Greetings!

Welcome to my awkwardly titled Rob Kelly Writing blog, a companion piece of sorts to my illustration blog, Rob Kelly Illustration (which is, itself, an arm of my portfolio site, Namtab.com). I tried coming up with different names for this enterprise, but there was something about the simplicity of swapping out "illustration" for "writing" that worked for me, since that's what this blog will be--writing.

As far as back as when I was a kid and I would create my own comic books (made on folded over pieces of notebook paper), I wrote and well as drew. But I never thought of myself as a writer, it was simply a means to end--I needed someone to create the material I wanted to draw, and for some reason I couldn't get any of my fellow 4th graders to slavishly parody superhero comics the way I wanted to.

But I sort of gave all that up when I kicked off my professional illustrator career, mostly because there was simply no need for it. I dabbled at creating my own daily newspaper strip, but other than that and a few other blind alleys my writing career, such as it was, had ended before it ever really began.

But after I started blogging in earnest--beginning with The Aquaman Shrine in 2006, and growing exponentially from there--I found myself back in the writing game, and really enjoying what I was doing. So much so that I ended up writing pieces for other people--in the beginning, mostly friends but soon I found myself writing pieces for magazines and websites that were asking me to contribute, something I never could have imagined happening.

So now that I've started seeing myself as a writer (or amateur historian, let's say) just as much an an artist, I thought I'd coral all the material I've produced in one place for people to enjoy (in theory). Most of this material has already been seen in magazines or the web, but this will also be the place when I have something new to offer!

Speaking of, I'll be kicking off this blog tomorrow with a piece I wrote but never saw print, so it's essentially all-new. I hope you like it, and thanks for stopping by!