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Email the author at qwanderer7+lgc@gmail.com

The Elves of LleuGarnock is Copyright Irene Pitcairn<2008-2009. The Elves of LleuGarnock is hosted on ComicGenesis, a free webhosting and site automation service for webcomics.

LleuGarnock HOME Archive     --- CHAPTERS & Sections     --- Chapter 1: Amaranta's Grandchildren 1-1: The Berry Incident 1-2: Destiny & Mr. Cat 1-3: By Garnock River 1-4: Pursuit of Fruit Chapter 2: Gemini Alone 2-1: The Dangers of Thinking 2-2: Healing 2-3: Destiny or Somesuch 2-4: Humans in Town Chapter 3: Laws and Secrets 3-1: Comforts of Home 3-2: Colliding Worlds 3-3: Living History 3-4: Gifts Chapter 4: Calindell Roads 4-1: Blue Girl 4-2: Toad's Story 4-3: Getting Along 4-4: Arledge Chapter 5: Under the Full Moon 5-1: Black Cat Inn 5-2: Corn Cat 5-3: Helpless 5-4: Story of the Opals Chapter 6: Prisoners of the Earth 6-1: Bitter Words 6-2: Kings and Constraints 6-3: The Shape of a Prison 6-4: Lightless Chapter 7: Bonds of Hardship 7-1: Differences of Opinion 7-2: Truitt's Tale 7-3: Strange Magic 7-4: The Black-Haired Man 7-5: The Evil-Hearted Monk Chapter 8: Shedding Light 8-1: Curses on Verses 8-2: Who Needs Keys? 8-3: The Sacrifice 8-4: Prayers Chapter 9: An Unequal Fight 9-1: Drawing the Curtains 9-2: Power of the Staff 9-3: To the Ends of the Earth 9-4: And Back Home

April 13, '08
You don't actually have to read all this, I'm mostly talking to myself.

I'm doing more long-term work to distract myself while my brain fits things together - I'm redesigning some characters that won't appear for a long time yet, and reading some Sandman comics. Sandman - now there's a comic where the theme of storytelling works. Where just about any quirky device or startling imagery can be made to work. But it absolutely can't be read page by page; it must be read in larger units. I think in general I am better at long-term stories. I've recognized this for a long time. I know I'm better with a more serious plot and a smooth, slow pace. So I keep coming back to this question of why am I trying for humor?

Because in order to provide motivation for a project, a regular schedule to keep up with is very useful. If such a schedule is private, it doesn't mean anything. I need an audience that has an expectation of the timeliness and quality of my work. This is mostly in my imagination at this point, but because I know it's possible that there are a lot of people out there waiting for my next page to go up, I can sit and bang my head against the writer's block for hours. Sometimes chips come off and I can work with them. These times seem longer than the times when I am actually excited and inspired, but the fun times fly by and leave pages of evidence behind them.

So I think of those imaginary people each time I draw a page, and I want that page to be worth something. A lot of the time humor is the way to make that happen. Sometimes it isn't. And a lot of the time I know that the pace that this style leads the story to go, reading it week to week will make people crazy. But the more I read through my work, the more I realize that when it's all done and put together in a book, the pace will be almost perfect - maybe a little fast, even - and the humor adds a lot more to the story as a whole than it takes away.

I apologize to my eagerly awaiting audience, no matter how big or how small or how imaginary. I've been using you to keep myself going every day, and yet not making your everyday enjoyment a priority. That's not going to change, but the way I figure it, the longer I keep using you as motivation, the more each new reader will get out of the accumulated material, the real story the way it was meant to be read. And I guess that's how most webcomics work, really.

I just worry about it a lot more than most of us.