Insomnia again. It's making me a little bit nuts, especially because I want to go to church this morning. It's frustrating, lying there in bed, tossing and turning, while ideas keep parading across my mind, making me want to get up and work them out on paper.

Yesterday morning, my wife suggested we go check out a new game store she found - have I mentioned how much I love my wife? - so we drove across the river to Saint Paul to look at a store called "The Source." Aptly named, as it turns out: it was about five times the size of All-Star Games (my favorite game store back in Diamond Bar, California), with a sizable DVD and comics section. They had about every roleplaying game known to Man, and a wonderfully eclectic collection of graphic novels spread over about four or five bookshelves. Not only did I find Kingdom of the Wicked, which I'd been meaning to find for the last, I don't know, five years, but I also found a couple of books by brothers and sisters in Christ, such as the haunting Revelation by Leo Bak and Chris Yambar's goofy Mr. Beat. I even found a copy of Proverbs & Parables, which features a strip by yours truly. It felt really good to know that my stuff - even if only a smidgin of work - was available for sale amongst such august company as Mike Mignola, James Kochalka, Alan Moore, Zander Cannon, and Jeff Smith. It made me feel like A Professional. I really like that feeling.

I fell in love when I first saw the comics store nearest me, Dreamhaven Books, and the game store right across the street, Phoenix Games. Phoenix was similar to All-Star Games in terms of selection, which is considerable - though the staff wasn't generally as ready to help as they were at All-Star - and Dreamhaven was bigger than any comic book store I'd ever seen before. So I was mightily impressed with these...but then I found The Source. It was like being in Heaven and Hell at the same time - Heaven, because the selection was like God's own library for geeks, and Hell because we couldn't really afford to buy anything. My wife got a couple of dice for our online Earthdawn game, but that was it. I left the store with a deep longing for material things (bad) and a stirring of my artistic desires (good).

I drew a little bit today - significant only because it's the first real drawing I've done at my art desk since we moved here in August. It felt good to draw again, and I began experiencing that Artsy Urge again while I was doing it - that weird creative-equivalent-of-adrenaline that starts flowing through my brain when I sit down and draw for more than an hour. It's addictive. You'd think it was nicotene or something; I spend a lot of time avoiding it, but when I sit down and do it for long enough, I want to do it more.

Having said that, I'm guessing that's completely unlike nicotene - I've never smoked - but it's what I imagine it feeling like.

So now I know something I'll miss deeply when I move back to California in a couple of years. For all that people think and say about Southern California being The Place To Be, it's really a barren wasteland when it comes to comics and games.

[Tangent: I just looked at All-Star Games' website, and found out that Peter Adkison, of Wizards of the Coast fame, is going to be there. It would be neat to meet the guy, find out what he's like. Nothing seemed to ever go on when I was in California, but now that I'm gone, all the cool stuff is happening...]

So now I feel really inspired to make mini-comics. Matt Feazell did a little dealy-bob about how to make mini-comics; they're easy and fun for the whole family. I printed out the directions and they've been sitting on my art desk for about two weeks now. Suddenly, after going to the store and looking at all of those comics, my brain is buzzing with ideas, one after the next. I love that, but as I said earlier, it's frustrating when you're lying in bed and trying to sleep. It's like my brain is taunting me.

I hope I continue to feel like this. I know what they say about being a professional writer: you can't only write when the inspiration strikes you, you have to write even when you don't feel like it. Still, I like inspiration.