[I'm borrowing a page from my good buddy Caleb Monroe and posting reruns of my former Scryptic Studios column, Running Up That Hill. This is the first column I ever wrote, originally airing on November 30, 2006. For each column, I'll do a Then and Now thing: Then being the column as it originally appeared, and Now being my reaction to the column today. Should be fun... and quite possibly embarrassing, too!]

THEN - 11/30/06

March 2006. We're in Atlanta visiting my wife's dad. As we're getting ready to head out to dinner, my cell phone tells me I've got a voice mail. It's Barbara Kesel, the editor of Platinum Studios' romance comic anthology (to which I've submitted a pitch not two weeks ago).

“By The Southern Grace of God is a lovely and wonderful story...” she begins. My head is spinning. She likes my pitch and wants me to send her a plot synopsis!

I call her the next day from the Georgia Aquarium. The synopsis looks good; it's just what she needed to be able to recommend my story on up the line to the higher-ups. I'm on cloud 17. My first-ever pitch to a comic book publisher looks like it's got a seriously good chance of being accepted.

Back home in Little Rock a few days later, I get an email from Barbara. The powers that be at Platinum have requested bios from all potential contributors. Holy moly! Here I am, a never-published aspiring comic book writer, being asked to write a bio that will be included with my first published comic book story, in the event it is actually published – which is seeming more and more likely at this point.

Here's what I came up with:

When, at the age of eight, Elton Pruitt authorized his mom to sell all of his comics at a garage sale, he thought he had outgrown them. Sadly, these included numerous issues of Neal Adams’ now-legendary run on  Batman and Detective Comics.

Years later, Elton regained his senses and rediscovered his love of comic books. Around this time he also discovered a passionate dislike for Southern rock – Lynyrd Skynyrd, 38 Special, you name it – and proudly attested to its worthlessness throughout the halls of his high school in Searcy, Arkansas.

So it seems only fitting that his first published comic book story would revolve around a Lynyrd Skynyrd song.

Prior to his work in comic books, Elton worked as a copywriter for a small ad agency in Little Rock, where his pitch to Roller Funeral Homes of Arkansas (“We put the fun in funeral”) never quite caught on. His work for Five Miles Out writing the screenplay for their Immercenary video game was better received and led him into the fabled land of The Internet, where he has spent the last ten years programming custom web applications for Aristotle Inc.

Today – at the exact moment you are reading this, in all likelihood – Elton is hard at work on his next comic book project, a little something he likes to call Descartes the Zombie. Watch for it – and check out EltonPruitt.com for more information on Elton and his ongoing quest to become the 22^nd century’s second greatest living comic book writer (after Drew Melbourne, of course).

I look back at that bio today, 7.5 months later, and don't know whether to laugh, cry, or have another beer. So, because I'm committed to writing this column tonight – and because Diamond Bear's new Presidential IPA is a truly fine example of the India Pale Ale that is the pinnacle of beer-drinking pleasure – I'll have another beer and continue.

I've come a long way since writing that bio in March. And to borrow a phrase from the Grateful Dead, “what a long, strange trip it's been.”

I'm still not published. That's the albatross around my neck that I work every day to rid myself of. More (much more) on that in future columns.

What happened to my romance anthology submission that seemed so promising last spring? I have no idea, honestly. On June 3rd, I got an email from Barbara informing me that my pitch for "By the Southern Grace of God" was rejected. I know she liked it, so I can only assume the higher-ups did not.

Drew Melbourne was my idol at that time. I'd only recently discovered his Think Like Tomorrow columns on this very site, and they gave me a huge dose of inspiration and education at just the right time to convince me to embrace my dreams and flip off my fears and take a serious shot at becoming a comic book writer. (In a future column, I'll share with you the first-ever email I sent Drew, in which I did a fairly good job of aping his uniquely comedic style.)

Today, Drew and I are Archenemies, in a friendly sort of way, and I have him to thank for inviting me to write this column. Descartes the Zombie is struggling to be born (much, much more on that in future columns). And in the very near future, I'll be working with the perfect artist to bring “By the Southern Grace of God” to comic book life, as a self-published story.

I hope you'll tune in to future installments of Running Up That Hill, in which I'll divulge important tidbits such as “why I'm glad my sister-in-law is a shrink” and “what I've learned from Luke and Laura in the last quarter-century.”

NOW - 10/18/08

I think this actually worked pretty well as a "pleased to meet me" sort of column.

This actually seems more like 5 years ago than a mere 2!