A Deviant Mind

This Dedication goes out to all my faithful readers who have been waiting three or four years to get this volume and the rest of the series A Deviant Mind back into print. The adventure in this Volume was more personal than all the issues before. In A Deviant Mind #15 I shared the experience and dedication to my cousin Donita and her husband, my best friend Doug Smith, who created A Deviant Mind with me back in 1980. He gave me the characters Captain Space and Lucky after he enlisted in the military, and I finally launched A Deviant Mind in 2010. My last phone call to Donita before they died was that I was sending them the first thirteen issues, so they could revel in what we had created. Donita and Doug were excited, and said they’d wait at the mailbox until they arrived.
Two days later, they were lost in a housefire.

Sigh. (Nobody knows this, but I tucked those issues into their casket. Yeah, casket.)

At any rate, I may have mentioned in some issues along the way how Doug and Donita continued to haunt me for the next five years. It doesn’t matter if they were a figment of my imagination or not. They told me things I couldn’t possibly know in sending messages to other family members--stuff I had no business knowing--so I’m the oddball out in the family without a doubt.
But I dedicated the series to their memories after their passing, and there were some fantastic, amazing stories, but upon the completion of issue #40--when they and I reached an agreement and they decided to move on--and Chani made her peace with Captain Space and Danae, and they moved on as well leaving Chani unsure of where to go next, all the wind went out of my sails on the series.

We should be at Issue #60 by now. I went through the same emotional crash after House of the Muses #9, and that seven-year hiatus destroyed the popularity of my series, my fanbase scattered. When I finally came to grips with saying goodbye to beloved characters and wrapped the series once and for all in September 2019, I thought I would find my creative fire again.

Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and the following years have been a strange journey. For one thing, I realized that when you are writing a long, ongoing series, it must be totally and completely your own. A series dedicated to the memories of others becomes hopelessly entrapped in the snares of the ghosts of the past.

I’ve been grappling with some new ideas. For starters, after this volume, Tara finally knows who she is.
Stay tuned. A Deviant Mind Vol. 8 is now off to print! A Deviant Mind Vol. 9 is pre-pressed up to issue #43. I must wrap up A Deviant Mind #44 and #45, and you’re going to learn some more things that will totally blow your mind. Thank you, one and all, for traveling on this long journey with me. I love you for your devotion to these stories.

--Pamela J. Harrison,
Radcliff, Kentucky
September 10, 2021