Apparently canned food can kill you. A client of mine who owns a restaurant read an article that links canned food with cancer.

In the past I did not have a breakdown of how I or my company worked at the suggestion of my wife I have created one:

http://theblackarts.com/websiteforyou.html

This links from my main website page and I hope is simple enough for new customers. It also uses Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars to help describe the site engines and add ons.

I'm still in Mexico and some stuff here is crazy cheap. I know everyone kinda knows that but I got four cowboy boots that look and feel like they were made by Steve Madden for like $200. Insane looking wrestler masks are like $7 and I got a large pewter book stand for like $9. I'm part Mexican since me mum is Filipino. I feel really bad. One of the boots I got has leather from the cheeks of an iguana. The pieces of leather are cut so that the circle cheek part is in the middle and the sides come t point so it looks like I have eyes all over my boots. After looking at my eye ball iguana boots I remember where else I saw this pattern and it was on this black jacket that Niel Gaiman has worn to maybe 6 events I saw him at. I always thought it was a custom tooling job he had but now I'm almost positive it is an iguana cheek jacket. If you like iguanas and have them as pets I'm sorry but I kinda hate them and I love me new boots.

I just reorganized my website listing page because sometimes people just hire me to do a site for a book, lots of sites for a book etc and sometimes these book sites are just as complicated or sometimes more complicated than their author page so I re did my page to show them all:

http://theblackarts.com/websites.html

26 author sites
20 book sites or book related sites
9 illustrator/artist sites
2 actor sites
5 small business sites

62 sites

Also I just did a design for an African Sauce for:

http://bakusafricanrestaurant.com/

that will launch at Whole Foods in a few months.

Half my staff has been replaced and I no longer share the office.

http://theblackarts.com/staff.html

This should have been done a long time ago but no after many moons have finally updated my wife's site. The text needs updating but for now the graphics are new. Also the site has many hidden bits of video, audio, art and little creatures with minor AI. So please stop by and take a look.

http://blackholly.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHpuaeQXOC4

I overhauled "The Mortal Instruments" website for Cassandra Clare like this weekend.

http://www.mortalinstruments.com/
http://www.mortalinstruments.com/
http://www.mortalinstruments.com/

Things at work have been kinda hard. My office mate "Curt" and I have decided to part ways. I won't get into it but having him in the office has not been as beneficial as I had hoped. Also I have had some problems with staff members and I had to fire over half of them. It sucks and I hate it but I hired 2 new people and I've been working my ass off so that my clients don't all fire me. I'm late on two people but things are turning up and we should be golden again in a few days. The new people I hired can do stuff the people I fired could do so , wordpress stuff, shopping carts and search engine stuff better than I can. So the future of "The Black Arts" is looking brighter. As part of making this all a cleansing experience I cleaned the whole office today.

In the mean time here are four overhauls for LHA we did:

http://writerlady.com/Chains/ (The map is being worked on and will come back)
http://writerlady.com/Fever1793/
http://writerlady.com/Twisted/
http://writerlady.com/Speak/

and her main site:

http://writerlady.com/

and I tweaked Wintergirls (added snow, interview, better menus etc)

http://wintergirls.net/

I have a friend from Pakistan who is walking down the isle soon and he told me that it is a tradition in Pakistan to party for like a month for a wedding. Not like a month long sleep over with family where everyone does their thing. It's like a fill a kiddy pool with beer and dive in, wake up holding a turkey leg with some strangers underwear on your head party. I can't imagine having a month long party like that. I'm sure it is not all like that but it is encouraged apparently and it is proper in Pakistan to party that hard for a wedding apparently.

Just when I thought my client list could not get more ridiculous, I got Mo Willems. Granted I just did his index page and provide hosting it and that is not a lot, even still, I'm going to brag about it. Anyway here it is:

http://mowillems.com/

Amy Efaw has a movie for her new book "After" on her site:

http://amyefaw.com/after.html

Another site is up for Going Bovine has gone live:

http://putopia.net/

Older ones:
http://goingbovine.com/
http://thegreattremelo.com/
http://www.cessnab.com/

Also we got sites for Kathy Duey and Caitlin Kittredge who we will be starting soon.

That's right true believers! We at the black arts have just well almost finished http://www.chrisclaremont.com/
There will be more stuff added to the site soon but for now please have a look. In case you don't know Chris Claremont is a comic book legend. He wrote about half of anything Marvel published which is worth reading. His work was the base for the good parts of the x men movies.

http://www.chrisclaremont.com/
http://www.chrisclaremont.com/
http://www.chrisclaremont.com/

!!!

I've kinda gotten used to seeing this but it is still annoying to see four seasons of four different shows and have all the actors of african/asian decent being thugs, side kicks, criminals or some stereotype and if married only to someone of similar ethnic heritage.

I watched season 1 of "The Unit" suggested by Laurie Anderson. It's a great show and with a bunch of crazy special ops soldiers with god complexes.

The main character is African American and so is his wife. No mixing in the show. Also all middle easters are baddies.

Burn Notice:
I'm half way through season 1 and the only asian that showed up on the show was a dumb surfer and the only Africans were Jamaican criminals, Actually one of the Jamaican criminals was played by one of my clients, Laurence Mason who is part Chinese.

Rescue Me:
All the firemen are jerks and the one Latin dude had a child with a crazy Latin woman and won't take responsibility for his child. Also all the Irish people on the show get drunk all the time and get into fights.

Leverage:
There is an African Hacker dude but he is a side kick. Also there are few non white people in the show and they are all baddies.

I know all this is normal but I'm really sick of it.

Jo Knowles has two new books and a working clock:

http://joknowles.com/mybooks.html

jude Watson has a Jedi

http://www.jude-watson.com/starwars.html

Sarah Brennan has Character Art, wallpaper, and smoke

http://www.sarahreesbrennan.com/demonscharacters.html

Chris Robertson's site is finally done

http://chrisrobertsonbooks.com/

Amy Efaw's site is almost done:

http://amyefaw.com/

and now I am back to working on Holly's

Recently I was looking at the pain posters in a hospital and I did not think is was very accurate so I made my own:

recently we did some updates and some new sites:

Sarah Rees Brennan

http://www.sarahreesbrennan.com/demonslexicon2.html

Now has a character section, wallpaper and smoke.


Jude Watson

http://www.jude-watson.com/starwars.html

now has one of our designers as a jedi making an intro to the site.

Cessnab

http://cessnab.com/tvspots.html

tv spot


Chris Robertson site

http://chrisrobertsonbooks.com/

Charles Brown, the editor and co-founder of Locus.

http://www.locusmag.com/

died yesterday. He was a friend of mine and the world is less without him.

Recently we at "The Black Arts" finished the web site for the artist Chris Robertson. Chris has done many editorial illustrations as well as worked as a storyboard artist to a director on many animated cartoons like Hey Arnold!, Family Guy, and American Dad and has also written and illustrated his own kids book called "Little Miss Liberty".

http://chrisrobertsonbooks.com/