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It wasn’t the moment I received the letter from the publisher that they had accepted my manuscript, nor was it the moment when I held the newly published manuscript in my hand.

“Condo Joe” was the first official novella I had written. It was also the first novella I had written that I had actually felt something for the main character, in this case Condo Joe. It was a major moment in my journey as a writer and a moment I know I will never forget.

The inspiration for “Condo Joe” came from Charleston, SC, more specifically The Morris Island Lighthouse of Folly Beach, James Island, but I had not actually begun the novella until I had returned to my home town New Castle, PA.

We are all familiar with Dickens’ “The Christmas Carol” or “The Grinch that Stole Christmas”. The more I wrote “Condo Joe” the more it reminded me of “The Christmas Carol” and it could easily have been entitled “The Grinch Who Stole Folly Beach”. Titles are everything. Things changed when I flipped the title from “Joe Condo”, a title with not much of a ring to it, to “Condo Joe”. Much better.

Anyway, I had finished “Condo Joe” and immediately sensed a sequel. It was a sequel that I had not anticipated, but nonetheless, it was a sequel I had felt very strongly about writing. I would call the sequel “Condo Joe: King of Carnival”.

In “King of Carnival” Condo Joe is elected mayor of Charleston. One of Condo Joe’s major accomplishments is completely restoring The Morris Island Lighthouse. The only thing that had gone wrong with the project involved the lighthouse’s windows—one had to be slightly relocated. The citizens of Charleston were not too thrilled about it at first until engineering had explained that the window had to be relocated to preserve the lighthouse’s structural integrity.

At the time Charleston is on the verge of bankruptcy—Condo Joe used his own money to restore the lighthouse. The only hope Condo Joe has of saving Charleston was found its history with pirates, in this case Stede Bonnet, the “Gentleman Pirate” who had been hanged in Charleston in White Point Garden.

Condo Joe had heard a rumor that Bonnet had buried treasure on Folly Beach. The problem was no one knew where he had buried it if it was, in fact, buried there.

Well, Condo Joe knows the City of Charleston does not have the funds to dig up the entire beach for the treasure chest, so he has to explore other options.

Well, I am not going to go into the entire story, only to say that it involves Condo Joe, of course, the Charleston Mermen minor league baseball cheerleaders, and Condo Joe’s angry ex-wife who wants to destroy the lighthouse with a missile.

Well, the missile reaches the shores of Folly Beach and The Morris Island Lighthouse, but, due to its trajectory, the missile actually misses the lighthouse, going right through its windows. The missile does leave a huge crater on Folly Beach, which in turns uncovers an object of what Condo Joe and the people of Charleston think is the treasure chest.

Condo Joe, too excited to think, ventures down into the creator, discovering that the buried object is, indeed, the treasure chest. Unfortunately as he tries to climb up out of it its walls begin caving in.

This is where I had my moment as a writer. I could not believe how attached I had become to Condo Joe. There was a strong possibility that Condo Joe would not make it out of the creator, and I did not want him to die! It was a very emotional moment for me. I had not planned it, but I had become attached to Condo Joe, which meant I had done something right as a writer.

Now, I am not going to tell you how the sequel to “Condo Joe” ends, but I will say that the moment he is climbing for his life from the creator, I had a choice to make, and I wondered if it would make or break the story.

I had first encountered the semicolon in classic literature in college. It seemed to appear in short stories like Barn Burning by Falkner. It seemed to turn what I thought was prose into technical writing—which I was not a fan of.

But back then I didn’t really understand the semicolon or its function in punctuation, but, once I had understood the semicolon and its purpose in prose, I got very comfortable with it. I thought it made my prose look so intellectual, so sophisticated. I used it whenever and wherever I could, and soon my prose spiraled out of control until the semicolon took over me.

I remember a critical paper I had written for a college literature class. Even though I had gotten a decent grade on the paper, the instructor, after I had asked him, pointed out in the paper where I had gotten a little too happy with the semicolon.

But even after that moment with my instructor, the problem I had with the semicolon still hadn’t quite sunk in yet—that is until it really mattered—just after I had published my first work of fiction Jamaican Moon and Other Stories, a collection of three novellas.

I had taken it for granted that the publisher would take care of all the proofreading—until I had received a telephone call from a good friend who had bought the book.

Although she had read and enjoyed the book, “The book,” she informed me, “was riddled with errors!” but luckily for me, she didn’t hold me responsible—even though I really was. The “suspension of disbelief” in fiction is one thing—but asking the reader to suspend their belief in bad grammar is an entirely different matter. Inexcusable!

I went through the book. Typos were everywhere, on every page. They were very distracting! An average of three typos plagued every page. Very unacceptable! What is acceptable—an average of only three typos—per book! And clearly I had not used the semicolon in moderation.

I immediately telephoned my publisher in Texas who had informed me that proofreading manuscripts wasn’t their responsibility. The price you pay for a non-traditional publisher.

But thank God it wasn’t too late to correct all the typos. Page by page, I corrected all the typos and wherever possible replacing a semicolon with a period.

I guess that process—going through the manuscript and getting rid of all the unnecessary semicolons—was time I spent in semicolon anonymous.

Having gone through semicolon anonymous, I am, by no means, an expert on the semicolon, and I am by no means cured. I still use it—sometimes more than I probably should—but I do try to use it in moderation.

If there is one author I think uses the semicolon correctly, it is mystery novelist Carl Hiaasen. Not only does he begin each novel with sentence with the preposition “On”, he also uses the semicolon quite sparingly, but I’m sure there are many more authors who do.

I don’t know what rule Hiassen uses with the semicolon, if he even has a rule, if he even needs a rule, but the rule I have now with the semicolon is that if I can eliminate the semicolon all together, I do, splitting the sentence up into two or more sentences.

This may sound a little extreme—may now I am suffering from semi-colon shock—but this practice with the semicolon has led me to believe that a perfectly clean sentence with exception to, of course, the period is a sentence with as little punctuation as possible, including the comma, yes, even the comma.

Using short simple sentences, at least for me, is the way to write. Short simple sentences will keep you out of trouble like the trouble I had with the semicolon.

I enjoy listening to all kinds of jazz, from night club jazz to New Orleans street jazz.

Although I am not a jazz musician of any sort, I have a theory: That there are a lot of similarities between drawing cartoons and playing jazz in that you improvise a lot.

I draw cartoons quickly with short swift strokes. It is as if when I am drawing a cartoon I am signing an autograph. From the moment my pen hits the paper, I do not stop drawing until the cartoon is completed.

Now, I am not saying that when I draw cartoons everything goes perfectly. Far from it. I mess up a lot. The trick is to just keep drawing and try to hide your mistakes as you go along. Improvise.

You have to draw like a magician. You have to give the illusion that the mistake, if you find it, was actually intended, or part of the original carton.

Cartooning, contrary to what art critics might think, is fine art. It is just a fast paced fine art.

You look at a cartoon closely. The cartoonist, you will notice, knows exactly what he and she is doing. Everything is balanced, in correct proportion.

In other words, not just anyone can draw cartoons. It goes beyond doodling, or to the next level of doodling. It is the fine art of doodling.

When painters paint, the way they move their brush, the way they command it, they paint at a literary pace. When cartoonist draw, they move at a much faster pace—at least I do.

The best example of which I can think of this is a video called The Making of New Yorker Cartoon on YouTube. It features the cartoonist, David Sipress, who explains the process of drawing a cartoon as he is drawing it.

Perhaps, Sipress explains it perfectly:

You draw it. It kind of feels like the idea passes through you. You weren’t responsible for it. It kind of happened to you. You look down and see it on the page. It surprises you. It delights you.

Now, of course, the more you draw a cartoon, the better you get at it. For instance, I draw cartoon boys, girls, snowmen, and Martians so much I rarely mess up.

Pine trees are one of the easiest cartoons to drawn. You can kind of slop them into a cartoon, and they still look good.

The wider, or longer my strokes, the harder it is for me to draw them. The shorter the stroke, of course, the easier.

It is almost as if when you are drawing a cartoon, you are participating in an Olympic event. In this case, the gymnastics of drawing cartoons. The dismount, believe it or not, is the easiest part, signing the cartooning.

It takes me about five minutes to complete a cartoon. If I add color, which on occasion I do, a cartoon takes longer.

I believe the best cartoons with color take very little color, just enough color to draw the observer into the cartoon. I usually add literary a spot of color to the polka dot I draw on little Martians.

I used to draw cartoons the old-school way with a pen a paper, well, not that old-school. The old-schoolers used fountain pens.

Now, I draw cartoons digitally with a pen tablet and stylus.

There is only one thing I do not like about drawing a cartoon with a pen tablet and a stylus. As you draw digital strokes across the tablet, the line sometimes breaks or skips.

Sometimes, there is nothing you can do about it. You have to stop and start drawing the cartoon over.

I wonder if the rubber stylus tip is chipped, ripped, cut, or sliced into, or the tablet has too much dust on it. I do not know.

Nonetheless, being it pen and paper or pen tablet and stylus, I draw at the same pace—quickly with short swift strokes.

There is nothing like the feeling, though of completing a cartoon, and if it makes you laugh, if it delights you, then you know you have a winner for the reader, but it the cartoon has to start with the cartoonist.

I have been publishing my cartoons on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for about two months. Here is what I learned so far.

I began with TikTok, where, with a real purpose in mind, I published single-panel gag cartoons.

The first week after publishing around 100 cartoons that featured snowmen and Martians, several of them got more than 500 views. Some got more than 700 views, and some surpassed 900 views.

Which video would be the first to make the 1k Club? The 1k Club, in case you are wondering, is a club I created. Yes, 1k is modest.

Things looked pretty promising. I thought I was off to a good start—that is until a family member went on TikTok and watched some of my cartoons. The cartoons they liked, but the background music, they questioned.

Well, although the views on some of my posts surpassed 500, I could not live with the background music. It was not just the wrong music. It was awful! It was rap—with the F-word repeated like a parrot. It was the background music to one of my most-viewed posts Shut Up, or I’ll Shoot.

I deleted took the video immediately.

I began to wonder then worry. I went through the first dozen or so posts. Sure enough, the music in the background of most of them were not only the wrong music but bad. I was not aware of it, but if you do not choose the music for you posts, TikTok will chose it for you.

Bad idea.

Of all the options you have editing your TikTok post after you have published them, oddly enough, changing the music is not one of them. Ugh.

I had no choice. I took the posts down. It costs me thousands of views. I re-posted them. The results, the views, were totally different. The re-posts could not seem to break 300 views. I wonder: Had these posts gotten a lot of views because of the bad music? Gosh, I hope not.

Since then, I have yet to surpass 300 views on even new posts—but at least the background music that I had chosen is the right fit—or at least the most fitting. I believe for my cartons, New Orleans jazz fits best.

I just could not live with 300 views or less, so I decided to start over. I deleted my TikTok account and starting a new one. The followers I had, gone.

Once realized that, I decided to live with what I had done, and before it was too late, 30 days, I reactivated my account. TikTok welcomed me back with sarcasm.

I’m wondering if TikTok just has just has to recover from all the drastic changes I made to my account in such a short time. Will it be months before I start to see some real growth again in view? We will see.

I’m learning, of course, that TikTok, a short video-based platform, is not the greatest platform for still-life, one-panel cartoons. It does not make sense to add a caption to a gag cartoons. They already have captions.

What is more suitable, however, for one-panel gag cartoons is Instagram.

I did have an Instagram account but it was static. I had not posted on it for years.

So, I decided to post gag cartoons on Instagram.

For weeks, I had not seen any real results on Instagram. None of my cartoons got more than 500 views. I even posted animated gag cartoons. Same results.

Then I had what I call a small breakthrough.

I created a cartoon called No Trespassing, which I published on Instagram.

About three days after I posted the animated version of the video, I noticed it jumped in views! Would it be the first video to make the 1k Club? I wanted to be at home, in my office, to witness it.

Well, I could not wait.

We were in Sam’s Club at the Customer Service desk of all places when it happened. I could not resist it. I checked my phone.

No Trespassing hit 1,000 views!

Well, the gag cartoon has been up on Instagram for about a week now. It has surpassed 1,500 views.

I posted another cartoon: Be Careful What You Moon. In just a couple of days, that cartoon surpassed 2,500 views.

I published a third cartoon: Shut Up, or I’ll Shoot. It surpassed 1,600 views in just one day!

I am almost convinced that Instagram is the best platform for one-panel gag cartoons. What I am not convinced of is that TikTok is not suitable for these cartoons.

I believe my rough start to TikTok, publishing cartoons then deleting them, has caused a set back in the TikTok algorithm.

In my opinion, though TikTok might be the best platform for one-panel animated cartoons. I create them through Grok, which is a topic for another post.

Some cartoons, I am learning, are more suitable for TikTok, and some are more suitable for Instagram. Some cartoons work better as still single-panel gag cartoons, and some work better for single-panel animated gag cartoons. One what platform, I do not know for sure. For how long, I do not know.

YouTube, I guess, is the all-in-one platform for still-life one-panel gag cartoons and animated ones. However, YouTube is showing the slowest growth in views per post.

As a cartoonist on social media, I will stay the course and views, I hope, will improve once the algorithm gets use to me. The one thing you should not do is throw the algorithm off.

I am hoping I have just learned the hard way about best practices posting cartoons to social media and eventually my cartoons will get views.

Although I have been drawing cartoons since childhood. Only recently have I realized it is my super power. I’m like the cartoonist equivalent to a rock star.

In grade school, the girls would line line, waiting for me to draw them cartoon characters like Snoopy. The boys, other other had, had other needs. Once I had forged someone’s parent’s signature on a permissions slip perfectly.

I also used this super power to get out of the jail of being sent to my room. I simply wrote a generic note saying that I was sorry, but it was accompanied by a drawing of a cute Disney cartoon. The cartoon would spring me.

Around this time, the Pittsburgh Pirates were a World Series-caliber team with the slugger, Dave Parker. I sketched his portrait with a ball point pen on loose-leaf paper.

Shortly after that, my parents took us to see a baseball game at Three Rivers Stadium. During batting practice, my father took the portrait of Dave Parker down to the dugout.

Weeks later, I received an autograph baseball of the ‘79 Pirates in the mail.

It does not end there.

Sometime in my teenage years, I began drawing a cartoon character named Shorty. Shorty wore shorts, a T-shirt with a capital S on it, and a cap with a spinner. He rode a skateboard to get around on.

I did not develop Shorty into a comic strip. I just drew him on greeting cards and envelopes for family and friends. My mother would always nag me: “Why don’t you try to do something with Shorty?” as in signicate him. I always found an excuse not to.

Decades later.

On March 9, 2024, I sent a Shorty cartoon via text to a friend of mine. She could not understand why Shorty was not signicated.

But this time that was not the end of it this time.

The beauty and convenience of the Internet

I began looking up cartoonist on YouTube, which led me to gag cartoons and the cartoonists who drew them, which led me to the New Yorker magazine, which led me to cartoonists like Roz Chast, David Sipress, George Booth, and Hillary Fitzgerald.

This, of course, inspired me to send in gag cartoons to the New Yorker. The New Yorker, I quickly learned, is the go-to publication for cartoonists who draw single-panel gag cartoons.

The first two gag cartoons I sent to the New Yorker were Yard Sale and Rub Me the Wrong Way.

I was certain both cartoon had a sure shot of getting published. I was sadly mistaken.

This did not discourage me from drawing cartoons. I became a cartoon-drawing machine and began drawing cartoons daily. On a good day, I drew five cartoons!

I kept sending cartoons in to the New Yorker, only to receive nothing but nos in return.

At this point, I had been drawing cartoons on plain old copy paper with a pen—nothing fancy like art paper and a fountain pen. I should have, however, been using the drawing table that my late father had been for me out of poplar wood and completely adjustable. The table looks like something right out of the Renaissance!

Unfortunately, I was too lazy to carry the drawing table down from the attic.

Weeks into cartooning, I realized that artists were drawing on a digital tablet. I decided to buy one. I went the economic route, $39.95, and bought a pen tablet with a stylus.

I thought learning the pen tablet would be tricky, looking at the computer screen while you draw on the tablet, but to my surprise, it dd not present a real problem.

About a month in, I decided to buy an active-screen tablet from Amazon.

The active-screen was not what I had expected.

The active-screen tablet had a glass surface, which I believe was an eighth-inch thick. When you draw on it, the stylus does not actually touch the active screen but just the surface of the glass. This leaves an eighth-inch gap in the drawn line between the surface of the screen and the active screen.

Also, the price of the active-screen tablet was a bit pricey at $179, well, at least for me, so I was not too disappointed returning it. I can certainly live with then tablet for cartooning. In case you are wondering there is no gap. The surface of the tablet is plastic, black, and matted.

The New Yorker, in the meantime, had not accepted a cartoon. I was submitting fifteen cartoon each time.

The New Yorker has a tricky submissions policy: They will not accept previously published cartoons. I guess because they are considered the no. 1 magazine to submit cartoons to, they want to be the first to publish it.

I could not live with their policy. It puts your cartoons in cartoon limbo. Other publications like The Reader’s Digest do not have such a policy—I would publish them elsewhere—including the cartoons that had been rejected.

I have found several places to publish my gag cartoons: Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

They claim that Instagram is the best platform to publish still one-panel gag cartoons, but I am still not convinced. I will admit, however, that I published an animated version of a cartoon called No Trespassing, and it is the first cartoon to hit 1,000 views, which I call the 1k Club.

The last time I looked, No Trespassing reached close to 1,100 views on Instagram.

I know. Know. 1,000 views is nothing, but it is a start.

The animated version of No Trespassing I will get into in another post.

I published two more cartoons on Instagram—Be Careful Who You Moon and Shut Up, or I’ll Shoot. Be Careful Who You Moon surpassed 2,600 views. Shut Up, or I’ll Shoot surpassed 1,600 views. Hope.

Until then, my new friends, you guessed it, my cartoons can be seen on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.