tallguywrites

I will be in Leeds at Thought Bubble today. Will you?

Here's the reworked Antisocial Personality Disorder chapter of Psychiatric Tales (previously know as Mad Or Bad). Eight pages of which only three are left from the original version. As ever, feel free to point out any errors you see.

All done now. Apart from renumbering the pages and a few other annoying tiny jobs. It'll be out from Blank Slate in Feb.



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News. I'm restarting The Streets Of San Diablo on Activate.com. The strip will return at the end of November and appear every Monday. http://act-i-vate.com/index

I've been so busy with my Psychiatric Tales book project that I had to put San Diablo on hiatus. However, now that book is almost finished, I can get back to my freakish Western/superhero/horror mash up tale. Yippee!

News. There will be a second volume of Psychiatric Tales as there are a ton of things I didn't get around to covering, including ECT, staff burnout, forms of dementia, substance abuse, the homeless, OCD, and about a million other things. There's no end to subjects I could cover. I'm aiming for early 2011 for a completion date for the second volume. Probably.

http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/

Here, at last then, is the final chapter of Psychiatric Tales. As ever if you spot any mistakes or have anything critical to say, then please let me know. I tend to think of these online versions of the stories as beta versions, which still need debugging. So all comments help.

The book still isn't finished. I have to redo much of the lettering in the first half of the book, correct spelling mistakes, plus rewrite and redraw four pages of an earlier chapter which, as it stands, is factually confusing.

The book will be out from Blank Slate in Feb and will be available through their website and various other places.



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Four frames, minus the lettering yet, from the last chapter of Psychiatric Tales. The complete finished last chapter will be online sometime in the coming week.

Paranormal Activity. A low-budget creepfest which has a more subtle approach than most modern horror films. Disturbing and well acted. Here's the freak-out trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UxLEqd074

Having to do extra shifts at the care home in order to have the money to buy new glasses. Had a ghastly shift yesterday morning. Had to work with a very difficult member of staff who can be extremely rude. I almost blew my top at one point, but managed to hold it together. I still feel wound up from the experience. More prozac please.

Two of the old ladies suffered diarrhoea. One was caked in excrement right down to her socks. It's an awful business having to clean up someone in this state. It can get to the point when working with the elderly that you think that you can smell bodily waste all the time. It even seeps into your dreams.

On the plus side there have been some very important developments regarding Psychiatric Tales this week. It's far too early for me to say anything about it. But it all looks very promising. My dream of never having to do carework again and becoming a full time writer/cartoonist is edging closer. And not a minute too soon.

I've now started work on the last chapter of Psychiatric Tales. Which is good. I've also decided that I'll have to go back and rework one of the earlier chapters, due to some factual confusion. Which is bad. However I will only have to redraw four pages of that chapter to correct it. So it's not as bad as it could have been.

Here's a panel from the last chapter.



It's all going smoothly, both the writing and the drawing. I'm very happy with all the publicity I've had. It's turning all this attention and good feeling into money that's the difficulty. I'm currently having to make ends meet by doing agency work two days a week. This means going up to a local care home for dementia sufferers and wiping bottoms for a living (work that keeps me grounded in reality if nothing else). If it wasn't for the fact that I'm staying at my parent's house I wouldn't be able to manage at all. I'd have to work full time and there'd be little chance of doing much in the way of cartooning.

A few noters in the past have offered money to help me finish the book. So for those who might have any spare change lying around, I'll give you the chance to donate to me via PayPal. Even small amounts of money will at least help me buy new ink cartridges and that sort of thing. I thank you in advance.

Doodle drawing for Doodlezine.

I'm still looking for contributions for my Draw A Dalek Blog: Exdrawminate. Feel free to send me something. http://exdrawminate.blogspot.com/

Three photos of the northern town where I live.



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This chapter on suicide is different from previous chapters, as it's much more personal in tone. It's not meant to be a piece giving you facts and figures about the subject. Nor do I attempt to give any advice. Such a strip may in fact be written by me in the future, but this strip is about how the subject of suicide has touched my own life.

This is the penultimate chapter of the book. The last chapter will be a long piece detailing my own mental health struggles.



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Back cover image for my Psychiatric Tales book. Will fit in the lower third of the cover with text above.

A Dutch website neurobiologicalsociety.org featured Psychiatric Tales. Well I can't read Dutch, but Babelfish did present me with this useful translation. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Stripping maker Darryl Cunningham is hard to the work the book bring out `Psychiatric Tales'. Strip, expects in 2010, will concern several forms of mental suffering. On its web-unwieldly he gives in advance by the chapter concerning schizophrenia in its whole public a foretaste to make. Go that to see, because he to weet with simple pictures more to say than the proverbial thousand words. To let we hope that the book is produced rapidly, because this tastes to more.

I'm extremely grateful to all the people who have left me feedback recently. It's impossible for me to reply to everyone, because I'd never get any drawing done, and I've got many pages to do yet. I've had a few offers from people to help out with proofreading. To which thanks. However most of the mistakes have been corrected on the original files since these uploads, and my publisher will be doing a final pass anyway.

I'm aware that there are factual blunders (well, some confusion anyway) in the chapter on Personality Disorder, and I'l be rewriting/redrawing sections of that.

Here's what will probably be the cover of Psychiatric Tales.

It seems I'm becoming something of a celebrity, at least in a small way. I made number one on Reddit the other day, I've been featured on Boing Boing. Many folk have been discussing Psychiatric Tales on Twitter, including Graham Linehan of Father Ted and The IT Crowd fame. I've also had about eighty emails. Far more than I can ever reply to and they're still coming in.

The vast majority of the emails have been positive, some a little critical (which is fair enough) and only one insulting (why am I defending violent crazy people, etc).

Boing Boing got their facts wrong when they reported that I'm a student nurse. I haven't been a student nurse for years and never finished my training anyway, (due to my own mental health problems). I'm currently working in a residential home for the elderly.

It's a very exciting time for me.

Here's a frame from the current chapter of Psychiatric Tales I'm working on, which is about the grim subject of suicide.



http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/

Girls on the London tube.


Pavement in Yorkshire.


Girls on train platform.


London cranes.

An eleven page chapter from my upcoming book Psychiatric Tales, which will be out from Blank Slate in early 2010. Feel free to point out any errors or make any other comments.



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Darwin sand sculpture outside Bradford town hall.




Darwin sandfingers.

A chapter of my Psychiatric Tales book. This one covering Bipolar-Disorder. As ever, if you spot any mistakes let me know. Feedback from those with this illness would be greatly appreciated. I've mostly covered the mania side of the illness here, because a previous chapter already talks about depression, and I didn't want to repeat myself. Thank you.



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