I’ve also done a painting of Lilith, but as it contains some nudity (artistic, I assure you), I won’t be posting it here… I’ve tried to keep this site “all ages”. If you’re interested, though, you can see it in my portfolio right here.

I’m really torn about this, but I’ve decided to end Hex Libris here. At least for a while. Though I’ve gotten lots of great response, the audience for this thing is not bigger now than when I started at the beginning of 1998. And though I’ve done it for the learning experience as much as anything, I did some disheartening math the other day: the time it takes me to create one of these is longer than the combined audience time spent reading each strip. By a fair amount. I’ve neglected work on portfolio pieces, and will be focussing on doing some of those now (just finished one I’m very proud of, but will wait until I’ve reviewed it one more time before unveiling it. Also, I’ve had some talks with different people about graphic novel work, so I’m working on presentations for that, as well.

It’s not definitely over forever. I love these characters. I honestly am heartbroken about stopping, but I think this format may just not be right for Hex Libris. Webcomics have a harder time gathering an audience for a story format. If I start a new Webcomic, it will be in the short-form newspaper style, where they may be short storylines but not some overarching and complicated backstory.

If you want to know if and when things start up again, please use the Get Hex Libris by Email function under the strip. You’ll receive any new work I post here in your email. And nothing else, I promise.

For some reason, I feel like I’m letting people down. But after some real agonizing and discussions with Maggie, this seems like the right time to do this. Thanks to all of you who have been so supportive.

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
Rating: Highly Recommended

I would have loved Pretty Monsters when I was a teenager. Heck, I loved it now that I’m farther away from my teenage-hood than feels comfortable.

While I’ve read what’s called “high fantasy” with elves and dragons and such trappings, I’ve always preferred the “magical realism” school of fantasy. Stories that depict events that seem normal until, suddenly, they aren’t. Here, you find obsessive teen-age poets, summer camp outcasts, wannabe soccer professionals and more than one surfer. Nary an elf and hardly a sorcerer to be seen.

The magic here, and I will call it magic, is the way she slowly and naturally gives information that changes the way you see what’s happened so far. Several pages into the first story, there’s a line that sums up what goes on in this book.

Anyone might accidentally dig up the wrong grave. It’s a mistake anyone could make.

–From The Wrong Grave

I mean, how could you not love that line?

All of these stories are pieces I wish I’d written. And when I say the collection is uneven, I merely mean that some stories are merely “really really good” while others are amazing. For me, the best were “The Surfer,” “Magic for Beginners,” the title story and the aforementioned “The Wrong Grave.” In all of these, Link pulls off the nearly impossible trick of establishing a believable set of characters and situations, and then veering off in odd but unforced directions. What you think you see or know changes gently, rather than settling for sudden surprise twists.

A warning, though: if you like easy answers and endings that reveal all and tie things up in a bow, this is not for you. In a lesser writer, the endings of some of these stories would be frustrating. You’ve come so far in a story, and to find that what you thought of as the “big question” to be answered will remain a big question can frustrate some readers. But when you reread these stories (and rereading them is part of the fun), you’ll see how the stories change in a second reading. And people with no patience for metafiction, in which the story itself addresses the way in which it is telling the story, will hate this.

Me, I loved going back and looking at the stories. And the stories within stories. And trying to answer the question of whether something happening is fiction within a fiction, or even fiction within fiction within fiction. I don’t remember the last time I felt the need to re-read something immediately, and rediscovering that almost teenage enthusiasm for something new.

If I’ve piqued your interest, you can read some of these stories online at Kelly Link’s website.