Absences

I feel like I owe some kind of explanation for my recent absence from this blog and from social media. And since I’m not going to be talking about this on social media, I should talk about it here. So, let’s start from the small stuff and work up to the big stuff.

Most recently, I’ve been knocked on my ass by a viral infection – it started Tuesday before last, as a bit of a sore throat, and then suddenly, last Saturday, a friend I was meeting wondered why I looked pale as a ghost, and then I got home and found myself close to unable to get up from bed. The next day, I lost my voice – this stayed gone till Thursday, and still isn’t fully back to normal.

The worst of it is over now, and I’m expecting to feel mostly fine by Monday. My doctor isn’t sure quite which viral infection it was, but there’s been one going around this geographical area for the last month or so, and it was most likely that. I had cousins visiting a couple of weeks ago, and apparently all of them had had something similar one by one the week before they visited – could’ve got it from one of them.

I’ve had some other stuff going on before that, more on which below, but before that, let me try and do the thing I’ve been unable to do for the last few weeks, and actually promote my book.

The collected edition of In Your Skin – that is, the whole book! – will be out in comics stores on 28th October, and in bookstores everywhere on 24th November.

In Your Skin is written and lettered by me, with art by Som, colours by Francesco Segala and Gloria Martinelli, design by Dylan Todd and Courtney Menard, edited by Eric Harburn, with consultation by Allison O’Toole. In Your Skin is produced by Tiny Onion, and published by Image Comics.

From Image’s official description:

Bollywood body horror collides with erotic obsession as a die-hard fan resolves to replace her retiring screen idol, blurring fantasy and flesh in a dark, intoxicating debut.

Priyanka is a Bollywood uber-fan who has been obsessed with film star Ayesha Sen since she was a kid — she’s watched her movies over and over, and knows her dances beat for beat. But after a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet her idol goes awry, and Ayesha announces her impending retirement from movies, Priyanka decides that if Ayesha isn’t going to live the life she's supposed to, Priyanka would be more than happy to take over for her …

Aditya Bidikar (The Department of Truth, Blue in Green) and rising star artist Som (Crocodile Black) present a twisted exploration of celebrity culture, identity, and image that’s perfect for fans of The Substance, Perfect Blue, Black Swan and David Cronenberg.

I haven’t been able to do the required promotional stuff in the last couple of months, but dear God, I’m so proud of this book – it’s weird, upsetting, sexy, dense and literate, and it’s got some of the absolute best body horror art you’re going to see this year courtesy of Som. It takes some big swings, and I wrote it to stand besides the kinds of books I grew up reading, and that made me love comics in the first place.

The collected edition includes an introduction by James Tynion IV, for which I’m very grateful to him, and some wonderful production design by Dylan – even cooler than what he did on the singles, which was already marvellous.

I don’t know how pre-orders affect collected editions, since they go to comics stores and bookstores, and presumably can be reordered once sold out, but nevertheless – pre-orders for the book close on Monday 21st September, so let your local comics store or bookstore know that you’d like a copy.

(For Indian readers: My assumption is that the book should be available here sometime after 24th November, and I’m having conversations with bookstores and distributors to figure out what I can do to make sure that happens. Stay tuned!)

Anyway, I mentioned in the last post that I’ve been going through some health stuff – my old chronic back pain suddenly came back, and I found I had a vitamin deficiency that was causing it (and the fact that I was fairly dehydrated). It doesn’t seem like anything major, but it’s enough minor things happening at once that we’re trying to figure out if there is something big underlying all of this.

The following is somewhat long and personal, please feel free to skip it if you so wish.

I had a fairly frantic first half of the year. I’ve mentioned it on here, but I haven’t really detailed it. From January to June, I was either traveling, or working flat-out. I’d very smartly scheduled only about three months of work for those six months, but the three months of travel meant that when I was home, I was working full days, on top of which I was still writing the book, producing promotional content and doing everything else that it takes to make a book (giving feedback on art and colours is still work with decision-making involved). One could say I should’ve avoided the travel, but there was always good reason for it, either on a work or a personal level.

During the travel, I was occasionally concerned that my back issues might return due to how much time I had to spend stationary in planes or cars, but by June end, they hadn’t, and I felt lucky.

When I got back from my last travels, I had to immediately move house, and the next month or so went into balancing work and fixing up the new place, so it wasn’t till mid-July that I felt I was “back home”.

The other thing that happened, and this is both entirely on me, and almost certainly what caused my health issues, is that because I was in this liminal mode of either travelling or overworking, I’d constantly tell myself I’d start taking proper care of myself once this bit was done, because doing all of that and taking care of myself was too overwhelming an idea. So for six months, I’d been eating badly, not exercising, working 12-14-hour days, and not doing any of the small things that mean taking of myself.^[1]

Anyway, all of that is the symptom. The disease is the fact that if something isn’t of value (i.e. work), or giving me an intellectual workout (reading, watching movies etc.), I generally find myself unmotivated to do it, and I use all this other stuff as an excuse to not do it. The problem isn’t the work or the travel, the problem is that I still figured out how to make the mundane, boring stuff that makes up life an integral part of mine – how to think of it as important. I’m so focussed on getting things done, I don’t quite know how to just do things.

This is the third time I’m getting an alarm call like this, and let’s hope I listen to it. I’m way better about these things now than I was in 2021, when I had my first brush with a health emergency, and, as I said, while this has taken me out of commission, it ultimately seems to be a minor thing. But I’m also older, and it takes less to put me out of commission, you know.

But here’s the thing. The moment all of this started, I took everything off my plate that I could. Work was already under control, thankfully (I only had to do about 50 pages of work over the last month, and I could do it in small increments), but I stopped all the Instagram stuff, decided to postpone all my planned writing work to October and beyond, and spent a lot my time resting, reading, and thinking.

Especially when the viral infection hit, I had no choice but to rest everything – including my brain. It was a weird time. I had an elevated heart rate throughout the infection, and I found it pretty much impossible to sleep – either that or the constant coughing kept me awake. Instead, I’d spend my nights in this in-between dreaming state where my mind would just concoct images based on whatever I’d been reading or watching that day. I’d wake up, realise I hadn’t really been asleep, and still have those strange images running through my head.

The day I was reading Jurassic Park, for example, my brain played me an entire alternate version of The Lost World which had nothing to do with the real thing. I finished reading Sjón’s wonderful From the Mouth of the Whale, and had a deucedly odd night in which I was asked if I’d like to worship Sága the Norse goddess of storytelling. I declined mainly because I felt it’s a lot of work, and a God is a pretty serious thing. Fun stuff like that.

This meant that during the day, I was sleep-deprived and brain-fogged, and I couldn’t read or watch anything too difficult or heavy, so I either reread old books (like the above-mentioned Jurassic Park) or did my version of trash watching, which is rewatching mainstream movies that I’ve already seen (e.g. films by Scorsese, Spielberg, or Tarantino). My brain actually felt like it got some rest along with my body.

This did, however, make me realise how much I demand of myself when I’m not sick. Even my “leisure” days usually involve me writing, or drawing, or learning something new. I constantly require my days to be meaningful, and anything that doesn’t fit this is put aside for another day. No wonder I feel I’m exhausted and running behind on everything – I’m trying to live multiple lives in one. My friend Omkar and I were chatting about The Prestige at some point, and he said of Christian Bale’s character – Wouldn’t that be a good way to get everything done? Just have a twin who’s equally committed to the bit.

But what that tells us is that we’re trying to cram enough life into our days that it’d require two people to do it properly.

I have, therefore, been trying my best to figure out how to live in the moment. I reread Four Thousand Weeks, which was very helpful (I’d only remembered about a third of the book – there’s a lot there of value that I’d forgotten). I’m also trying to figure out how not to be so demanding on myself. I’m way kinder to myself about my failings than I was in my 20s, but I still ask a lot of myself, and I’d like to … not.

Anyway, the hope is that I still haven’t done permanent damage to my body in all of this. We’ll be doing some blood tests and checkups once the virus is fully out of my system. I’ll keep you posted.