Tag: newsletter

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. 

I’m at table B-12! Right up front! Stop by and get some books! I’ll have copies of Failure to Launch!

Perfect Crime Party is currently crowdfunding! I mentioned it last month but this is the newest anthology I edited for Iron Circus. There is a lot of fun lighthearted crime stories. So please grab yourself a copy!

This months werewolf movie is An American Werewolf in Paris. I’ll be hosting it on my discord September 17th at 4pm pt. If you wanna join, just sign up for my discord here. I starting to run out of the big deal werewolf movies. So I’m also open to recommendations. 

• Tuesday 8pm-10pm PST – Art times
• Wednesday 8pm-10pm PST – Art times
• Thursday 6pm-8pm PST (during the Iron Circus Geekshow)
• Sunday 8pm-11pm PST – Playing Baldur’s Gate 3

Please stop by!

I spent a big chunk of August traveling. I went to Worldcon for the first time. It was in Glasgow, Scotland. My thought was if I didn’t like the con, then I could just leave and do something touristy. I did end up enjoying the con and I plan to go when it’s in Seattle next year. My hotel was about a 20 min to the convention center but it was pretty nice and along the river. 

If you don’t know, Worldcon is a sci-fi fantasy con where the Hugos are held. It’s in a different city every year. While there is some fan stuff, it is mainly aimed at pros and aspiring pros. As such the vibe was very different at Worldcon that the many comic shows I’ve been to. I think a lot of the panels at comic cons are basically press releases. There are some panels on craft, but they usually get buried/given bad time slots. Which makes sense because those comic shows are more focused on fans and sales. 

So it was nice to listen to some topics with writing being the focus. I particularly liked one I went to about governments in sci-fi and fantasy and why those two genres tend toward writing about fascism or monarchy. I went because in The City Between, Connor’s husband Jordan is their worlds equivalent of the governor. I think I got some good notes and ideas on how to flesh that angle out more in future stories.

Also at Worldcon I grabbed some new books. One I ready finished, To Shape a Dragon’s Breath. It is about a native girl who finds a dragon. Her people used to have dragons but were wiped out when white settlers started colonizing the area. Said white colonizers also have a lot of laws about dragons, so she has to go to one of their schools for dragon riders. It was very well written and I got through it pretty fast. My one complaint is at the beginning the main character is a bit too nice for my tastes. That isn’t a flaw with the book, just my personal taste. I frequently like characters that are trash monsters to the point where my friends tell me they can’t watch someone of my favorite shows because everyone is too awful. So me thinking a character is too nice, is probably a plus for everyone else. 

After Worldcon, I stayed in Glasgow an extra day to explore. I was traveling with my pal Bones Leopard who wanted to visit the Glasgow Necropolis. I took a lot of graves I thought had cool designs. 

Right next to it is Glasgows Cathedral. So we also popped in and I took a bunch of pictures of that. 

Afterward, Bones feet started to hurt, so I ended up wandering around on my own and talking pictures of architecture I thought was neat. And while exploring I came across a group of bagpipers performing. 

After that I went to Edinburgh for a few days. Mostly I walked around and saw some performances. The Fridge Fest was going on while I was there. So I got to see a few fun street performances. On day was pretty rainy in the afternoon so I spelt it in the National Museum of Scotland. But the big thing I did in Edinburgh was I climbed Arthur’s Seat. The view was amazing!

I put all my Scotland pictures in my google drive. Anyone who wants to see them can browse here. The folder includes:

• a bunch of buildings I thought looked neat in Glasgow and Edinburgh
• walking along the river
• all the graves I took pics of
• a religion museum next to the graveyard and cathedral
• inside the cathedral
• the oldest house in Glasgow (each floor showed it in a different time period)
• some landscapes/hills taken from inside the train to Edinburgh
• climbing Arthur’s Seat
• photos from the National Museum of Scotland

The whole trip was fun. I also got to hang out with Kate Ashwin in person. Iron Circus wants to do a boxset of Cautionary Fables, so we sat down and figured out what we want the box to look like. 

Now that I’m home I’m gonna rest up and focus on The City Between. I have like 4 pages left of Shards of Reflection to finish up. So I need to make sure the next story, Glass Diamonds, is ready to go fairly soon. One that is done I need to rearrange my patreon a bit.

Obviously, I haven’t had time to get back to You are the Chosen One in over a year. But Patreon removed goals from Patreon over a year ago. When I started You are the Chosen One, I was using goals as a milestone to justify when either You are the Chosen One or The City Between could have another update day. The goal is removed and I wouldn’t have time to do that even if my patreon did reach it. So I need to reassess what I’m doing. I will probably start posting it publicly, however I don’t know if I want to rotate it’s chapters with The City Between with updates on Wednesdays, or just post it whenever. 

Also, Patreon removing goals was a more minor example it continuiously making unhelpful changes. The newest of which is them forcing everyone to switch to a different payment model. Basically, until this month, I charged all my Patreon backers on the 1st. That is how subsciptions used to work on all patreons. But they thought that was a problem because sometimes someone would sign up the 25th of a month and then be charged twice in a short amount of time.

For the past year, Patreon has been pushing creators to switch to everyone gets charged on whatever day they signed up on a monthly basis. While pushing everyone to make this change, they also made an app, one that barely works. Because they made an app, now anyone who pays via the app is giving Apple 30% of what they pay. This sucks but it is thing that has been known and talked about in the tech community for years. Like before Comixology died, it wouldn’t let you buy things in it’s Apple app BECAUSE of this 30% fee.

So Patreon has made some news posts complaining that Apple is doing this. But the sneaky part is they are using Apple enforcing it’s shitty TOS as an excuse to force creators to switch to new subscription model. The new model is worse for me because well it’s nice to get a big chunk of money all at once each month, rather than have it trickle in day.

Anyway, this was fuuuuun news to come back to when I was very jet-lagged. There is a new patreon-like service called Comradery. It definately looks appealing. So I’ll probably look into mirroring my patreon content on there. But that will probably be something I sit down and figure out in like December rather than right now. For now I gotta focus on keeping The City Between running. 

That’s all for this month. Thanks everyone for you support as always!