The brilliance of it is its naturalness. Fink combines a touching, human story with hardcore depictions of sex—even a penetration close-up!—and they just feel so right together. The feeling comes partially through solid storytelling, as every sex scene moves the tale along, and partially through use of gorgeous artistic trickery: the panel borders change from rectangular and plain to curvilinear and ornate and then back again, just as our own “rational” minds regularly become distorted with desire.

There are only a few archetypal themes in fiction, and I would say that the foundation underlying all steampunk is man’s desire to impose his will on nature. And as above, so below: in our Victorian setting man’s relationship with woman is a similarly misguided imposition of will. But unlike Greenpeace and second wave feminists, Fink seems to recognize that while misguided, it is not malevolent. It is the result of misunderstanding. The man in the book puzzles over an equation, “X=Y?” Are we the same?

“X=Y?” The dialogue in the book is in shapes and symbols: hearts, exclamation points, question marks. It’s a beautiful way to tell the story, and it’s a clever way of inviting the reader inside with both a wink and a comforting hand on the shoulder: “You know what they’re saying. You’ve been there.” And it works, because you have been there in at least a few of the story’s poignant moments of relationship normalcy: you’ve been in bed with your partner when one of you is hot and the other rather sleepy; you or your partner has been too preoccupied with work to love the other; you’ve felt a little too much or a little not enough.

The story showcases a wide range of human emotions around sex and relationships, as well as an equally large selection of sex acts and fetish fuel to drive them. Regarding the latter, the story shows or evokes chastity belts, adultery, sex toys, vibrator anxiety, oral sex, titty fucking, voyeurism, cuckoldry, partner swapping, threesomes, anal play, bisexuality, exhibitionism, group sex. It contains all that, and it’s still touching.

Yes, it is touching and titillating both. Neither is sacrificed for the other, and the book is worth it for that alone. In how many places can you see wet blowjobs next to tender portrayals of true love—and all of that next to perfectly rendered sound effects like the sharp VERT of a “power drill” and the TONK TONK TONK of a heartless tin man walking down the street?

It’s a simple book, but as it’s a porno I’ll happily forgive it that one fault.

• Read it for free online at Chester 5000 XYV.
• Buy it from Top Shelf for $14.95.
• Squeeze the margin from the little guy at Amazon for $8.79.

Bonus! View more hot comics by Jess Fink here on her website.

“Emergency vehicles entering ahead” is the first episode of Misinterpreted Street Signs, a comic rendition of what goes on in my head when I drive around town. It depicts what would happen if a hoodlum added a carefully placed exclamation mark.

Download the script: Emergency vehicles entering ahead – Draft 1.0

This script is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You’re free to draw the comic and create derivative works from it. Read this post for more details.

In fact, I’m writing right now. Mission accomplished? Well, no. Internally, I don’t feel like a writer. Externally, I lack social validation: no one calls me a writer. I am at a point A and I wish to be at point B. How do I get there? For me, I see three steps:

1. Learn to write
2. Write
3. Sell my writing

Learn to write

Learning is instruction, practice, and reflection.

For instruction, here are a few well done books on craft that I’ve read (and will continue to reread):

• Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain. This book is a brilliant overview of the nuts and bolts of fiction and I recommend it to any beginner, especially if they’re interested in writing genre pieces. He covers huge ground about writing fiction including why people read, the mechanics of character motivation and reaction, and the functions that each part of your story needs to fill. For a taste, see this post on scenes; if you like it, get the book, as it’s about 100 times more useful.
• The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler. The author applies the lessons of Joseph Campbell’s work The Hero with a Thousand Faces to writing stories. Campbell’s thesis is that The Hero’s Journey is a universal human phenomenon, and parts of it do indeed show up with regularity in all of our fiction. The book is primarily aimed at screenwriters and feels simplistic, but I think the author’s general advice to use the knowledge of archetypes and patterns to troubleshoot your stories is going to come in handy for me.
• On Writing by Stephen King. This was recommended to me by a friend as the author “is obviously someone who knows how to write for impact.” I found the autobiographical segments themselves to be well worth the price of admission. His advice on writing is rather generalized and I didn’t find much of immediate value to myself (with one exception: he beats the adverb’s are evil horse well past death, but it’s worth it), but I’ll reread it a few times as I grow as a writer to see what I was missing between the lines.

There are also plenty of resources available for free online. Search for “writing” in iTunes and then click on iTunes U and you’ll find hundreds of lecture videos and podcasts, many including famous and successful authors as guest lecturers. MIT’s OpenCourseware has a writing category as well. (Why anyone would pay for schooling in creative writing at this point is beyond me.)

And of course there’s direct instruction: reading others’ works. I’m going on a diet. I’m upping my fiction intake dramatically and reducing my television viewing to a fraction of what it’s been lately.

Practice is writing itself. The observation is obvious, but there’s something wonderful hidden inside: you’re never done. The field of ideas and how to communicate them is infinite, and I’ll never run out of challenges within it as long as I live.

Reflection is a critical part of learning anything. It’s impossible not to reflect a little as you write, but I suspect that with more reflection the results will be more significant. To that end I’m doing three things:

1. Ship early, ship often. It’s a lesson I take from agile software development. I’m putting my work out in front of eyes as often as I can for feedback, and I’m going to sell my work at every opportunity. I’m lucky to have a few friends who are willing to read and provide feedback, and I’ve also signed up at Scribophile for some extra eyes.
2. Reread and rewrite. Rewriting is a part of writing, and it’s the part that requires that you actually learned. I love getting feedback on my work, but my own feedback is important, too. What doesn’t feel right in my story? I’m working to identify the broken spots and fix them.
3. Express the lessons. This blog is a place to write about what I’m learning. After all, if I can’t condense ideas into words then writing perhaps isn’t for me.

Write

As a banjo instructional I read once said, “There’s no substitute for time behind the pot.” I’m trying to stick to Stephen King’s recommendation: sit down every morning, and don’t get up again until you’ve reached your word count quota. Mine’s a simple 1000 words right now.

I’ve added one step to make the process even more explicit: make sure that I have something to write the next day. It’s frustrating to sit down to a blank page in the morning and face a new quota without an idea to work on.

My mantra during this step is fuck my inner editor. My goal is to get out a draft, no matter how terrible it is. A quota can’t be met without words, and a blank page can’t be improved with rewrites.

Sell my writing

My goal is to make a living from my writing, and so, eventually, I have to sell it. The traditional sales method is to send off short stories to magazines, and novel manuscripts to agents and publishers. I may do this at some point in the future.

However, I’m also curious about the possibilities of direct sales through digital self publishing. My background is in web development and computer programming, so I have the skills to use the net to my advantage. I can package up my own writings and distribute them directly. This website might become the basis for that.

The value of the goal

The true value of having the goal to become a writer is that it gives me something to measure my decisions against: If I take this action, am I closer or further away from my goal? Breaking it down into the three steps makes it even clearer: Does doing this small thing help me learn to write, write, or sell my writing?

All I have to do is increase the frequency of actions for which the answer is yes and decrease the frequency of those that answer no. After enough of those little, easy decisions, eventually, I’ll be a writer.

Download the script: Robocuts – Draft 1.0

This script is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You’re free to draw the comic and create derivative works from it. Read this post for more details.

Mostly it means you’re allowed to draw my comics without asking permission, and it will make me super duper happy if you do.

I’m not an artist, but I’d like to write comics, so I’m writing scripts and putting them up here in the hopes that perhaps someone in the opposite position will find them useful. If you see one you’d like to draw, you’re totally free to do so as long as you obey the license. Generally it just requires you to link back (attribution), and often requires you to license your own work openly (share alike). If you draw something, I’d love to see it—please email me! I’ll be sure to link back to your art, too.

But the open licensing also means that you’re free to do other things with the scripts as well, such as post them on your website, write new stories with the characters, make YouTube videos, generally whatever you can imagine. Just be sure to give attribution and license accordingly.

Not all scripts are licensed the same, so check each script for the details on what is and isn’t allowed. If you’re unsure, or would just like to chat about it, feel free to email me.

Here’s the list of all of my openly licensed comic scripts.

During my high school valedictorian speech I declared that I would become a quantum physicist. Indeed, my do-little philosophy worked surprisingly well through college (superficially at least), and in 2004 I graduated with a B.S., double majoring in Physics and Computer Science. The latter major was partially because I’d enjoyed programming my TI-83 calculator in high school and also to prepare me for computational quantum physics. However, in the summer before my senior year I had my first epiphany: fundamental physics was too far removed from the world for me. I wanted to see the results of my work and touch people’s lives, not just rest assured that my research may or may not be useful to humanity somewhere between 10 and 100 years down the line (depending on what industrial and military applications were found first; and funding, of course).

And so, in the summer of 2003, I abandoned my earlier dream of becoming a quantum physicist and became goal-less.

After graduation I wandered into web development by accident or perhaps divine will, but not by conscious choice. And then I wandered out of it and went to Europe, and then back into it, and then out of it and onto the Appalachian Trail, and then back into it, and then out of it and into culinary school, and then back into it, and then out of it and drove across the country, and then back into it, and now again back out of it.

Eight years of that is enough. It’s time to stop fighting my subconscious and create a life that works with my nature instead of against it. It’s time to create a life that will bring out the best in me.

I wish I could say that I have a grand yet unfulfilled passion for writing, and that now’s when I’ve just gotten up the courage to go for it. Unfortunately, my inner compass does not point in any clear direction. Writing—learning to write, writing, and selling it—is a bit of a stab in the dark. And it’s scary here in the dark. I fear failure, and more than that, I fear “wasting time.” But the time is going to pass anyway, and my old path, projected out into the future, doesn’t lead anywhere pleasant. Faced with a cliff, the fool leaps.

It’s not a totally blind leap, though; there are hints that writing will work out for me. I wrote, a little, growing up. I used to read bunches of sci fi and fantasy, loving every moment, and I still read a little. All through my career people have remarked on my communication skills. Writing shares some of the traits of software that I love: work from anywhere, 0 cost digital distribution, I get to lock myself away sometimes. All of my heroes—Alan Watts, Aleister Crowley, O Sensei, Alan Moore—wrote (in the latter case, write); more importantly, their works bring me more peace than almost anything else on this planet. Writing will reconnect me with the world of ideas, will allow me to explore all aspects of life, and is itself a limitless discipline—I’ll never be done.

Aleister Crowley thought that once you’ve reached adulthood, the evidence of your True Will is already buried in your past, you just have to see it for what it is. Would you like to know what made me want to become a quantum physicist in the first place? A science fiction novel.

Reality is not changing, it is Change itself. It is the spontaneous Creation of subatomic particles and it is the spontaneous Creation of the thoughts in your mind and it is the selfsame void from which they both spring. No moment is like the last (and this one is all that we’d have were we called humans having instead of humans being).

Reality is Chaos because order is imposed by our minds, an evolutionary advantage with myopic qualities. There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is this: what order do you choose to impose?

And what man can choose it for you? A Magickal vow cannot be broken and a Magickal responsibility cannot be avoided. This is your Cross and it is the source of your resurrection. “Every man and woman is a Star.” This is your star’s power; this is your fusion.

A choice made with wisdom is humble. force yours upon another’s soul at the peril of your own. Those who walk fearlessly in Chaos know that the only sin is restriction.

The initiate chooses once; the adept is always choosing. Freedom is attainable here, the only type that cannot be taken away by those with the false belief that man can govern man. If you are the author of your life, what is authority?

The benighted man doesn’t see the choice at all, and so confuses his unconscious beliefs with Reality itself, to the consequences of violence and all Black Magick.

Choose ye wisely.

Science
ORIGIN Middle English (denoting knowledge): from Old French, from Latin scientia, from scire ‘know.’

Common misunderstandings and uncommon understandings about science are both eminently forgivable, as once the thin varnish of the high school textbook definition is removed we find it to be merely the latest, most popular label placed on top of the vast field of epistemology. And what is knowledge?

I don’t know! Day by day, my pendulum continues on its current arc and I grow less interested in knowledge and more interested in understanding. Perhaps paradoxically, it seems that proficiency in one is inversely related to proficiency in the other, which is part of the reason scientists and hippies hold such scorn for each other.

Understanding, I believe, is the Aha! moment. It is the epiphany. It is a spontaneous thought, born out of the same pregnant nothingness as the big bang. It is the momentary alignment of one’s self with reality. Like all things holy, it is ineffable. Knowledge is what happens when ineffable understanding is put into words. It is the symbolization of that understanding.

The primary difference between a poem and a scientific formula is simply a difference of language: they are both sets of symbols that describe reality as understood by their authors. That art (more often) deals with subjective reality and science (more often) deals with objective reality is a secondary concern. In some cases, such as psychology, there is barely even that distinction.

Art freely admits to not being reality, for art is that which is artificial. It is only out of coincidence that at this point in our social evolution—undirected and random, like all evolution—science’s root in knowledge seems more important than art’s root in the artificial. Rather than ranking them one after another in value, I see them as synonymous, and the definition of each sheds light on the other.

The symbol, while it has a reality of its own, is not the reality it describes, no matter how stern or flowery the descriptors used. If we misunderstand that, we put our personal aesthetic choice of language—stern and scientific or flowery and artistic—between our selves and our reality.

A symptom of our alienation from reality is our alienation from each other: we create schisms within our societies, massive cliques that masquerade as culture wars with each side’s grievance being that the Other denies reality. But they do not deny reality, they simply describe it differently.

It is a matter of aesthetics.

But in the dojo it is found that form is not functionless after all: it is communication and magick.

At the beginning of practice, to step into your hakama is to invoke into yourself the spirit of the samurai, to bring their heart to your training. And at the end of practice it is time for a simple meditation: to fold a hakama, you must give care to flatten its seven pleats, each of which symbolizes one of the virtues of budo: benevolence, honor, courtesy, wisdom, sincerity, loyalty, and piety.

Like a book, every word contains within it all of reality. But some words seem more fun to play with, and I find this one to be a gem:

surrender |səˈrendər|
1. cease resistance to an enemy or opponent and submit to their authority
2. abandon oneself entirely to (a powerful emotion or influence); give in to

Aleister Crowley wrote that, “Every man and woman is a star.” An aspect of the image conveyed is that just as every star has its own path in the sky, interacting with but never in the way of another’s, so too do people. To Crowley, the cosmos is symbolic of harmonious human existence when everyone acts in accord with their own True Will. But many people do not exist in accord with their True Will. Some orbits merely wobble, but some cross others’ paths, just as stars do in fact collide.

Crowley views the imposition of one’s will over another’s as Black Magick. The chaos magicians express this as, “The only sin is restriction.” But in the event that another sins against you, that an opponent attempts to impose his will over yours, what do you do?

In a martial context, our language encourages us to view our choices as fight or flight. But like all of reality is in a book or a word, all of reality is in a situation. Your options are infinite, even if your mind cuts them into two: a dichotomy, rather like a lobotomy (they share half their linguistic roots), leaves something valuable on the table.

Often surrender is an option—you could give the mugger your wallet, for instance. To surrender you cease resistance: you don’t fight. But, finishing the definition, you also submit to another’s authority. In Crowley’s language, you submit your will to another’s and so enable Black Magick: you allow the universe to exist outside of its natural harmonious state. But if you were to fight, you run the risk (or certainty) of imposing your own will on your opponent and perpetrating Black Magick yourself.

Fighting is the destruction of materials, of bodies, of True Will; it is a net negative on the universe. Fleeing and surrender are avoidance; their effects on the universe are measured as opportunity costs. Our culture knows this dilemma: we condemn both violence and the coward.

Outside of our dichotomy-turned-3tomy, what option does not resist — does not fight — but does not surrender? What option creates rather than destroys? I believe this, both in and out of a martial context, to be aikido (whether known by that or any other name). Aikido is the path that restores the universe to its natural harmonious state. It recognizes that every man and woman is a star. To remember that this is true not just of yourself but also of an opponent intent on harm requires great compassion. Or, as Crowley would say: “Love is the law, love under will.”

But there is still the block before we carve it into a dichotomy or 3tomy, and this is reality. In point of fact, your options in conflict are not plural. You have but one option: to react as you will react. To accept this is to surrender in the second sense of the word.

Two definitions seem more prudent than one because our culture has a strong sense of identity surrounding the self. As Alan Watts might phrase it, we feel ourselves to stop at the border of our bags of skin. Surrender in the first definition is ceasing resistance to an outward opponent; in the latter definition it is ceasing resistance to an inner one.

This, too, is what someone means when they say, “surrender to God.” Whether you take a view of God as an omnipotent grandfather or as a symbol for the natural universe, the resulting sensation is the same: the universe is out of your hands. You are not in control. The tension you may feel in the face of this is your own resistance to the nature of reality. To surrender to God is to cease that inner resistance. Without resistance, you exist in reality without effort, wu wei, in accord with the tao.

Though the resistance is to inner forces, there is linguistic baggage with “God” that makes it feel outer. Or are the inner and outer not as different as perceived after all? Here is the Atman in the Brahman, the Holy Ghost in the Trinity. Surrendering to God is surrendering to yourself. It is an affirmation of your wisdom and your power rather than a forfeiture of it. It is the recognition that you are a star.