Writing My New Comic Book Has Completely Taken Over My Brain

And I still don't know if it's a problem or not. (Images below)

It’s now January of 2026, the year of my great transition into a brand new life, something I’ve been planning for many years. Super excited about this.

…and I’ve already encountered a problem.

It’s an odd problem I never anticipated. I’m not even 100% clear on how to fix it, which is a new experience for me.

One of the many changes I’m making in 2026 is that I will start spending 75% my time in my “passion engine” and 25% in my “cash engine.”

The passion engine means business projects I’m working on primarily because I want to work on them, regardless of how much money they make. They may make a lot of money, they might make some money, or they might make no money, and any of those is fine with me.

The goal for the passion engine is to do what I want, not necessarily to make money (though, as always, making money is preferable to not making money).

The cash engine means projects I’m working on that I enjoy, but the primary point of them is to make money.

This would solidify this April when I scale back to a 4-day workweek, as I discussed here:

At 54, I’m Cutting My Work Week to 4 Days (Here’s the Real Reason)

Four workdays per week would mean 3 days in the passion engine and 1 day in the cash engine. Perfect symmetry.

So I started January 1st with gusto as I always do, deciding to dip my toe into my passion engine and start doing some work on that. I looked at my three or four passion projects, and picked one at random, the Black Dragon and Pink Firefly comic book I’m going to be releasing soon, as I discussed here:

Writing Fantasy Fiction

So I sat down, pulled up my old copy of Microsoft Word 2019 (you don’t need any of these new bullshit versions), and started writing the next issue in the comic book based on my overall story arc…

…and I kept writing…

….for six days straight.

When I finally snapped out of it and came to my senses, I realized that six fucking days had gone by and I had done virtually nothing else with my life. I got hardly any other work done, I didn’t have sex with anyone, I didn’t go to the gym, and so on. I even lost a little weight because I wasn’t focused on eating.

I had spent six days in a row, day and night, in a complete, blissful, orgasmic, flow state. Writing fantasy fiction is one of those things I was born to do, and the entire experience was absolutely wonderful beyond words that I can’t begin to describe.

…and now I’m behind on various important cash projects.

Fuck.

So for the past few days, I’ve been back in my cash engine, scrambling to catch everything up. Which is irritating, but not a big deal. I expect to be back to normal soon.

Yet even now, as I’m working in my cash engine, the passion engine calls to me, almost like a drug addiction.

When I’m not working on my cash projects, I am almost constantly thinking about the comic book. I’m visualizing scenes in my head. I’m hearing the characters speak with each other. Sometimes they’re planning, sometimes they’re arguing, sometimes they’re fucking, sometimes they’re fighting, but they’re always doing something.

When I lie in bed at night, instead of drifting off to sleep, I’m coming up with new scenarios, new arcs, new plot lines, or new scenes. Or I’m taking existing scenes and improving them, making them amazing. It’s better than watching my favorite movies.

I’m now completely in love with all of my main characters (there are about 16 of them by issue #20!), including the villains and antagonists, including the characters that started out as side characters, and including the characters that die or will die soon. I want them all to succeed, struggle, and succeed again (again, including the villains). I obsess over them like they’re real people.

As of Jan 1st, I had issues 1-13 written. Six days later, I was on issue 25 (at least first drafts), completing the entire first volume(!). As of today’s date, I’m now on issue 27 and have arced out the entire story, in detail, out to the end of volume two, and have outlined the story skeleton for volume three. (The artwork is more or less completed up to issue 8 and we’re proceeding on the rest.)

AND I’ve mapped out how the website will look AND I’ve outlined my sales videos where I describe how the comic is different than most of the other low-quality, woke, girlboss garbage out there AND I know exactly what I’m going to say (1.5 hours of content) for when I do the launch livestream.

I have so much story now that we’re probably going to sell compilations or graphic novels instead of just one issue at a time. That’s what Eric July did with the Rippaverse comics and it worked well for him. (I mean, 25 issues at a one-per-month schedule would take two fucking years. That’s way too long when SPEED is the most important thing in business right now.)

This comic book has hijacked my entire brain. It feels great and very weird at the same time. I don’t remember a time in my life when anything like this happened to me, but likely it was many years ago when I last worked on my third novel.

So now, my problem is figuring out how to contain this wonderful, amazing, passionate monster that has taken over my life. I still haven’t figured out how to do this.

My current plan is to devote all day on Mondays (my current one day off per week) to focusing on the comic, just to get it out of my system, then dabble with it during breaks throughout the rest of the week.

But at least three times now I’ve stopped my cash work to go write more of my comic book story when I really shouldn’t have.

My first inclination is to treat that like it’s a problem, because it probably is.

But now I’m asking myself if that’s bad. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it is. Or maybe it is before April 20th when I transition my schedule.

I’m really not sure, but I’ll figure it out.

I really don’t give a shit if this comic book makes any money once I release it. I’m just so fucking excited about seeing it completed, for me, that I’ve actually had trouble sleeping lately from the excitement.

It’s just been a very interesting experience this month, unleashing and taming this amazing, magical monster that’s been incubating inside me for so long.

It felt weird to talk about the comic without providing some images, so below are some of the rough draft character models.

It’s all coming soon. Very soon.