While writing this I’ve posted the second to last page of Glass Diamonds on my patreon and the the last page will be up tomorrow. Folks who back for $5 a month get to read pages a month before everyone else. It will wrap up on my website next month.
I know money is tight for everyone, but I’m really trying to get my patreon’s monthly total to cover my monthly student loan payment. It is roughly $100 away from that. I just started a graphic novel book club for $1 patreons (We’re reading Concrete) and I’ll start posting the script for Glass Diamonds next month (after all the pages are up) for them as well.
I mentioned this last month but Glass Diamonds is wrapping up and I’m not done with the next City Between story, I’m going to post some short stories I’m doing for up coming anthologies. The first is called Look Upon My Works and Don’t Think About Me At All. It is for the upcoming Iron Circus anthology Lie Machine. The whole anthology is about propaganda and news bias. My story is about quotes being taken out of context. So that will start getting posted for $5 backers this month and for everyone else next month. It will feature a meme from one of my favorite shows.
The graphic novel book club is going to be reading Concrete volume 2 on Monday November 23rd at 3pm PST. If you are unfamiliar, it is a series about a man who’s brain is put in a stone body by aliens. The inking in it is lovely and it the main image of this month’s newsletter.
On Saturdays at 11 am PST, I usually watch a movie in my discord. This month I’m still in a monster movie mood, so here is the line up:
- November 7th – Cat People
- November 14th – The Devil’s Backbone
- November 21 – From Dusk Til Dawn
- November 28 – The Invisible Man
I’ll also be streaming on these dates and times:
- Tuesday at 7pm – 9pm PST – Art times
- Wednesday at 7pm – 9pm PST – Art times
- Sunday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Disco Elysium
When I’m done script I think I wanna add another gaming stream. Mostly because I’d like to play the remake of Ocarina of Time on stream. But I need to make sure the writing is all set.
Gonna bucket down and write. I’m on page 70 of the next story’s script. It’s gonna be longest book in The City Between so far. It is called Brittle Beast. Jeff and Sina are back. They are looking into a local cryptic. There are a few more moving parts so I think I’m roughly half way done.
Like I mentioned above, the patreon graphic novel book club is reading Concrete by Paul Chadwick. I got recommended it by my friend Blue Deliquanti. They used it as an example of storytelling through backgrounds in a panel we did together. And the backgrounds are indeed lush and great at including little details. The the panel layouts were always interesting. While taking notes for the bookclub, I felt like I wanted to screenshot every panel as an example of good inking. The writing was just as solid. There is great understanded sense of humor. Like while doing a stunt he is asked who is paying for his equipment. You turn the page and get this panel.
And there is a running gag where his assistant Larry keeps telling people he is working on a novel. When he is asked what it’s about, Larry always have a long winded unfocused answer. So between that, the amazing art, and the contemplative exploration about Concrete’s mixed feeling about the current state of his body, I’m looking forward to continuing the series with the patreon backers reading along.
This month the Saturday movies were movies I’d seen before since I was sharing my favorite werewolf movies. But a theater near me was showing old horror movies all month, so I saw The Bride of Frankenstein. And the lady above who plays the housekeeper stole the show. There wasn’t any scenery that she didn’t chew up. And since I had seen the original Frankenstein, I wasn’t surprised that the movie looked beautiful.
While finishing up artwork for Glass Diamonds, I put on the second season of the Netflix show The Gentlemen. It’s about an english noble who finds out the estate he just inherited grows weed. And he decides to get more involved in crime. It is by Guy Richie and it is a fun watch if you like Guy Richie’s movies. It is fast paced and has punchy editing. Daniel Ing (who plays Lyonel Baratheon in A Knight in the Seven Kingdoms) stole the show in the first season. But wasn’t in this new season a lot (I assume he was filming a Knight in the Seven Kingdoms), but the show still delivered some punchy action.
I did more reading this month than new movie watching. First was A Divided Duty by Seanan McGuire. It is the 20th volume in the October Daye series. It came out the same day I sent last month’s newsletter and since it is one of my favorite book series, I jumped in right away. A few books ago in the series most of the character were trapped in an alternate reality. This book is mostly focused on October trying to help a former antagonist reform herself. But an ongoing thing in the book is the knowledge/memories of what each character could have been is haunting them and effecting their decisions in this book. I liked that each character has to grapple with what they could have been. I can’t say much more without spoilers, but I do enjoy the on-going examination of parents trying to force their kids to be something harming them.
Difficult relationships with parents ended be being an accidental theme of books I read this month. I also read Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders. The lead is a trans woman who is teaching her lesbian mom magic. The lead’s other mother died a few years before the book starts and her still living mom has become a bit of a shut in because of it. The magic lessons are supposed to help her deal with her grief and get out more. That’s one plot line, and the other is flashbacks that show how the two moms met, fell in love, and their struggles raising a kid together when right wingers were trying to stop queer couples from raising kids. And that reflects how the main character is having her own relationship problems and is also getting targeted at her university job by right wingers. One thing I really liked about it was how complicated the mother daughter relationship was not because either was a bad person, but because they both approach the world so differently. And it is clear that the woman they are both grieving helped them both communicate with each other better.
Then for something lighter, I checked out Soulless by Gail Carriger. I saw her on a panel at Worldcon and thought her books sounded like a lot of fun. Souless is in alternate victorian England that knows about werewolves and vampires. You can only become one if you have excess soul and the main character can turn off a supernatural creature’s power because she doesn’t have a soul. She is looking into some supernatural creatures going missing. It is a fun little mystery. What is extra fun is the main character’s lack of a soul results in her not have an internal moral compass, so she is using manners rules guide her. It adds a bit of comedy of manners to the mystery.
And last thing I read was Balder’s Gate 3: Astarian by T Kingfisher. It is a prequel to the game Balder’s Gate 3 and the audiobook is read by Astarian’s voice actor Neil Newbon. I thought it was just okay. It is getting A LOT of backlash around it, most of which is directed at the author. But most of what is wrong with it is stuff Wizards of the Coast should have caught, like continuity mistakes and trying to make Astarian nicer. It’s a shame because I like T Kingfisher’s writing, just seems like Wizard tied her hands a bit.
That’s it for this month. Thank you all for your support each month. And once again, please consider supporting my patreon.