Sunshine, rainbows, and lollypops

This time around, I'm signing into this blog to be nice :). Today morning, I woke up, brushed my teeth, and hit a considerably large creative block. No amount of early morning caffeine was helping me get around it. So I thought I'd take a break and go through all my umpteen different blogs. Today happens to be the first day on which I went through this blog under a thoroughly objective, dispassionate light. I am disappointed! The first thought that came to my mind was "Boy! This blog must belong to a grumpy old underdog of a spiteful billy-goat!". The kind that snaps and charges at you at the slightest sign of provocation. But dear friends, that is the farthest from the truth. Though not highly people-trained, I'm generally well-behaved. The people who maintain close proximity with me would totally vouch for it. Writing spiteful blog-posts is as evil as I can possibly get ;)

In my defense, I've been hitting this blog only when in a bad mood. Taking into consideration the infrequency of blog-posts here, you can with no further doubt, arrive at the conclusion that I'm mostly a happy person. :D Without further ado, let me move on to letting you guys know about the good things that have been happening around me.

I am not an unpublished artist/writer anymore! Yaaayyy!! I now have an ongoing comic strip in Indian Express, which is one of the leading national dailies in India. Its called Marcus and More and the stories revolve around the lovable chihuahua Marcus, Jinx - a witch disguised as a black cat, space aliens, and of course, a few not so significant humans. The first strip came out on April 24th and it has been going well since, finally gaining me some exposure. For those of you who have missed the previous strips, here is a link where you can read them --> Marcus and More

Also, on the 24th of this month, Amma's Tales brought their second book called Tail Tales out in the market. The book is written by Dr. Hema Vaidyanathan and of course, illustrated by yours truly ;). Rosh is the colorist and Merryn the graphic designer . You can read more about that and also take a sneak peek inside it here --> Tail Tales

Right now, alongside the Marcus strips, I'm also working on the first graphic novel from the Libera Artisti. Its an anthology of four 24-page stories, two(stories, of course, silly! Not pages) of which are going to be by me. The other two stories are by our beloved artists, Rosh and Sinu. It should ideally be out by the end of this year. I will keep you guys updated on that either through my blogs or through the Libera Artisti page on Facebook.

As for the highlights of my 'non-professional' life, I got to re-bond with one of my best friends. What is funny is that we hadn't noticed that we had drifted apart over the years until all of a sudden the walls(that we didn't even know had formed between us) disappeared and we found us closer to each other than ever before

Hopefully, in two weeks, I will be traveling to Bangalore to meet Merryn and a few other important people. In all probability, my next blog-post will be on that. So until then, its adieu from your friendly neighborhood graphic novelist. Peace out! :)