart
<v Speaker 5>because story is so personal with it being my cats
<v Speaker 5>and essentially my nephew. And on top of that, I'm
<v Speaker 5>gonna brag just a little bit because I worked on
<v Speaker 5>My Little Pony comics. My Little Pony had a lot
<v Speaker 5>of lessons, but they were never cloying lessons. And I
<v Speaker 5>took from that as well that you learn stuff. But
<v Speaker 5>it's not that moment in eighties cartoons where people would
<v Speaker 5>sit down and say, well, what did we learn today? Kids?
<v Speaker 5>It's very much they're more natural. I think they're a
<v Speaker 5>little more nuanced. They're just a hair more realistic and
<v Speaker 5>crunchy and the kind of thing that you can really
<v Speaker 5>relate to with that feeling like you're being preached at.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, well said very well. Said what do you hope
<v Speaker 3>parents or the adults in a child's life or say,
<v Speaker 3>I already give the book to my niece or nephew, grandson,
<v Speaker 3>granddaughters too little, but give it the book to them.
<v Speaker 3>What do you want parents to see is important in
<v Speaker 3>the book?
<v Speaker 5>Oh? I want them first of all to have shared
<v Speaker 5>experiences with their kid, so to be able to share
<v Speaker 5>the book and have have that commonality. Because there's so
<v Speaker 5>much kids entertainment that's written specifically for kids that's almost
<v Speaker 5>off putting to adults. So by writing something that I
<v Speaker 5>hope is intelligent and interesting and engaging enough where that
<v Speaker 5>even while it's four kids, the parents or adults can
<v Speaker 5>enjoy it too. That's going to create a shared experience
<v Speaker 5>that they're going to be able to bond over. Like
<v Speaker 5>I said, that's also something that happened with My Little
<v Speaker 5>Pony where those stories were While they're very much written
<v Speaker 5>for a younger audience, they can be enjoyed by an
<v Speaker 5>older audience. So I wanted to bring that and hopefully
<v Speaker 5>it deals with enough kind of problems and issues like
<v Speaker 5>the small ones kids have about fitting in with a
<v Speaker 5>new group, that it gives them something that they can
<v Speaker 5>talk to each other about. And yeah, I just want
<v Speaker 5>to facilitate that kind of There's someone I heard that
<v Speaker 5>said that it's not just about quality time with kids,
<v Speaker 5>it's about quantity time because you only get the quality
<v Speaker 5>moments when you spend enough moments with them to have
<v Speaker 5>that you can't manufacture like I will now have quality
<v Speaker 5>time with you. It's more you need to be there
<v Speaker 5>a lot and then magic stuff happens. And I want
<v Speaker 5>to have things that help bring those moments about.
<v Speaker 2>Oh.
<v Speaker 3>I love that. Now, on the kid's point of view,
<v Speaker 3>what do you hope the kids get from the book.
<v Speaker 5>First of all, I hope they enjoy it because it's
<v Speaker 5>it's a fun story. I don't want it to feel
<v Speaker 5>like work. And I tried very hard to make sure
<v Speaker 5>that the kids are written like kids, like they should
<v Speaker 5>be able to see themselves and some things that they're
<v Speaker 5>going through in the kids in the story, so they're
<v Speaker 5>not like miniature adults. They're having kid length problems. You know,
<v Speaker 5>they lose a book, they it's always fitting in with
<v Speaker 5>new people or making a new friend, any of that
<v Speaker 5>stuff where I hope they see themselves reflected in it,
<v Speaker 5>and I hope it gives them a little more experience,
<v Speaker 5>like it broadens their thought, so like if you've never
<v Speaker 5>met someone who's adopted, it gives you enough to go
<v Speaker 5>on to know how loved those those adoptees are, and
<v Speaker 5>like some of the complications that come with either being
<v Speaker 5>adopted or what it took to be adopted or anything
<v Speaker 5>like that, where I just want to I want to
<v Speaker 5>give them a little more of a window into what
<v Speaker 5>the world is like in a friendly way, to see
<v Speaker 5>how vast and textured and awesome it is.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, and even though you bring in adoption, you have
<v Speaker 3>several other ghosts that we didn't even mention beside sister,
<v Speaker 3>and we're not going to go through all of them,
<v Speaker 3>but you also bring in a dog ghost.
<v Speaker 5>Yes, I kind of felt like if the cats were intelligent,
<v Speaker 5>other animals would be intelligent, and there would also be
<v Speaker 5>animals that would pass through. There's a there's a specific
<v Speaker 5>reason why the dog is attracted to them. It's not
<v Speaker 5>normal because it establishes that normally animals are much easier
<v Speaker 5>to pass through to the next place. But something happens
<v Speaker 5>that causes a bit of a disturbance, and it also
<v Speaker 5>won it allows for a lot of humor. That's that
<v Speaker 5>particular chapter I think is one of the funniest, and
<v Speaker 5>it just kind of opens your mind to the way
<v Speaker 5>that the dogs are written very different than the cats,
<v Speaker 5>and I liked playing with that difference between those two
<v Speaker 5>different characters.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, and what would you say to people that are
<v Speaker 3>listening and aren't the hearing you know, ah, you know,
<v Speaker 3>I love cats, but there's talk about spirits and ghosts
<v Speaker 3>and stuff, and this might be too much for a
<v Speaker 3>little kid. How would you reassure them that this is
<v Speaker 3>a good book for your child. I didn't think it
<v Speaker 3>was scary, but I mean, I'm an adult, so I'm
<v Speaker 3>not the best one to judge in that point, but
<v Speaker 3>I think it's perfectly acceptable for a child. But anyone
<v Speaker 3>who's who who's thinking, I'm not sure, says the word
<v Speaker 3>ghost it's for a kid. I mean there's other ghost
<v Speaker 3>things for kids, but.
<v Speaker 5>M yeah, it's it's designed to be more magical than
<v Speaker 5>frightening or scary, like all the scary stuff is actually
<v Speaker 5>pretty low stakes, like things get knocked around at the house,
<v Speaker 5>or there are noises or drafts, but there's nothing where
<v Speaker 5>the kid ever feels like he's actually in danger. Those
<v Speaker 5>stakes were set up intentionally, but it's also it's a
<v Speaker 5>magical fantasy universe that's built. So it's the kind of
<v Speaker 5>place where if a kid read the book, he would
<v Speaker 5>like to be in that universe, as opposed to a
<v Speaker 5>scary place where it's like, well it's an interesting story,
<v Speaker 5>but I would not want to live there. Like it
<v Speaker 5>just it adds a little magic to what's in your
<v Speaker 5>existing life, and it's it's you know, it's set up
<v Speaker 5>to be you know, like Casper the Friendly Ghost or
<v Speaker 5>something like that, where it's whether or not you think
<v Speaker 5>ghosts are real or any of that stuff. It's just
<v Speaker 5>that little magical add on to the world that's out
<v Speaker 5>there to make it a little more interesting, a little
<v Speaker 5>more fantastic.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, it's wonderful. I mean, it's written so well, and
<v Speaker 3>it's and the drawing is amazing. How long does it
<v Speaker 3>take you to draw or illustrate a book like this?
<v Speaker 5>I can draw a page day. It's also a question
<v Speaker 5>of what other stuff is going on at the time.
<v Speaker 5>And she's through it, she's actually doing really well. But
<v Speaker 5>my mom was sick for a while during it, and
<v Speaker 5>that threw me off my pace. It probably took me
<v Speaker 5>about six to nine months to actually get the book
<v Speaker 5>done from beginning to end once the script was approved
<v Speaker 5>by storm King.
<v Speaker 3>Well, I'm glad your mom is doing better, and thank you.
<v Speaker 3>You're welcome. That's pretty amazing A page a day. Do
<v Speaker 3>you ever find yourself stuck when you're trying to dream
<v Speaker 3>of what the characters should look like? Or in this case,
<v Speaker 3>I know you wrote you had your nephew in mine,
<v Speaker 3>So are his parents in the book too?
<v Speaker 5>No, that would be my brother and sister in law.
<v Speaker 5>I didn't put them in, but I telegraphed some of
<v Speaker 5>the adoption stuff by not putting them in. So my
<v Speaker 5>nephew is still young enough where he's still developing a personality,
<v Speaker 5>so it was more the visual representation of him and
<v Speaker 5>just kind of his youthful exuberance rather than anything aside
<v Speaker 5>from the backstory, nothing so specific about him like that.
<v Speaker 5>So I didn't feel bad about about not putting my
<v Speaker 5>brother and sister in law in there. And sometimes I
<v Speaker 5>do get stuck, but not for long. And I've been
<v Speaker 5>doing this long enough where I can either tell when
<v Speaker 5>it's something i'll figure out, or I can tell if
<v Speaker 5>it's something where I've done it wrong and I have
<v Speaker 5>to go back a couple steps. But a lot of
<v Speaker 5>times it's figuring out. Like I was saying about when
<v Speaker 5>we were talking about the kind of collective unconsciousness thing,
<v Speaker 5>you realize that you need to take a break from it,
<v Speaker 5>so you find something else to do. One of the
<v Speaker 5>things that worked really well was that if I was
<v Speaker 5>really stuck on something, or there was something that I'd
<v Speaker 5>written in the script that I didn't think was working,
<v Speaker 5>I still could finish inking and coloring and lettering the
<v Speaker 5>page before, and that it'd take the rest of the day.
<v Speaker 5>And while you're doing that, your brain will go in
<v Speaker 5>all sorts of different directions, and hopefully by the time
<v Speaker 5>that day is over, you've actually figured out the problem
<v Speaker 5>that you're going to have to get to the next day.
<v Speaker 3>A little bit of the writing Mystique shared with us,
<v Speaker 3>So thank you. Do you have another book coming out
<v Speaker 3>with kats in the future or would you like to I.
<v Speaker 5>Would love to do a sequel to Ghost Whiskers. That
<v Speaker 5>would be delightful. It depends on how well this one sells.
<v Speaker 5>I've got another pitch in with Storm King. I'm going
<v Speaker 5>to be drawing the Anger Birds comic, and I have
<v Speaker 5>a couple more romantic comedy comics coming out. I want
<v Speaker 5>to make sure that I'm doing it judiciously, like I'm
<v Speaker 5>not putting cats in it just because I really like
<v Speaker 5>cats and I want them in everything I'm doing. I'm
<v Speaker 5>trying to make sure that the story is the story
<v Speaker 5>is the story. But yeah, I would love to do
<v Speaker 5>more in this universe, and I'd love to figure out.
<v Speaker 5>One of the pitches I have is for something Egyptian,
<v Speaker 5>so there'd be lots of places where I can put
<v Speaker 5>cats in that as well.
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, wonderful. So let's tell everyone where can people
<v Speaker 3>find your books find out more about you?
<v Speaker 5>So you should be able to find it on Amazon,
<v Speaker 5>but you can also go to Storm kingcomics dot com
<v Speaker 5>and get it there, or you can go to my
<v Speaker 5>website Thhomz dot com. There's some weird stuff going on
<v Speaker 5>in the comics industry with distribution, so sometimes that gets
<v Speaker 5>a little glitchy. But you can go to Storm King
<v Speaker 5>or me directly. We have tons of copies if you
<v Speaker 5>get them from me, they'll come signed.
<v Speaker 3>Well wonderful. I'd like to thank you so much for
<v Speaker 3>coming on Catatude and I wish you amazing success.
<v Speaker 5>Oh my pleasure. Thank you very much.
<v Speaker 3>I hope you all enjoyed the show. The book is
<v Speaker 3>called The Ghost Whiskers for children from like five to twelve.
<v Speaker 3>You can find out more at Storm mckincomics dot com
<v Speaker 3>or tom z sence spelled t h o m z
<v Speaker 3>dot com. What a great book. Thank you Tom for
<v Speaker 3>coming on the show. Thank you to everyone listening to Catitude.
<v Speaker 3>We are the top cat show on pet Life Radio
<v Speaker 3>and that says a lot, so thank you so much.
<v Speaker 3>And of course a huge thank you to my cats,
<v Speaker 3>Dennis Mollie and Charlotte Mollie. Now I know how you
<v Speaker 3>watch a lot of cat TV, and I'm concerned a
<v Speaker 3>little bit, and I aug thank you to Mark winter,
<v Speaker 3>for making me and my guests sound amazing. Now remember
<v Speaker 3>lista attitude, have catitude.
<v Speaker 1>Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on Petlife
<v Speaker 1>Radio dot com
<v Speaker 5>T