Big Announcements!

Blog No. 162

I hope you’ve already seen these things, but I’m going for total coverage, so get ready to see it all over again. I suspect that I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled drivel in no time, but this is all so important to me, I’ve got to go against all my instincts and spread the word. I have at least three things to share (I may drift into more because it’s my style, but I’m going to try to stick to it).

To preface it all, I hope whatever time off and celebrations you may have had were/are spectacular. I had a nice family Christmas as usual and other than the few times I had to go in for rentals, I don’t go back to work until the 5^th. So that pretty great. I just wish I were using the time more productively (as usual) but I’ve actually gotten a bunch done (not as usual). Over last weekend, the poster for the No Light Tomorrow book launch were finished and printed. At the same time, we (meaning Christian and myself) finished the December Zine (number six if we’re counting and there are numbers on them so we are). Though, more could always be done. And I’ve already mentioned two of the things, but let’s break them down.

Zine 005

Blog No. 150

I know some people (out of the few who read this) are probably tired of hearing about the Zines all the time. They are a flimsy little booklet akin to what high school students create to prove they aren’t part of the system (or whatever). While they may not be anything spectacular, they are a really cool thing to have and make, so for the time being, we are staying the course and Zine 005 is here. We still have to distribute it, but they will be printed and ready to go as of Friday. Out of all the ones we have done so far, this one is my favourite.

This one is starting to garner a bit of a history. As stated before, this year our plan was to print four Zines on a quarterly basis. The first one came out in March and the second in June. That meant that this one was scheduled for September.

“But wait.” You may be saying to yourself. “It’s October. What happened?”

Some Random Updates

Blog No. 147

Things are moving quickly in the Adventure Worlds sphere. (adventureworldsblog.com) From the outside it sometimes seems like everything is at a crawl, but there is a lot going on under the surface that is keeping everyone busy.

No Light Tomorrow (the collection) is still in progress. We are up to our elbows in plans, communications, and searches. It is in the hands of an editor at the moment, so we are in a holding pattern. This will be the first time I work with a professional editor and the first time Christian works with an independent editor, so that’s very exciting, but a bit nerve-wracking. We have been working on the collection since last year, changing it, editing it, shaping the stories. The thought that someone I haven’t met could point out things that will make us do major rewrites is daunting. For now we are in a holding pattern, waiting for the shoe to drop. In the mean time we’ve been planning a big release event with some very special people, hunting for a printer (one who could possibly achieve the outcome we want without too much cost or stress), and brainstorming things that have grown well beyond the scope of the one small collection. We are even thinking about future or regular events for not only No Light, but everything we do and with the other local artists we work with.

The Third Zine and Feeling under the Weather

Blog No. 122

Issue number three of the Zine is done, printed, and will be distributed into the wild over the next few days. In that time, it’ll be up on Adventure Worlds too. For this, the first quarter of the year, we have a cover by local artist Alex Morneau, and Finders was drawn by Nikita Why (the man who drew the cover last time. I have to apologize again, last time I misspelled his last lame. How could someone possibly do that? In my infinite ability to mess up, I managed it somehow. So Nikita, I’m very sorry, thanks for sticking around and doing a bang-up job on Finders. He did that son-of-a-gun by hand. When you take a look you’ll see why that’s amazing. I don’t think I misspelled anything this time, but e had a little trouble with the printing. When we first started to look into making the first Zine, we looked around for a local printer in our price range without much luck. Unfortunately we went with one of the big box stores (we do pay for it out of pocket) and the first couple of times that was fine. This time around we started to see the determent of cheeping out (or at least not going to people who are passionate about the stuff.

Novel Update

Blog No. 119

I’ve decided to steal something from Christian who borrowed it from someone else. If you go over to his page (http://christianlaforet.com/2015/02/10/hey-im-writing-a-novel-pt-1) you’ll see that he is marking the progress of his novel on his blog and the majority of his updates are going to be centered around that progress. I’m still going to be writing about random things that happen to interest me at the time I sit down to write this blog, but I’m going to be adding some updates of my own (here on my blog). I’m even going to use the word and chapter counter thing that he is (that I’ve seen on plenty of other pages, like on my friend Melissa’s (http://blog.melissaschnarr.com/).

Finders

Blog No. 117

Out of all the art forms I can think of (and probably all the ones I can’t) visual art is the most outside my ability. I can carry a tune (and even some harmony) and I can cook well enough. My dance moves are rather lame, but I can follow a rhythm (especially for someone who has never practiced). Writing is something I’ve been working towards, but I’ve always had plenty of ideas, and I know how to plot out a story. I can even tell a joke or two, both verbally and in a scene. I am no expert in any of those fields (though I’m really trying with the writing) but I have enough of a grasp on the concepts that if I put in the effort (that the people I know who excel in those areas have) I can get better. When it comes to visual art, drawing, painting, sculpting, photography, film, etc, I could work for a hundred years and still be terrible. 

Behind the Writing: Finders

Blog No. 96

http://adventureworldsblog.com/2014/09/15/finders-001/

The first strip of Finders went up on Adventure Worlds as a last minute replacement and it’s been getting a lot of great attention. I have to say, I’m really excited by that. It was first released as the anchor to our Zine. Christian and I were handling all the images and layout respectively, and it prompted us to have Christian draw the first comic and have it be a special treat for any followers of the site. The Zine was (other than Finders) a snapshot of Adventure Worlds, with previously posted stories. We felt that Finders would make it something special. And it worked. We got a lot of great feedback on the Zine, and the majority of it was on Finders. Some of the Drink and Draw crew even gave us some pointers on how to improve the layout of the comic.