Tag: newsletter

Hello new folks, I am the editor on the Iron Circus book Runaway to the Stars by Jay Eaton. It has been super successful and we wanna try to get folks interested in Runaway to the Stars to check out Iron Circus’s next kickstarter Goblin Throne by Mel Gillman. So Jay, Mel, and I are going to have dueling streams while we talk about all our comics. It will be Tuesday May 12 at 6:30 pm pst. I’ll be drawing on my twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/kelmcdonald

Also, I’m sending this out while I’m at Comic Con Oakland. So thanks everyone who stopped by at the show and welcome new people! If you signed up for Cautionary Fables, you can find that in my store or on the publisher Iron Circus‘s. If you signed up for The City Between (my werewolves in the future comic), you can read that on my site or on my patreon. 

On Saturdays at 11 am PST, I usually watch a movie in my discord. They are all movies I haven’t seen. Anyone can pop in and watch along. This month we are watching:

• May 16 – Blackberry
• May 23 – Her
• May 30 – Minority Report

Pop in with this link.

Other that the big special stream, I’ll also be streaming on these dates and times:

• Tuesday at 7pm – 10pm PST – Art times
• Wednesday at 7pm – 9pm PST – Art times
• Sunday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Disco Elysium 

Join me on my twitch! 

My kickstarter finished up! It was a close call, but it made it. After things wrapped up, I got some fanart from Steve Lieber!

Before I got hired by Seven Seas and was made managing editor at Iron Circus, me and Meredith McClaren got our graphic novel Blue Moon picked up. But I very quickly got those two jobs and then buried by editorial work. It didn’t leave much time to write the script for Meredith. But now after 3 years, I’ve finally finished writing it! So I’m excited for the book to start moving forward at a quicker pace. 

Now I’m gonna focus on writing the next City Between story. Glass Diamonds will be done by the end of the year, so I want the next story ready to go. 

Last month’s movie watch parties started with Battle Royale. When starting the classic death game story, I was supered to learn that it is newer than I thought it was. I can definately see why it made an impact, but my opinion of it suffers a bit from having seen or read stuff that takes death games further. Because at the end of the day, I would have liked some more creativity in the violence of more explanation about why the death games exists. Wikipedia says the book goes into that more, so I might pick up the book at a later date. 

Then I played the 1931 Frankenstein movie. After seeing the Del Toro one and here all the discussion around it, I realized I hadn’t seen the 1931 version. It is a really beautiful film. One thing that struck me was that it didn’t have any non-diegetic music. I don’t know enough about film history to know would this have had an orchestra play a score like old silent films? Like did they do that for the really early films with sound? Or was there just no music intentionally? If someone knows film facts, let me know. 

I don’t like to get too be too repetitive with time period or tone from week to week. So I followed up a classic like Frankenstein with a very new movie, Death of a Unicorn. It was overall fine. I enjoyed it, but I wish it was more ridiculous. Like all the humor and scares were at an 8, but with such a silly premise (A father hits a unicorn with his car and then it turns out the blood has healing properties. So the father’s billionaire boss wants to sell unicorn blood to people. Which leads to other unicorns murdering the wanna be unicorn hunters, while the father and daughter are caught in the middle), I wanted everything to be at a 10. 

And last movie of the month was 9 to 5. All three actresses are legends, so unsurprisingly the movie is a lot of fun. I liked that each lady had a different background and problems but end up coming together in a way that feels natural. It didn’t leave me with much to say though. 

Another thing I watched that I also think is really good, but don’t have much to say is My Brother the Minotaur. It is the newest project by Cartoon Saloon. Their stuff is always beautiful. The story is a kid friendly mystery. It does good character work that keeps a fairly simplish engaging. 

While I had my Apple TV turned on (I rotate streaming services), I also checked out Pluribus. I’ve been only hearing great things about it, but it wasn’t a super high priority for me because I didn’t particularly like Breaking Bad (I found it kinda boring) but I did like Better Call Saul. While I like main characters that are bad people/unlikable, I would like to see them struggle internally a bit. So Jimmy in Better Call Saul trying to be good but continuously falling back on bad habits and fixating on grudges is way more appealing to Walt embracing his worse qualities. So I’m glad Pluribus is following more of Jimmy’s arc that Walt’s. I also like that the hivemind isn’t overtly hostile, while still terrifying. I saw some discussion online theorizing that the hivemind virus is something sent ahead of an alien invasion, but I hope that isn’t the case. Things are more interesting when it is focusing on just individuality being lost. And having Carol be such a mess while arguing against the hivemind reminds me a bit of The World’s End, the main character is even worse than Carol while arguing for individuality. 

And while working this month I had the audiobook All Accounts Settle by Drew Hayes. It is the last book in the series Fred the Vampire Accountant and was a stratifying send off. The whole series is fairly low stakes for the most part. I found it because I was trying to find urban fantasy books that aren’t about magic cops and aren’t romance. So some serialized short stories about a vampire accountant solving bureaucracy problems was exactly what I was looking for. The whole thing is full of stuff like Fred helps a haunted house gain ownership of itself, so it doesn’t have to worry about real estate developers trying to buy it. It is a fairly chill series with nice place to stop. 

I ended the month reading Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks, the first book in The Culture series. Last month, I read Player of Games based on my pal Blue Delliquanti’s rec. I’m glad I didn’t start with this one. While I enjoyed it, it really throws a lot at you at once. And the whole book is full of spies and double crosses. I think learning about the titular Culture in Player of Games, helped me get a handle on this book with a lot more narrative threads to keep track of. I might have bounced off the series if I had started here. 

Anyway, that is all. Thank you all for your support, both through the kickstarter and through my Patreon. Hang in there. 

Hi there everyone! Shards of Reflection is still kickstarting and it has roughly a week to make 2k. Please spread the where ever you can. 

And for folks that met me at Wondercon, thank you for getting my books and signing up for the newsletter. Here’s a run down of what I do. 

• 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.

This month I’m mostly gonna recharge from doing cons. But I will be at Comic Con Oakland at the start of May. So incase I don’t have May’s newsletter out by then, catch me there on May 9th and 10th. 

But while I rest up for that, join me as I watch some movies on Saturday afternoons. Here’s what I’m watching

• April 4 – Battle Royale
• April 11 – Frankenstein (1931)
• April 18 – Death of a Unicorn
• April 25 – 9 to 5

All the movies start at 11am pacific time. You can join by clicking here.

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 enjoyed Wondercon. I’ll probably go next year. It being more spread out/having wider aisles made it feel nicer to browse and walk around. I saw some good costumes. I posted them all on my blusky. But here’s an especially good werewolf. 

One fun thing that happened at Wondercon is I have a stuff wolf that props up copies of Can I Pet Your Werewolf. A little girl asked me what the wolf’s name was. I told her he is a wolf and since wolves are wild animals they don’t have names. Little girl DID NOT like that answer. So I guess next time a kid asks me the wolf’s name I should have an answer. I’m thinking Talbot. 

Between the two big conventions, I’ve been thinking a lot about Buffy. If you didn’t here, Hulu canceled the Buffy reboot they were planning. Jessie Gender did a run down of everything as well as her thoughts its cancelation is mainly due to misogyny. I agree with her that misogyny is probably what ultimately killed it, I think this project was doomed from the start. Now I am a huge Buffy fan and it was obviously a big influence on what I create, but when I first heard about the reboot and Sarah Michelle Gellar was playing Buffy in it, I thought that was a bad decision. In general, I want new stuff to get made rather than infinite reboots/sequels. Then even if you are doing a reboot, if the intent is to get a new generation into Buffy, having SMG there is bogging the series down with a continuity and creating a barrier to entry. And if new teens aren’t the plan, they just want the old audience back, then why are we focusing on a new Slayer? Jessie mentions in her video the executives claimed Zhao was a bad fit for the show, but her work is pretty well known with all the successes she’s been having. So why didn’t the executives figure out she was a bad fit from the start? Jessie is right to say that is on them for not knowing what they wanted and not trusting Zhao to do her job. But that trying to have it both ways mismanagement was something I thought was coming since the announcement that Sarah Michelle Gellar was returning as Buffy. If they have to reboot Buffy, they need a fresh start. But this is a lot of text. So here’s some old drawings I did for a Buffy art test. 

This month I watched All About Eve. A lot of youtubers I watch that I watch have mentioned it. I can see why because like Casablanca last month, this movie is kinda classics are classics for a reason. I especially liked the costuming being used to mislead the viewer. Like Bette Davis’s character is in all these dark dresses that mixed with her sharp eyebrows that give her a real villainous look. Then Anne Baxter is dressed like an ingenue with most modest light colors at first. Then half way through she starts wearing dresses that mimic Bette Davis’s and it is around the same time the audience is completely clued into Anne Baxter’s character being a villain. 

The week after I showed my discord something completely different. We watched Annihilation. I over all liked the movie but it left me with a lot of questions. I wouldn’t call them plots holes, more stuff I wondered about that I assume the movie just didn’t have room for. It made me want to check out the books. I was really impressed with Gina Rodriguez in the movie. I had only seen her in Jane the Virgin before. So seeing her lose it the way she does in Annihilation was impressive. Also, as scary as the bear monster was, I find the alligator with extra teeth more unnerving. 

I did more reading this month. I accidentally let my to read pile get bigger than I like. The book club I’m in read Reel to Real by bell hooks. The book is a collection of her criticism of various movies. Most of the movies were ones I hadn’t seen. So it mostly just made me add to my movies to see list. It also made me wish bell hooks lived longer because I would have loved to have read her thoughts on more recent movies like American Fiction and Moonlight. 

After Reel to Real, I jumped into A Ruin, Great and Free by Cadwell Turnbull. It is the final book in his trilogy that started with No Gods, No Monsters. It continues to work on a big picture community look at the supernatural that I don’t see very often, while not becoming too detached from his characters personal humanity. I immediately wanted go back and reread the series from the start. 

This month had the release of a new Seanan McGuire book Butterfly Effects. It is the 15th book in her Incryptid series, so I wouldn’t recommend jumping into it cold. The series as a whole is about a family of cryptozoologists. A lot of the plot in this particular book is resolving things from a few books before. The main thing I found interesting is the antagonists are a hivemind but part of the hivemind is trying to rebel. So the logistic of a rebellion in a society that is all psychically connected was interesting to dig at. 

Final book I read was Player of Games by Ian M Banks. Two of my friends, Spike Trotman and Blue Delliquanti, have talked up the Culture Series to me. I don’t have a lot to say about Player of Games by itself, other than I liked it. Blue told me to start with this one and it is an easy into. I’m intrigued and will end up reading more Culture Novels. So I might have more to say when I’m deeper in. 

That’s it for this month. Thanks as always for your support and once again, please spread the word about my Kickstarter.

Hi there everyone! Shards of Reflection is still kickstarting. It is going a little slow, so it will be a close call. Please spread the where ever you can. 

And for folks that met me at Emerald City, thank you for getting my books and signing up for the newsletter. Here’s a run down of what I do. 

• 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.

At the end of this month I’ll be at Wondercon. So on March 27 through March 29, you can find me at table 2212. I’ll be sharing with Sam Logan. 

I will still be showing movies in my discord on the Saturdays I’m not at a con. Anyone can join. Just click this link. Movies are at 11am pst. Here’s what we are watching. 

• March 14 – All About Eve
• March 21 – Annihilation
• March 28 – no movie I’ll be at Wondercon
• April 4 – Battle Royale

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 was guest on War Rocket Ajax to promote Shards of Reflection. We mostly talk about tv we are watching and how if I had a A Knight in the Seven Kingdoms podcast I would name is Westeros Runs on Duncan. 

This month is doing a lot of to keep promoing my kickstarter. I also need to get ahead of the Glass Diamond pages before Wondercon. 

I’m also recovering from Emerald City Comic Con. 10-7pm for 3 days straight is rough, especially on my feet. As I recover I’m looking into new cons to try instead of Emerald City. I mentioned why I probably wasn’t going to return to ECCC last month. I’m hundred 100% on that now. So is Kory who I share an ECCC table with. She did a long thread about how Reedpop treated us this year. This is also the tip of the iceberg over the years. I usually handle all our paperwork for Emerald City. So Kory didn’t have to call and Reedpop to fix the several mistakes they made with our table over the years like giving us a different size than we paid for, trying to double charge us. 

Since Kory, Meredith (who also shares the table with us) and I all have monster stuff, we are thinking of giving to Crypticon in 2027. Kory has also been telling me to check out furry shows since werewolves is close enough. I mostly haven’t tried furry shows because I got the impression that a lot of the focus at those is on commissions and I don’t really like taking commissions at cons. 

But enough retreading grips about Reedpop. Here’s stuff that I’ve been enjoying. I’m a patron backer of Skip Intro and he’s started a non-fiction book club for his patrons. We just finished The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson. It’s about how violence is depicted in media/art/the news. It was an interesting read but suffered a bit because she wasn’t really arguing that it was good or bad. She was more working out her own feelings. I feel like what it made me think about rather than her particular opinions. Partly because she seemed to have wildly different opinions about some pieces (since they are mostly fairly recent examples they are all pretty easy to look up). That and this book was written in 2011. So while she talks about images being shared on the news, she doesn’t cover violence going viral on social media. There is a part where she talks what the purpose of art is, whether it be to make you feel uncomfortable or to show truth. I disagree with both. I think art is to make you feel something, good or bad. 

And that kinda sentiment was kinda dug into by a youtube video I watched. I really enjoyed Jeffiot’s video Peak Art, Peak Slop. He does a dive into how people react to art that is hard to parse like David Lynch’s work vs how people react to something formulaic like Mr. Beast. There is a deep dive that into how the more complicated art sticks with us, even if we don’t like it. Basically, when it comes to more complexed art, no matter who sees it, the longer we think over a more complicated piece of art, the more we end up with sticking with us. Where as something simple and easy to process has a good chance of not being very memorable and we end up forgetting it once it is done. 

It’s something I think is true to the movies I ended up watching this month. My Saturday movies started with the movie Moonlight. It had been on my to watch list since it won the Oscar. It is a truly beautiful movie. There are a lot of very long shots that let you sit with a moment or build tension. Pretty much any scene with the main character at the beach is really moving. I had kinda expected a more tragic ending, since that is what the Oscars tend to like. But instead the end is kinda bitter sweet and tender.

My discord also watched Casablanca. I had never seen it before, but I had seen the DS9 episode that is based off Casablanca. I shared with the discord some side by side comparisons. It was really good, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Classic movies I feel can go either way, either they still knock it out of the park or they have aged really poorly. Casablanca is 100% in the first category. I especially thought it was neat how perfect Victor was. Usually in love triangles, the competition for the main character is a shit head or boring, but Victor is just a great guy in all forms and doesn’t even mind that Rick and Ilsa were a thing. I chatted with the discord that if he was even slightly a bad person, the audience would probably hate Ilsa for not staying with Rick.

I also started The Pitt this month. When I was home for the holidays, my cousin sang its praises and then Skip Intro made a video about. So I put it at the top of my list of shows to check out on HBO while I had it turned on for a few months. It is really intense in a good way. The hour by hour structure fits the ER better than it ever did 24hour. I like that you don’t really learn what happens to patience after they leave. And most stuff is unresolved because it is just the hospital that one day. Kory also started watching it, and the second season is set during the 4th of July. Kory goes to Anthrocon every year and was like “This is the 4th of July, where are the furries with heat stroke?!” then sure enough, last episode. 

Another thing I checked out based on recs is Death By Lightening. It’s a mini series on Netflix about President Garfield. Skip Intro put it on his best things he watched in 2025 and I hadn’t heard of it. It follows both Garfield and Guiteau as Garfield wins the primary and then the presidency. I did know some of the story because I really like the musical Assassins and Guiteau is one of the titular assassins. Michael Shannon plays Garfield and does a great job, as does Nick Offerman as Chester Arthur. But the most brillanent casting was Matthew Macfadyen as Guiteau. He brings a lot of the same energy to the role as when he was Tom on Succession, only with an extra level of delusion. I can see why Skip Intro put on his top picks for 2025. It did make me wish that Matthew Macfadyen would sing the Ballad of Guiteau. 

That’s all for this month. Thanks again for the support. Please tell your friends about my kickstarter. Also here’s a really good cosplay I saw are Emerald City

The fifth book in The City Between is now up on Kickstarter. So please grab yourself a physical copy of Shards of Reflection. It follows a new vampire as she looks for the vampire who turned her.

This is technically not in February, but it is so early in March that I’m going to bring it up now. I’ll be at Emerald City Comic Con on March 5th-8th. I’ll be at table 11120. I have been at Emerald City every year since 2011, but this will probably be my last year. Ever since Reedpop bought Emerald City, they have messed up my table. And this year they moved it away from the other comic artists and down to the basement. That combined with them publicly saying they want to move away from comics/nerd culture to compete with Spring Break/Coachella and they have been caught selling the data both exhibitors and attendees, means I should replace it with a different show. If you can’t read the article here is a relavant quote:

“We’re competing with Coachella, we’re competing with spring break and with all kinds of other big events,” says Kristina Rogers, VP, ReedPOP comics portfolio in an interview in the trade publication ICv2 earlier this week. “For us, that means expanding what pop culture means – everything from Renaissance Faires to comedy to music. Our idea is to take every cool festival you’ve gone to and bring it indoors. It’s a bit more of a ‘World’s Fair’ approach.”

“Eventually the “comic con” (that’s what the CC stands for) becomes an “everything con,” with something for fans of all aspects of pop culture, plus the added bonus of celebrity photo ops, a slightly nerdy vibe, and lots of glorious costumes.”

It’s a huge bummer that Reedpop ruined such a good convention, but I need to move on. Maybe I’ll be able to find a different con in Seattle to check out.  

Until Emerald City, I’m still hosting my Saturday afternoon movie. Anyone who wants to can join by jumping into my discord. Movies play Saturday at 11 am west coast time. 

• Feb 14th – Moonlight
• Feb 21st – Casablanca
• Feb 28th – Malcolm X

And as usual I’m streaming 3 times a week.  

• 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! If you haven’t joined, I usually end up talking to a friend about tv or movies while drawing. 

Most of this month I was building the kickstarter page. I got bookplates for sale as an add on. I’m gonna sketch on them and sign them, so took me a bit to come up with a nice design that still left room for sketches. I’m happy with how they turned out. 

his month I’m mostly gonna focus on getting my stock ready for con season starting up. And making sure I’m ahead on Glass Diamonds. 

I’m also reviewing the submissions for Iron Circus’s newest anthology Lie Machine. It is about propaganda and manufactured consent. I’m the main editor on it and did the first pass on all the submissions this weekend. Spike and I will make the final call later this month. There are already some cool stories from people, so I think this will end up a rad book. 

My Saturday afternoon movies this month were started with Rob Reiner movies I hadn’t seen before. The best of which was When Harry Met Sally. I had it on my to watch list for awhile. Broey Deshanel’s video on the Anatomy of a Rom Com bumped it to higher up on the list. It lived up it’s reputation. I especially liked Harry and Sally’s friends that end up together. 

The other movies I watched didn’t live up to what I had heard about them. I watched This is Spinal Tap, which my main comment on is I think references to it spoiled all the really good jokes. I think stone hedge prop gag and the bad album covers were the only ones that hadn’t been spoiled for me.

Next was Stand By Me which I thought was just okay. While the main character had good arc acknowledging his grief, the other boys’ stories felt incomplete. Like River Phoenix’s character is dealing with people assuming he’s no good like his parents, but that doesn’t get much resolution. And it also felt like the other two boys could have been cut from the movie without much changing. On stream I talked to my pal Joe about how they also don’t really like the movie. Both of us kinda agreed that the movie Now and Then is similar but better job giving the whole friend group an arc and development. 

And this last one will probably make a lot of my readers mad. I saw the movie Akira for the first time and was mostly frustrated. I had been putting off seeing it because I have read the manga. Pretty much every time I’ve seen an anime movie that is based off a manga series, I’ve been frustrated with the movie because I can’t stop thinking about how it is just scratching the surface of what makes the manga great. I don’t mind adaptions changing stuff, it is just the movies that are kinda summaries of something deeper leaves me feeling unsatisfied. While the Akira movie is beautifully animated and the sound design is top notch, I couldn’t stop thinking about the manga. As you can see above, I chatted with my pal Kory Bing about it. 

I am really liking A Knight in the Seven Kingdoms. Last year I listened to the audiobook and thought the smaller scale combined with the stories being episodic would make it easier to adapt to tv. So I was cautiously optimistic when I saw the trailer. The first few episodes exceeded my expectation. The casting is excellent. Dunk and Egg both have great chemistry. The actor playing Dunk really sells how sincere and kind he is. And Lyonel Baratheon in particular steals the show. It also had me thinking part of why the show works is because it isn’t afraid to be silly. I think a lot of recent fantasy and science fiction shows/movies have been held back by trying not to look dumb. I also like that even smaller details are helping reinforce its themes. The third episode has a great bit where Dunk and Egg talk about a dirty song and what seems like a joke turns into a point that the subject of the song used the little she had to become great (like what Dunk will do). 

While my HBO is turned back on to watch A Knight in the Seven Kingdoms, I also got caught up on Hacks and The Righteous Gem Stones. The latter is a show I really enjoy but don’t have a whole lot to say. But I love Hacks because it is rare that women get to be as messy and terrible as the leads in this show. It is also the only show that correctly pronounces my hometown Waltham, MA. 

Fallout Season 2 ended strong, but I still think the big picture isn’t quite coming together. I like each episode on it’s own, but there were things like a supermutant cameo that didn’t go anywhere and the Brotherhood of Steel didn’t amount to much. I do wish they would have some of the good factions like Followers of the Apocalypse or Jacobstown. The show makes the point that Caesar’s Legion is much worse than the NCR, but Lucy’s arguement about their being some good people out there is weakened by leaving out the people trying to do good without the corruption problems of the NCR.   

That it for this month. Thanks again for your support. And before I go, here’s a duck dressed as Leazel from Baldur’s Gate 3. Meredith McClaren sent it to me. It’s in reference to a Laezel’s voice actress reading out a Baldur’s Gate shit post. 

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.