I was born in the 1970s and grew up in the 1980s. I currently live in Nashville, Tennessee, and work freelance doing proofreading and copyediting.
The name “Not Alison” comes from a probably unpublishable fictional memoir I’ve written, which begins, “My name is not Alison, but I wish that it was.”
This blog will play host to some of my creative work, beginning with Not a Cat Lady, a graphic novella I had started working on (all too slowly) before the pandemic.
Illustrations I make just for the blog will mostly be rough, unfinished sketches. To rein in my perfectionist nature, I’ll just slap something down and post it raw to avoid wasting endless time rethinking & editing every image. If I want to get anything done I can’t get lost in polishing minor things.
I work best drawing with a real pencil on physical paper. I scan the drawings and then edit them using Corel Painter and a Wacom tablet. Because Painter’s text features are frustrating, I use Pixelmator Pro for adding word balloons and all the text (copied and pasted from a word processing document).
Rough illustrations (like the ones made for this blog) are drawn directly in Painter without going through pencil/paper and scanner.
Not a Cat Lady
This story takes place in 2018 (long before the COVID-19 pandemic). This is a graphic novella meant to be read in order from the beginning. You may want to read the disclaimers.
After the Fire
Coming eventually. Another graphic novella; the drawings are all completed and the pages are still being composited. I want to have a fair number of pages ready before beginning to post them.