Tag: newsletter

Hi folks, I’ll be tabling at Emerald City this weekend. Myself, Kory Bing, and Meredith McClaren will all be at table 20201. We will have a wide variety of monster and fantasy books! And I’ll have some new totebags. 

I mentioned I will have new totebags at Emerald City. After the show I’ll have them up in my store. I just need White Squirrel who handles my store fulfillment to take pictures of them. So it might be in April that they go up. Here’s the design. Like my other totebag, I worked with the great folks at Unicorn Empire. It’s a quote from Rebecca in Fame & Misfortune. So I asked Unicorn Empire to looks at art deco patterns, so it would match The City Between’s general look.

For the monthly full moon movie chat, I’ve rented the new Wolf Man movie. I don’t have high expectation for the movie, but maybe it will be fun to watch as a group. It will be March 14th at 3pm PST. Click here if you wanna join!

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!

Last month, as mentioned on my friend Bones Leopard and I started a twitch show/podcast where we read Berserk. We’ve done two episodes live. I’ve been posting them on my youtube. So you can catch up here. I’ll make a public/free post on my patreon the morning before we go live. So you’ll know when we are coming!

Also, to promote Bones and I’s new show and Glass Diamonds I was a guest on War Rocket Ajax. 

Also, I answered all the questions in this silly meme on Blusky. 

Last month was about prepping for Emerald City and recovering from the crunch time I had at Seven Seas. So once Emerald City is out of the way I’m gonna give Glass Diamonds most of attention. I just have the final scene to write. I might end up writing it in the Emerald City hotel room. 

While working, I was catching up on various TV shows. One of which is the 5th season of Fargo. One thing I really appreciate about Fargo is it always has one element that is vaguely supernatural in each season. And that supernatural element always reenforces one of the major themes of the season. Like in this season, the characters are constantly talking about debt and what people owe one another. So when one of the criminals is 500 year old sin-eater who talks in cryptic lines, they are about how he returns what he is given (whether kindness to an old woman he stays with or violence directed at him by a corrupt deputy) and how he is burdened by the sins of the rich he was forced to take on. And it adds a good texture the story, especially when the main character pushes back against his older views on debt and payment. I think without that spice of the supernatural, the story might be easy to dismiss as something more straight forward. 

When I think of a lot of my favorite stories, they are ones that use the magical or sci-fi elements to reinforce their metaphor rather than there for the plot or world building. 

That’s it for this month. Everyone, take care of yourselves.

If you missed the kickstarter last year, you can now grab Murky Water from my shop. But the world is on fire, I get it if you don’t got the funds for it. 

This month me and my pal Bones are gonna start a twitch stream show where we read Berserk. Last newsletter I said it would be Tuesdays, but Bones has a conflict. So we will be having our first episode Feb 6th at 3pm pst. Join us while we discuss volume 1 (of the thinner ones, not the nice hardcovers.) That is The Black Swordsman, The Brand, and The Guardians of Desire part 1.

Also this month the full moon is Feb 12th. Since it’s so close to Valentine’s Day, I wanted to shoot for something more on the romantic side of werewolf movies. So we’ll be watching Blood and Chocolate at Noon PST. If you want to join, head on over to my discord. 

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!

This month was pretty rough because I had a lot of deadline crunch at Seven Seas. I still got another week of deadline crunch. Then things will ease up a bit.

I did manage to see Nosferatu though. Overall, I mostly liked it. But parts of it fell flat to me. It is about 30 mins longer than the original and I think overall that hurts the movie. We spend a lot of time with Thomas at Count Orlok’s castle. While beautiful and moody, it makes it a bit jarring when the movie switches gears to focus on Orlok in the more modern city. It kinda switches main characters half way through and that doesn’t quite work. Right after seeing it, I basically said I wish we stayed with Thomas or his bit at the beginning was shorter. I also wish we got a better look at the count. He is 90% in shadow most of the time. Eggers said in interviews he made to sure to cut out what was silly about Dracula/vampire movies. So that is probably why. But I wish we got a better look at him at least some of the time. 

After a few weeks I saw Be Kind Rewind compared all three Nosferatus. She points out that the new Nosferatu also explains more of the why. And I think that might be another reason why it didn’t 100% hit for me. The new Nosferatu is running a lot on mood and vibes, so when explaining the why of things, it dampens/interrupts the mood. I did still like it but I think I perfer the other two versions. Both of which (as pointed out in Be Kind Rewind’s video) are free to watch. The original is on youtube with ads and the 70s one is on tubi for free. 

While buried in work, I had audiobooks. Several of which were releases I had been waiting for. Heavenly Tyrant is the follow up to Iron Widow which I read a few years ago.  Heavenly Tyrant was a good follow up, but I feel like being catalogued as YA has been limiting story. There was some political stuff that is kinda surface level compared to where it could have gone. But it is kinda more minor nitpick. I definitely will be picking up the third book in the series when it comes out. 

I also grabbed Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear. It’s part of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series. I always like the stories showing the kids origins because who they are being in conflict with who their parents think they are. So this didn’t disappoint. 

Currently, I’m relistening to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. A few years ago they got rereleased with Andy Serkis as the reader. He does a great job. When I first listening to the Lord of the Rings audiobook, I found Rob Inglis a bit dry. So they are worth checking out if you want to revisit the series. 

Thats all for this month. Thanks everyone for your support. Take care of yourselves and each other. 

Crossposted from my newsletter.

Happy New Year everyone! 

I’m still figuring out the streaming schedule for the year. But getting back to werewolf movie night, next up is Monster Squad!

Join my discord Sunday January 12th at 2pm PST to watch a very ridiculous movie. Click here to join! 

For sure I’ll be streaming at these times:

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

Also me and my pal Bones Leopard are gonna twitch show/podcast were we read through Berserk. We are gonna read and talk about volume 1 on February 4th. But we are still nailing down the time. 

All these streams will be on my twitch, so stop by!

The big thing last month was my Christmas charity stream where I played Slay the Princess. If you missed it, I now have it up on my youtube. I went for 7 hours. 

I’m gotta start the new year off with updating my store. I need to get Murky Water up now that the Kickstarter is fulfilled. Also, because of someone asking about it, I realized I never put the second chapter of SuperNatural Attraction in the store. So gonna get those up soon. 

Also, last month I was thinking about what to do about You Are the Chosen One since I can’t keep it up going weekly. I’m gonna start putting pages of that up on my website on Fridays, but once a month I’ll make a progress report $1 patreon backers. So I gotta tweak my patreon backer level for that. 

And for those of you who don’t like patreon, I started a Kofi. I’ve not completely done fiddling with it. But I’m gonna try to remember to post everything that is on patreon, on there as well. 

I watch a lot of youtube while working as usual. And this month, a video that stood out to me was Laura Crone made a video about Magicians the book vs the show. She likes both, but a thing that talks about in it is how a book is marketed or explained to people sets different expectations. In the context of Magicians, Laura brings up if someone was given it in the context of “if you like x fantasy book” they might be frustrated with the structure of the book being closer to literary fiction. I’ve been kinda mentally chewing on that idea. 

I’ve talked with some other comic creators in the past about how stories start making a promise to the reader. Like I love Beastars, but I know several people who were frustrated with it because it starts with a murder and no one tries to solve the murder in the first arc. But thinking about how someone is presented a book via marketing or a friend rec, also can set the a book up to fail in readers eyes. I made me think about how I didn’t really like Wicked the book, because it’s sold as the Wizard of Oz from the Wicked Witch’s pov. But the book isn’t really from her point of view, yes you get more background on her, but you don’t get into her head. The musical (and the new movie) do a better job of following through on the promise of presenting things from Alphaba’s point of view. 

I don’t really have a conclusion to that point and will probably keep mentally chewing on this idea for a bit. But I wanted to share what’s been on my mind writing wise lately. 

This year, I’m gonna try to keep better track of what I’m watching and reading. I fell off it the past few years because of my workload at Seven Seas. So I need to make time for reading some comics that AREN’T mangas I’m editing. 

Thanks everyone for your support.