Well this week's prolly gonna suck

 ...as I've been assigned jury duty. And yeah, I have to show up. Oh well. Taxes, voting, and jury duty: the responsibilities of a citizen. Even when the country has gone to sleep with the fishes.

I've been working on my drawing skillz. Trying to simplify the characters so I can draw them consistently and recognizably. That's taking work. I'm hoping to be able to at least do some cartoon bits with them. There's just no way in hell I can do an actual graphic novel without some kind of help. But before that, I have to finish writing the thing, so there is that.

Anyway I have a few pictures I had rendered from my designs. Only posting one chapter this week, it's all I had time to edit. Because next weekend I'm also at LA Comic Con helping my roommate with her table. 

When it rains, it pours. 

Speaking of which... 

such a lovely day in the Deece...

Uh, Mister J, you forgot to shave... oh boy...

The Charon Six in their prime. Captain Jamber, Navigator Doreel, Pilot Reilly, Engineer Yarrow, Weapons Officer Mersh, and Junior Pilot Cirin.

Commander Yarrow at the peak of her career

...and Admiral Reilly. This fucking guy.

See you next week. Which will hopefully be better and full of more content. Thanks for reading. 

UPDATE: Got released from service by phone, didn't even need to show up. Woo hoo! Now I can edit next week's update. See ya!

I'm hearing voices and it's awesome

So anyway, I found a site that will read out documents in the style of your choice, and I've been listening to my own book in exactly the kind of accent Justin speaks with and it's so wonderful. Also, hearing the words written make me see where things need to be edited. I'd link it here, but I'd have to pay for the privilege, and I'm not up for that. So I can't download the files. 

It's a celebrity voice, too. It's John Rhys-Davies. Yeah, that's right, it's Gimli (among many many others; I associate him more with Indiana Jones movies). It's a bit deeper than Justin's but the style of speaking is spot on. NO, not the Gimli voice, his natural speaking voice. If Derek Jacobi or Kenneth Branagh's voices were available, that would be closer... or Paul Bettany (!) but it's awesome nonetheless.

Hearing that voice do Justin's dialog made my heart swell, and it probably grew three sizes. It also helped motivate me to write more. There are not enough hours in the day to work on this book, and unfortunately I do have real-world shit to deal with. But I write when I can, and I like what I see, and that's all that matters.

I don't care if I get a million readers. I don't care if I get a thousand or a hundred or ten. I don't care if nobody else reads this book. I'm not writing it for other people. I'm writing the thing that's been in my head since the late 80's and I'll keep writing it as long as the characters keep telling me what they're doing.

But if you do read it, thanks. 

Enough bullfish, let's have some pictures.

1990's illustration by Freya. Don't know how accurate the gun is but I appreciate the effort.

Sheru's room is a mess, but a colorfully organized one. 

Meanwhile at Gynnix's place... oh look the chair's gone. 

And, here's the anteroom of the Guildmaster's office. Nice setup there Mr. J.

Thanks for reading.

Special midweek post

 ...because I have got to post this somewhere, dammit. I know if I share it on social media, it'll get rekt because it's an AI-enhanced page I did. Because social media is very black and white when it comes to using it, even if you're using it to upgrade your own damn work. 

So anyway... here is a page of dialog from next week's book upload, which was going to be this week but I'm a little behind on editing so I need a week's cushion. I'm posting both my original drawing (by hand) and the rendered work. Stylistically, it's not quite right but it does what I wanted it to, bring the scene to life. When the comic gets underway, it'll be a lot more consistent with my designs. I'm treating this like a storyboard version.

Next task: to render the ending scene of the book in actual animated glory, with the song that goes with it on the soundtrack. Because that scene has been in my head, song and all, for thirty years, and I can make a goddamn music video if I want to. 

Okay, so, here it is. 

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

New Fanfic Premieres!

(edit: posted on October 12, the first pic was uploaded on the 6th, can't adjust the creation date)

Before I get to the book stuff let me introduce you to a little fanfic I wrote in 2009 that I wanted to put into daylight. This platform (and Royal Road) allows for that. So without further ado: 

 A little isekai featuring three of my favorite dead guys. It's a novella, in 21 chapters. Prologue and first chapter are posted. Further postings every week, along with Timeless. You can read it here: 

As for the book itself, work is proceeding apace. Published two chapters this week. Did a shoutout trade with a guy doing military sf space opera, which once this book leaves Earth, mine will become more of. If that makes sense. 

I played around with adding word balloons to some of the art I've already converted with Craiyon, and they're making me kinda happy, so I'm sharing them here. I'm almost out of edited chapters and then I'll be out of pre-written ones, and then I have to finish the thing. I'm so damn excited. Writing is fun again.

So here's some stuff to look at. 

This happens a lot, actually...

Everyone's waiting for the bish and the bitch

Justin is not "just" anything, but fair point.

That pretty much sums him up, actually.

Commander Kazuri "Kazz" Yarrow, Hero of Charon.

and finally... this fucking guy. Hey, he said the T word!

Anyway that's it for this week. Week was weird, we got hit with a tropical storm in So Cal and it was much ado about nothing this far north but the cooldown was welcome. Back to the writing cave for me.

Thanks for reading.

Well this was certainly a week

So far this week I've had the power go out of the house twice, for 8+ hours each, during the hottest fishing week of the season. I mean it's 100F (38C) every day this week, and through to the next weekend. This is by far the least October-y October that has ever Octobered. So no light, no AC, no way to get any extra work on the book done, so I'm a bit behind and I hate that. I have many chapters as a cushion but the fewer I have the more anxious I feel, and there's a bunch to go through and edit/fix on many of these. 

Then I went to do this week's upload and went outside to grab food that got delivered and stepped on a bee. Yow. Do not recommend. I'm not allergic or anything but that's about the only good news about it. 

So I didn't have a lot to prep for this blog post and my foot hurts and I'm cranky and I don't know what I want to do. I have some pics to share, but that's about it. Most of the chapter I uploaded is world building stuff about the Little Big War (aka World War Three) and San Marin, and some more back story on Diana Bergman. Wow, it's almost like she's important to the story or something huh. Funny how that happens.

I forgot that I named the weird apartment house (called a "dingbat" style house, very prevalent in Southern California) Casa de Perdedor. I love that song. And that's pretty much what Diana's life was all about at that point. 

There is one thing though that I just remembered, I'm really really seriously considering uploading my stupid "Less Than Heroic" fanfic because this kind of multiverse foolery is really popular right now. The problem is, one of the main characters (and the POV character as a matter of fact) is from a Popular Series By A Problematic Asshole. Normally I would just CTRL-F/REPLACE the character with a similar one in some other venue but there really isn't a good one. This one was baked in so thoroughly that there's no way to separate him without wrecking it irrevocably. So. Do I go ahead and upload anyway with a caveat "yeah, I know, this character's creator sucks, sorry" or do I just not upload it? Because one of the other two characters is hella awesome (from a totally different series) and the third character is stupid awesome because he's MINE and of course it's Justin you knew it would be.

Don't know if anyone reads these things but if you have a suggestion either way, please let me know. I'd hate to throw the whole thing out when I think that the story itself is kinda fun. Otherwise it would never see the light of day.

And now, picture time!

my week, summed up in one picture

aaand here's a picture of the Problematic Author.

hahahaha Jacob you scamp.

*sigh* everyone jumping on the bandwagon

and here's something cute, Justin and his two best friends growing up as
Institute fosters. Yep, Mr. J is one of them, Who's the other one? Well, it's a long story...
Original sketch reworked by Craiyon. 

And here's my original sketch.

 Next week will be better. (it BETTER be better, let's put it that way) 

Thanks for reading.

A challenger appears!

Uploaded two chapters this week. Introducing a guy we'd previously heard about but hadn't seen yet...

Gynnix's ex-boyfriend.

Yeah, he's a handful. I don't have any pics of him (yet) the only one I had was from the paper doll set (yes there were paper dolls thirty years ago idk what happened to them don't at me) but I'll be coming up with some new ones soon. My drawing has started coming back to me, at least in the sketch stages, so we'll see.

The only thing I really have to say this week is that part of chapter 14 is entirely new, the convo with Ijon. Originally I had this sappy talk with Shizuko about why she hates Justin more than life itself, but I managed to get the info across using Sheru instead. She really is the friend I had hoped Shizuko would be to Gynnix, but just never became it. Besides, why would Gynnix be friends with an agent (except for Ijon, and only then because she worked on his research team now and again). Shizuko has pretty much exited the main storyline except for, you know, the main reason she's there. Which will become apparent in future chapters.

And I got to introduce the reason Ijon's a bit... off. That kind of stuff will do it to you.

And then there's Diana Bergman. What the fish was Justin doing in her apartment anyway? Did this have anything to do with the missing three years? 

Ambrose Bierce (Wikipedia link) wrote "The Devil's Dictionary" (which is hilarious, totally recommend) and disappeared into the desert in 1914. Poor schmuck.

See also: Jimmy Hoffa, the passengers and crew of the Mary Celeste, and quite possibly the "Princes in the Tower." Not to mention all the non-famous ones. The Institute's been screwing this up for a couple hundred years now so they're pretty good at it.

Also, first mention of the First Rule. Can you guess what it is? It's probably obvious. More on that later.

That's all for this week. Next week: a brief history of the next three hundred years and why the San Marin thing ties up with World War Three. 

Here's a few pics: first up, Gynnix in her early 90's "costume" going out to kill a guy. Don't laugh, we all dressed like that. Some of us still do, actually...

Ah, November in So Cal. Sweater weather.
Or at least it used to be.

Here's Senior Lambda Bernardo Chavez in his natural habitat: 
At home among eighty bajillion boxes of "historical stuff"

Here's a first attempt at getting the cafeteria scene rendered.
Gynnix looks so happy to see him. Sheru needs to roll her eyes. But 
you get the drift. Have a nice day, Jin Jin!

(Also, for the record, the whole "my what is what now" bit wouldn't actually translate over from Mandarin well, but you're reading it in English so it's perfectly fine. No paradoxes, remember?)

Thanks for reading. 

More Like Justin A Day Early Amirite

So I uploaded this week's chapters Sunday instead of Monday. I have stuff (real world not fun stuff) to do this week so I figured why not. 

Now that those chapters are up I can put up some art I did thirty years ago (and the remade versions). It's picture day at the Oh Fish Corral.

Not a scene from the book but that's the gate. My original 1990 image that
I've been terrified to ink or color....

And here it is colorized, and characters reworked as anime...

And what it would look like in place in the middle of a museum.

And now, the animated version!

And of course here's the Diet Coke joke that's been sitting there since 1990. To (mis)quote a great unsung Mel Brooks movie (Silent Movie): "The ad was right: it really *is* the real thing!"

Original art by Insanity Inc (?)

And finally, I never got around to drawing Rory in the old days but I'm rectifying it soon, because she deserves to be as badass in pictures as she is in print. Meanwhile here's a pic I made with prompts. She's not quite right, but it'll do for a placemark.

oh yeah, she's gonna protect the living shit out of the Hope Diamond.

Anyway, that's it for this week. Next week we meet more characters, get a bit more history of the world (and the San Marin incident in particular) and Gynnix encounters a small (huge) problem.

Thanks for reading!