Tag: newsletter

New Year and New Books Coming

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Hey all, I’m going to launch a kickstarter in February. I got a preview page up for people to sign up to be notified at launch. It is for the 5th book in The City Between series, Shards of Reflection. 

January is gonna be pretty quiet while I get the kickstarter ready and do some usual new year stuff. So I’m gonna do Saturday afternoon movie my discord. Click here to join. We’re watching these at 11 am pst. 

  • Jan 10th – This is Spinal Tap
  • Jan 17th – Stand By Me
  • Jan 24th – When Harry Met Sally
  • Jan 31st – Akira

And as usual, I’ll be streaming. My PS5 was getting repaired, so I didn’t do my Christmas charity stream. So I’m leaving the charity donation bar up all this month to make up for it. 

  • Tuesday at 7pm – 10pm PST – Art times
  • Wednesday at 7pm – 9pm PST – Art times
  • Sunday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Baldur’s Gate 3

Join me on my twitch!

I didn’t get a lot done last month because I spent a lot of it dealing with a sinus infection. I’m still a bit stuffy, but I’m mostly better. With the new year, I’m gonna focus on writing the next story of The City Between. Glass Diamonds is about half way done. The next one is called Brittle Beast. It is a follow up to The Better to Find You With. Sina and Jeff are looking into a cryptid. Here’s some concept art for the cryptid.

I mentioned last month I started doing yoga and pilates. The past few years, I’ve been slowly making progress to get to my goal of being able to do the One Punch Man work out: 100 push ups, 100 sit ups, 100 squats, and run 10k. I can do the squats and I’m pretty close to 100 sit ups. I’m gonna try to get to 100 sit ups then focus on the running part. So wish me luck on my 2026 goal. I hope you all can hit any 2026 goals you have. 

Last month’s Saturday movies started with Amadeus. It was a movie that I had heard a lot of good things about and it definitely lived up to the hype. F. Murray Abraham does such a good job displaying Salieri’s hatred and jealousy of Mozart. I liked also the contrast between Salieri being able to play the political game and make work to their patron’s taste and Mozart being more creative but unable think about how he is being perceived or the consequences of his actions. 

I followed it up with Northman. Before I watched, all I knew about Northman was who the director was and that it was based off the legend that inspired Hamlet. It was a very beautiful. It touches on how cycles of violence wipe out whole families. While I over all liked it, it mostly made me want to reread/catch up on Vinland Saga. 

And I did just that. Vinland Saga ended recently and I really loved what I had read before. If you haven’t read it, it with the main character, Thorfinn, on a more standard revenge motive. But it quickly became one of my favorite comics when it started its second part when for the first time in 10 years Thorfinn doesn’t have revenge driving him. He is adrift without such a strong goal. It turns the story to a mediation on violence and how one can seek redemption. It also examines how cultural values affect the reasons for violence. The story is about vikings during just before and during the reign of King Canute. Thorfinn wonders if the promise of Valhalla or Norse culture is especially violent. The art is just gorgeous and has a lot of powerful shots. I highly recommend people give it a read.  

For something lighter, I checked out the start of Fallout Season 2. I mostly liked the first season. It was a good mix of humor and action. My main complaints were the villain in season 1’s plan didn’t really make sense. The others are more nitpicks. Like I understand why they wanted to wasteland to not have any established society built because that is easier for a new viewer. But it’s canon with all the games, so I would have liked stuff to build up or moved forward rather than start from zero. Season 2 is off to a good start though. There is a great bit where the brotherhood of steel guys find an alien in a freezer and then get excited about the freezer. Moving to New Vegas stuff is so far a fun ride. 

And last thing I watched in 2025 was Wake Up Dead Man. I overall liked it because I enjoyed Knives Out and Glass Onion. I think Wake Up Dead Man is a better murder mystery than Glass Onion, but Glass Onion and Knives Out had a better message. Basically, in the first two movies, the suspects were both right and left win, so it drives home that wealth has a bond than politics. Everyone except the lead being right wing or indifferent, ends up flattening the story. I did like how it handled religion though, that it is can be used to help or hurt people and that both someone’s faith or lack of faith should be respected (as long as it’s not hurting people).

Thank you all for your support. I really appreciate it. 

A Year Comes and Goes

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If you want any of my books as a holiday gift you have to order by Dec 16th for it to get there in time. Iron Circus is having a sale until the 16th where everything is 30% off, so you can grab Stars, Hide Your Fire or Cautionary Fables at a discount. My werewolf stuff is only in my store. 

On Christmas, I’m going to do another charity stream for the Trevor Project. If you are unfamiliar, the Trevor Project is for suicide prevention and support for LGBTQ+ youth.

I asked folks on my patreon which game I should play. The Forgotten City won. If you are unfamiliar with The Forgotten City, it is a time loop ethics puzzle in a Roman city that is cursed. Basically, if anyone in the city “sins” the whole city is turned into gold. You have to figure out what counts as a sin and how to break the curse. I’ll start at noon pst. You can watch on my twitch. 

As for movies in my discord, reminder that I play a movie for anyone to watch Saturday’s at 11am pst. You can join here. We are watching:

  • Dec 6th – Amadeus
  • Dec 13th – The Northman
  • skipping the 20th
  • Dec 27th – Snowpiercer

And as usual, I’ll be streaming, thought I changed some of the times. 

Everything else will be the streaming schedule:

  • Tuesday at 7pm – 10pm PST – Art times
  • Wednesday at 7pm – 9pm PST – Art times
  • Sunday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Baldur’s Gate 3

Join me on my twitch!

I’m visiting my parents this month so I mostly focused on getting ahead on Glass Diamonds. It’s about half way done. So it will probably wrap up around this time next year. 

My eyes are almost done healing from surgery in September. So I started upping my work outs again. I started doing both yoga and pilates once a week. Ugh. It has resulted in my being sore a lot. But after a month I’m already getting better at it. In the new year, I’m gonna try to get back to doing cardio again. I fell off it during the summer and need to get back to it. 

This month I finally got the chance to go through all The Murderbot Diaries. I really liked the show when I watched it earlier this year. The books didn’t disappoint. It did made me wonder what season 2 of the show Murderbot would be like because the human characters aren’t in the second and third book. I am also glad that I read it AFTER I was done writing all of Glass Diamonds. Both Rebecca and Murderbot are frustrated with the humans they are trying to protect. And I think if I had read it before writing Glass Diamonds, I would have accidentally veered Rebecca too much in Murderbot’s direction. 

One of the movies watched in my discord was All the Presidents Men, which is you don’t know is about investigating Watergate. I definitely see why it was nominated for a bunch of Oscars. The lighting and shots keep the tension going through what could because have easily been considered boring. I did think it was interesting that the movie doesn’t follow the whole investigation. 

I also saw The Breakfast Club for the first time. I was mostly underwhelmed by it. Mostly because I felt like I saw everything interested referenced in other things. Usually I still enjoy movies that have been referenced referenced a lot, but since The Breakfast Club is conversations without much plot, the stuff that gets referenced is basically the whole movie. I vastly perfer John Hughes other movies, (and ended up rewatching Planes, Trains, and Automobiles on Thankgiving. 

A classic I ended liking more was The Day the Earth Stood Still. While the plot was straight forward, it did a lot of interesting stuff with lighting and their limited effects. I was surprised that for a movie made in 1951, they did a good job at having a multicultural crowd at the end. 

While working I ended up find a video that did a deep dive into why America’s biking infrastructure is so other places in the world. A lot of it comes down to one guy in the 70s thinking that casual biking would “ruin” biking as a sport. He wanted bikes to be treated like cars and pushed any attempts at bike lanes or anything that made biking easier. It was very interesting watch.

Another niche deep dive I watched a video on the interactive animatronic characters at Disneyland & Disneyworld. It does a research into their first animatronic Abe Lincoln that Walt Disney wanted to be able to answer questions, but it was pretty limited. And then how it different techniques for having characters guests could interact with were developed and then put aside. 

And finally, this month I learned baby crocodiles make laser gun noises. Make sure to turn on the sound.

See you next month. Thank you all for your support. 

I Got Werewolves and Frankensteins This Month

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I hope you all had a good October! 

The next anthology I’m editing is announced! Lie Machine will open submissions December 1st. 

Pretty quiet this month. I’m doing my Saturday morning/afternoon movies. On the 8th we are watching The Fall, the 15th All the Presidents Men, the 22nd the Breakfast Club, and the 29th the Day the Earth Stood Still. If you wanna hang and watch these, here is a link to join. And as usual, I’ll be streaming. 

Everything else will be the streaming schedule:

  • Tuesday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Art times
  • Wednesday at 4pm – 6pm PST – Art times
  • Sunday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Baldur’s Gate 3

Join me on my twitch!

Bones and I have officially moved Wolf & Bones Comic Club to a blog write up. I posted our thoughts on The Dark Phoenix Saga on my Patreon. If is free to read. Next we will be reading the first 1/3 of Bone by Jeff Smith. 

I was a guest on the podcast World Anvil. I was part of their halloween line up where I talked about werewolves in fiction today and in the past. You can give it a listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHd2DpwNWe0

I also did an incredibly bad job playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I have never played a metriodvania game. So after I was done, I got told I have to HOLD the jump button rather than just press it. I might give it another chance. But I think I’ll finish Slay the Princess and Disco Elysium on stream first. 

I’m in the home stretch of writing Blue Moon. Just got a murder and the climax to write. Been awhile, but I’m excited to get to the end so Meredith can start drawing. 

I’ve also been doing some end of year stuff for Iron Circus. Last week I went through all the titles sales. I made notes on what is selling and what isn’t. So usually books do really well when they first come out, then their sales slowly peter out. I took note on what kinda books continue to sell consistently after they aren’t in the spotlight. Like even though the Cautionary Fable books are mostly a bit old, they continue to sell well (3 of them are in Iron Circus’s top 20 titles for the year). So I’m talking to Spike about what we should look for when submissions open again. 

Just a few days ago I found out about the webcomic Dust ‘n’ Dread by Lesle Kieu. I immediately read all of it in one go. The premise is a Frankenstein and a werewolf are hired guns in the old west. The inking is excellent and Kieu does a great job with spot blacks. It also has some excellent monster designs and uniquie takes on things. Like in the original wolfman, werewolves see a pentagram in the hand of their victims. Kieu ups the horror by having the werewolf see they damage they will cause and that reveals the pentagram. Haunting him in a way similiar to how the ghosts of the werewolf victims haunt David in American Werewolf in London. Also, the undead man/frankenstein character, is partly animated by a system of bugs inside him, making any damage he takes more gruesome. I highly recommend it. 

I also grabbed the newest volume of Power Fantasy. I read the first trade back in July. I had some minor issues with the pacing in volume 1, but volume 2 smoothed at out. I summed it up to Spike as superpowered people arguing politics and philosophy. One of the characters has a superpowered child. It is very much about how despite attempts to shield his son from the bad of the world, the emotional volatility teenagers go through is a bad combination with this much power, even if his parents are powerful enough to keep him inline. And everyone’s fears combined with their own huge amount of power, only add to that danger. 

Good Devils Don’t Play Fair With Evil by David Brothers and Nick Dragotta. was something I picked up as soon as it came out. It’s a collection of shorts Brothers and Dragotta that are them channelling all their favorite shonen manga. They got a good handle on the action in all of them. I particularly liked Fight Like Hell which follows a kid that has fought to survive all his life. He is killed in a fight and since fighting is all he knows, he wants to fight in Heaven. But without the need to survive, he loses his edge.

I also checked out the prose YA book Library of The Dead by T.L. Huchu. It’s about a teen that delivers messages for ghosts. She gets tied up in a mystery involving missing kids because one of the ghosts is the mother of one of the missing kids. I have owned the book for awhile. I heard about it last year at Worldcon because Huchu was on an urban fantasy panel about making the city a character of your book. He had some interesting things to say building the city into the story, so I grabbed a copy of Library of the Dead. However, while the world building was interesting, it didn’t have a lot of baring on the plot of the book. So the pacing was very uneven. I felt like 80% of the plot happened in the last third of the book. I’m gonna hold off on checking out any more of this series until I hear if people think the pacing improved.   

The werewolf movies I showed in my discord were some of my favorites, so the only new movie I saw was Del Toro’s new Frankenstein movie. Like all of Del Toro’s movie, it’s beautiful. It is closer to the book. He used Bernie Wrightson’s illustrated Frankenstein as inspiration (Bernie Wrightson is credited in the movie), and some of the shots are right out of the book. 

And while on the topic of Frankenstein, Matt Baume did a deep dive into James Whale, the director of the original Frankenstein. It was a really interesting dig into how he got started and then pigeon holed as the monster movie guy. 

And the thing that inspired me to give Castlevania a try is I wanted a very long video that is the history of the franchise. The youtuber dug into the topic because he was wondering why there isn’t a new Castlevania game when the Netflix series seems to be doing so well. Turns out it’s because the real villain of the Castlevania franchise is corporate mismanagement. 

Hope you have a good month. As always, thanks for your support!

Spooky Season

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Hi there everyone! Normally, I use Mulder saying “Do you think I’m spooky?” but this image popped up on my tumblr dash and I had to switch it up. First, thank you everyone who signed up for my newsletter at Rose City Comic Con. 

If you are new here, here’s a run down of what I’m working on/what you might be looking for. 

  • The City Between is my webcomic about werewolves in the future. It updates Wednesdays. The current story is titled Glass Diamonds. It is free to read on my website, or you can follow my patreon to get it emailed to you. 
  • Blue Moon is a werewolf romance graphic novel I’m writing and Meredith McClaren is going to draw. 
  • Cautionary Fables and Fairytales is a kid-friendly folklore anthology series I edit and organize for Iron Circus Comics. 
  • You are the Chosen One is a fantasy comic that is exclusive to my patreon but is currently on hold until I’ve gotten a few other things off my plate. 


I have two day jobs. One is as an editor for Seven Seas, so I’ll occasionally share manga I’m editing for them. I’m also the managing editor at Iron Circus Comics. I like folklore, fantasy, and especially like werewolves.

I’m doing Saturday movie afternoons in my Discord. They are always Saturday at 11 am PST if you want to join over lunch. This month is gonna be all werewolf movies! Hop in if you want to join. 

We are watching Wolf (1994) on October 11 and then the OG Wolfman movie on October 25th. 

I’m skipping October 18th because I will be a guest on the World Anvil livestream. So if you’d like to join me live, you can watch here:

I’ll be talking about worldbuilding, comics, and werewolves!

And as usual, I’ll be streaming. 

Everything else will be the streaming schedule:

  • Tuesday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Art times
  • Wednesday at 4pm – 6pm PST – Art times
  • Sunday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Baldur’s Gate 3

Join me on my twitch!

A lot of my last month was me prepping Iron Circus’s book announcements for next year. Basically, Iron Circus uses a distributor Ingram. They tell bookstores about titles roughly a year in advanced. So before October 1st, I have to gather a bunch of marketing info and sample pages for every book the Iron Circus wants to put out between October 2026 – March 2027. We got some qood stuff coming out then. 

I had laser eye surgery two weeks ago. They are healing up nicely. I’ve been asked a lot of questions about it. So I might make a small q&a comic about it. Healing was pretty quick, so I’m already back to work. Right now I’m focusing on finishing up Blue Moon’s script so Meredith can start drawing it. I need finish that before I make any q&a comics. 

Last month, I saw Perfect Blue for the first time. Before watching it, I knew who the director was, it was about a singer having a breakdown, and that Black Swan is frequently accused of ripping it off. Overall, I liked it. Which didn’t surprise me, because I like most stuff by Satoshi Kon. It did however, make me think about why people say Black Swan rips it off. Both movies are very good and surrealist movies about a female performer cracking under pres. But they have very different things about performance. It left me thinking people aren’t looking deeper than the very surface on two very good films. 

Another movie watched in my discord this month was My Cousin Vinny. This one, before watching it, I had only known about that end scene where Mona Lisa explains car details. I see why that clip gets pass around. In general, Mona Lisa steals the show in the movie. The movie started a bit slow and at Vinny’s incompetence got on my nerves at first. But I liked when Vinny started cross examining witnesses and as I said, Mona Lisa stole every scene she was in.

I was a big fan of Owl House while it aired. So I immediately checked out The Knights of Guinevere when the pilot dropped on youtube. If you haven’t watched it, there is an interesting exploration of the complicated feelings someone might have for a big corperation like Disney. It gives people comfort and inspires the young, but actually working for them can be crushing/cruel to the feelings it originally inspired. I’m really looking forward to seeing where the show goes.

Most of the books I read this month were part of my reread of the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire. The newest book, Silver and Lead, came out last week and I devoured it as soon as it dropped. This is book 19 in the series, so I can’t say too much without spoiling earlier books in the series. But I couldn’t put it down and accidentally stayed up until 3am.  

Lastly, while healing up for surgery, I watched an interesting video about the complicated relationship between the Irish and Irish Americans. It looks into how both sides use a simplified version of Ireland for profit and pushing different political ideas. And it digs into the various historical factors that lead to where things are now. I’d recommend folks give it a listen, because it was fascinating. 

Thanks everyone. Have a good month. And take care of yourself!
 

Welcome Everyone who Signed Up at San Diego

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Hello everyone!

Thanks everyone who stopped by my table at San Diego Comic Con and signed up for my newsletter. If you are new here, here’s a run down of what I’m working on/what you might be looking for. 

  • The City Between is my webcomic about werewolves in the future. It updates Wednesdays. The current story is titled Glass Diamonds. It is free to read on my website, or you can follow my patreon to get it emailed to you. 
  • Blue Moon is a werewolf romance graphic novel I’m writing and Meredith McClaren is going to draw. 
  • Cautionary Fables and Fairytales is a kid-friendly folklore anthology series I edit and organize for Iron Circus Comics. 
  • Wolf and Bones Comic Club is a streaming show I do with my friend Bones Leopard. We are currently reading Berserk. It is live on my twitch Thursday, then I post the episodes on my youtube. 
  • You are the Chosen One is a fantasy comic that is exclusive to my patreon but is currently on hold until I’ve gotten a few other things off my plate. 

I have two day jobs. One is as an editor for Seven Seas, so I’ll occasionally share manga I’m editing for them. I’m also the managing editor at Iron Circus Comics. I like folklore, fantasy, and especially like werewolves.

Now that I’m back from San Diego, I’m getting a short break before I head to Worldcon in Seattle. I’ll mostly be doing panels. Above I posted a schedule but here’s some more details. 

  • Table Talk 47 – Wednesday 7:30pm-8:30pm – Room 427: Six people can sign up to have a chat with me. You have to sign up in advance (The Worldcon site doesn’t have that up yet), so keep an eye out if you are interested. I’m willing to look at portfolios if one of the sign ups is interested. 
  • SF/F in Comics! – Thursday 1:30pm-2:30pm – Room 420-422: How have speculative fiction and fantasy been represented in comics? From Jack Kirby’s super-science, to Jeff Lemire’s android families in Descender, to fae crimes of Black Cloak by Kelly Thompson and Meredith McClaren, let’s explore the comics that tried to put the science first, or brought the fantastical to the forefront, and talk about how that drew us into those stories!
  • The Indie Comics Panel: The Big 25% – Friday 9am-10am – Room 431-432: The “Big Two” comic book publishers control 75% of the market and get plenty of attention. If you’re curious about who makes up the independent comics market and where you fit in as a fan, this might be the panel for you!
  • Kickstarter for Authors – Saturday 10:30am-11:30am – Room 443-444: Kickstarter is becoming a powerful platform for connecting indie authors with readers. Join our Kickstarter experts to learn what projects work best, how Kickstarter backers are different from readers on other marketplaces, and how to set your project up for success.
  • Writing Comics and Graphic Novels – Saturday 1:30pm-2:30pm – Room 343-344: Comics are bigger than ever, and the publishing industry is wild for graphic novels and manga, but writing a comics story is its own skill—different from prose or a screenplay. Gain valuable insight about the medium of comics: pitching, script formatting, collaborating with artists, and common pitfalls many new comic writers make as they get their start.
  • The Comic Book Sommelier – Sunday 3pm-4pm – Room 423-424: Comic books today: Even with sales numbers dropping and the distribution channel scattered and shredded, there’s never been a better time to be a comics fan. Why Marvel and DC are doing some of the best work they’ve done in years, probably under pressure from the strong stories of “second-rank” companies and the surge of independent comics publishers. This panel will cover some of the “inside baseball” of how things are going, then move to being an audience-led “comic book sommelier,” where we match an individual with a perfect comic title or two.

So it is a pretty packed week. I hope some of you can make it! I really enjoyed Worldcon last year, so I’m very curious to check out the programing at the show this year. I haven’t had a chance to go through the whole program but there are a couple I’m already interested in like Blueprint for Hope.  

And I’ll still be streaming on Twitch:

  • Tuesday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Art times
  • Wednesday at 4pm – 6pm PST – Art times
  • Thursday at 3pm – 4pm PST – Wolf & Bones Comic Club
  • Thursday at 4pm – 6pm PST – Art times
  • Sunday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Baldur’s Gate 3

All these streams will be on my twitch, so stop by!Bones is traveling so Wolf & Bones Comic Club is gonna be sporadic. They also think they have hit their limit with the violence in Berserk so we are lined up some different titles to move on to. We are gonna talk about the Dark Phoenix Saga, Bone, and then Rose of Versailles. 

Prep for San Diego Comic Con took up most of my time this month. I posted some of the con photos online. The thing I took the most pictures of was the lego version of the convention center. It was really impressed with all the details. I ended up taking a video as I walked around it. I also took photos of cosplayers, but kept it to deeper cuts/rarer costumes. All my photos are up on my google drive. 

I got decently ahead with Glass Diamonds, so this month I’m focus on writing Blue Moon. I’ve been stuck at the half way point for awhile. Meredith has been swamped with her Image series Black Cloak and her new book Meateaters (both of which are very good and you should check out), so it hasn’t been a big problem. I don’t want to hold her up though. 

Since San Diego prep took up a lot of time last month, I didn’t get to check out too many new books this month. One the drive down to San Diego I listened to the audiobook of Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir by Brent Spiner. It’s mystery about him dealing with an obsessive trekkie while filming The Next Generation. While not the best book, it was funny and he got the whole cast of TNG to read their dialogue in the audiobook. I’d mostly recommend it to people who are Star Trek fans and are looking of an audiobook specifically. 

I also finally got a chance to read The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumokuren. I watched the first few episodes of the anime. But it’s only available with subtitles and with I’d rather take in the visuals completely than try to read while watching. So I switched over to the manga. If you don’t know what this manga is about, it’s a romantic horror story. The titular Hikaru died in the mountains and has been replaced by a creator that not only copied his body, but also his memories. It is now experiencing being human for first time. The art really sells the uneasy intimacy between the main character and this fake Hikaru. I ended up reading 3 volumes and will get catch up later this month. 

Lastly, I listened to the audiobook of The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison. This is the fourth book set in the world of The Goblin Emperor. It picks up right where the pervious book left off. Thara Celehar ends up looking into why a cemetery has fallen into disuse and get it functioning again. It digs into who the elf kingdom views as a “person” and how to right old injustices. The end was a little abrupt. I assume it was because Katherine Addison is getting stuff into place for the next book, but still felt off. I did like how Celehar slowly learns to move beyond his self loathing, or at least starts too. 

That’s it for this month! Thanks for your support and take care.