Man this has literally been the worst month I have ever experienced. There have probably been others in the past, but as far back as I can recall myself, this one has to be at the top of the list. I've suffered quite a few sucker punches throughout this month. I'm hoping the latter half will at least allow me enough peace to recover.

First off, I met this awesome girl at the last Megacon (which was in February if memory serves)... well at least I thought I did. She cosplays as the Joker and had an amazing costume as well as makeup that I noticed right away as she came by my table. I offered her one of my "Lil Joker" prints which she insisted on paying for (nice of her to do so). We only met briefly and then I didn't see her for the rest of the con. I caught up with her again here on DA where she commissioned another piece from me. Over the next several weeks we spoke almost everyday. Despite the geographical distance between us, we grew really close. Pretty soon it was phone calls, text messages, messenger, web cam... good lord the late night web cam sessions. This all went on until June. I invited her to come stay with me while we both attended FSC 2009. Over that weekend we spent a great night together. A couple of weeks later, after many attempts to get her to even communicate with me, she tells me that she doesn't want any kind of relationship. She has very distinct "relationship issues" and is basically afraid of the concept all together. This comes after a possible future was already implied over several months. Talk about a wicked and unexpected sucker punch... to the throat. On top of that, my latest attempts to keep communication open once again utterly failed. For all you WoW fans, it's like being 2-shotted by a Rogue only there's no auto res or spirit healer. *sigh*

Next in line, I finally hooked up with an awesome colorist. Blake Wilkie . He was eager to work and we had agreed upon a decent rate. I couldn't afford, at the time, to advance enough to cover the entire book so I advanced him per bulk of pages that I sent. Initially I sent around 6-7 pages along with the funds to cover them. He sent me samples back through email which looked awesome. However, I got no response to emails asking for the high resolution version of those finished pages. I eventually received an email from him telling me that he had been burned by a previous client for over $800. Because of this unfortunate situation, he informed me that production on his end would be extremely slow in the future due to the fact that he would have to take on multiple contracts in order to recover what he had lost. Well we wanted to do what we could to keep him working with us because we liked the quality he produced. We were able to get a loan and advance him $400, which given our previous agreed upon page rate, would more than cover the rest of the book. I continued to send emails asking for the high resolution versions of the pages he had completed. I never got a response. The next email I received told me that he had another contract that he had to fulfill by a specific date. After that obligation was taken care of, he would continue work and have more updates for us. Afterwards I sent other emails, understanding that there were no updates to show us, but instead still requesting the hi res color files; no response. The deadline date he had mentioned in his previous email came and went with no word from him. After a few days, I sent another email, this time asking for updates as well as the hi res color files of what he had finished. Again, no response. At this point we figured enough was enough, we took it upon ourselves to open a dispute with paypal. Low and behold, he responds to us within hours of the dispute. At this point the deadline that I was shooting for, that he had also agreed to, was no longer going to be met with and we were going to look elsewhere for colors. He tells me that his deadline had to change to a later date (which he failed to inform us about) and that he was having to work through some kind of back injury (also which he failed to inform us about). I told him that I sent numerous emails requesting updates as far as work as well as the hi res files to what he managed to finish. His excuse there was that he never received those emails... yet he was able to respond to the email confirming the advance as well as our confirming his work situation. At this point we decided we couldn't work with him. Unfortunately for us he had already spent what we had advanced him and paypal was unable to recover anything on our part. In summary we pretty much got burned for just under $500 and we're currently researching other legal options to retrieve those funds. My advice to all those artists who will actually go through the effort of reading all of this, be very VERY careful in your dealings with Blake Wilkie .

Well that's pretty much it for my rant regarding the shittiest month I have ever experienced. I sincerely hope that I don't encounter another one of these... or at least I don't hit one for a very VERY long time. Here's hoping for a decent enough August. I'm honestly not expecting anyone to read this, just felt good to put it all down.

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