Tag: comic

Concerning Writing Things Because They Sound Cool

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Byrd

I’m having to do some retroactive…development.

I thought I had the gods pretty well thought out for Enter Cedar, but I’m finding that there are some nuances I didn’t quite flesh out. And that’s becoming problematic, as the story I’m writing now is having more interactions with the gods.

And sometimes, I use words because they sound cool…like, what did I mean by the “Original Phantasms”? Now I’m having to justify it…It’s annoying.

Look, you can even buy it as a sticker…

The series has also reached a point where I’m writing a new thing and I think to myself “oh, shit, what did they say in that scene”, and I’m having to reread parts, or reference something. And I don’t have a great setup to reference things. Do I need a wiki?

I might enjoy writing weekly wiki articles more than writing blog posts.

Concerning New York and Mighty Gifts

Posted on June 23, 2025 by Byrd

I’m back from New York, that was a lot of fun. There was one quote that I got from the NY Public Library, from the Robert Motherwell exhibit.

I’ve summarized it as “One should enter the studio as a warrior entering the arena.”
– https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/robert-motherwell

And I now have that on the front door. I’m hoping it’ll help me get a move on in the morning. Waking up at 5am has been particular tough this year, and I have to, if I want to get this stuff made. Maybe someday I can devote more time to it, but for now, 5am is the best time for making stuff.

So, I’m looking at finishing the second chapter. Which, as I type that, sends me into a spiral of negative self talk. It’s June and I’m just finishing the second chapter? Yikes, John.

And on top of that, I’m looking at a reader copy of last year’s project that my friend Lucy provided extensive feedback on. That has to be prioritized too.

See, that’s the problem with 2 hours at 5am. There’s only so much you can do, so deciding what can be done in the small step of 2 hours at 5am is challenging.

But, my 5am is generally reserved for producing new work. For the stuff that is editing, or planning, I tend to try to block out time in real life. That’s why I’ve been doing self organized writing retreats. I think for my 2024 project, I need to block some time off for edits.

That being said, I do want to give Lucy a shout out, she read this book 4 times and provided GREAT feedback. I consider this a great honor and a mighty gift.

But, to bring it all back to what we’re working on this week. In New York, I finished thumbnailing the first episode of Post-Apathy, so I need to sketch it out this week. That’s my focus.

Concerning Self Publishing & Happy Birthday Cosima

Posted on June 9, 2025 by Byrd

Happy Birthday, Cosima 🙂 I hope today was wonderful 🙂

I’ve been very silent on this blog. Formatting and learning about self publishing took more time and effort than I thought. At the same time I’ve been trying to finish my 2024 project, “Where the Highway Meets the Corridor”. The 2024 project is about done, I just got some wonderful feedback from a friend who beta read it. So I’ll be making some updates. Thanks Lucy 🙂

But, the bulk of my focus these last 6 months has been self publishing. And the bulk of that focus has been deciding “should I?”. I didn’t really start the Imbibe Universe with an idea of self publishing. I didn’t even start it with print books in mind. I think discovering that Barnes & Noble offers a self publishing, print-on-demand option helped a lot. I don’t have an Amazon account, and I’ll take any chance I can to avoid giving money to the top dog. I would be saying something different when B&N was putting local book shops out of business.

The last 6 months has been formatting, exporting, proof reading, more formatting, learning about ISBN’s, making decisions, and journaling about the concept of arrogance and the idea of being worthy of removing one’s ideas out of their electrical mass of meat and placing them in the public. It’s scary.

Even now, as I draft this post, I’m looking at the button in the B&N module that says “Put On Sale” and I’m rethinking my decisions.

Ultimately, I don’t think I found some single word or piece of reason or logic that convinced me that I was worthy of moving forward with publishing. I think I defaulted to my normal modus operandi, which is the gut feeling that there’s a limited number of hours in a life time, and the reality that unless you do the work, those ideas disappear.

Which, now I know, is anxiety. Anxiety drives me. Always has. Always been there. Thankfully therapy helps. Therapy and writing things out.

So, thanks for reading through that anxiety with me. You’ve enabled me to press that “Put On Sale” button, and the first 4 books of the Imbibe Universe are now for sale. “Where the Highway Meets the Corridor” will drop next. And then “Post-Apathy” later this year.

These books are also paired with a selection of stickers available through Redbubble. It’s been a fun 6 months.

Concerning Mortality & Learning

Posted on February 11, 2025 by Byrd

This blog post builds off a previous blog post (“Humans, Elves and Buggers”), where we discussed the different ways mortality influences how we teach and learn knowledge. I use classic sci-fi/fantasy tropes like humans, elves, and buggers to explain this idea. I use this theory to describe some of the larger influences in the Imbibe Universe. The KRB represents Elves, the Raven Council represents buggers, and I use Titus represents humans.

I’m not sure Titus truly fits the definition of a human. Titus is a parasite, one who consumes others to obtain their knowledge. In a way, Titus is a 4th thing in the “Humans, Buggers and Elves” theory.

Humans (Beasts), ones who die, who learn by continuously passing knowledge on.

Elves (Bots), ones who do not die, who learn knowledge once and know forever.

Buggers (Boos), ones who die, who learn by being born into a pool of knowledge.

Yeerks (Bloodsuckers), ones who do not die, who learn by consuming knowledge.

Concerning Sharing & Happy Birthday Fletcher

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Byrd

Happy Birthday, Godson! You and your sisters are thought about daily. I hope you’re having a good birthday and that you’re getting everything you want and that it’s a good experience for you. We love you.

Last week marks the last of the Algorithm Interview content I had to post. But, 2024 was an odd year of growth and discovery. When I started posting this last year of content, I fully intended to illustrate the entire script as a comic. But, then I switched to this illustrated novel, and figured these early comic pages would just sit in the Algorithm Interview section. But the illustrated novel is finished, and I think there’s room for these comic pages to live in the novel. So I’ll be taking those out and inserting them into the printed book. I’m in the process of tidying things up, illustrating a few things here and there, and then it’ll be done, and I can start on the next novel “Post-Apathy”. And that’s very exciting.

I’m also doing a lot of thinking about self publishing. A lot of my career has been a lot of expecting success to just happen, and not taking action on my projects because I felt it wasn’t time, I wasn’t ready, or I didn’t have permission. Like “Oh, I can’t make that movie, I haven’t made my practice movies yet”. Or “I can’t start on that project, I need a budget”.

Comics were both the realization that I can’t wait and it was the answer to getting it done. My thoughts about publishing (self and otherwise) have fallen into the same rut of thoughts, “gotta wait till the world says okay, now it’s your turn”, “gotta wait till someone qualified says you’re good enough”.

But, there’s only a limited amount of time, and unless you’re sharing your thoughts, nobody is going to dig for them.

It makes me think about this poem I read in high school. I tried googling the user and poem, but I couldn’t find it. You can find it if you use the waybackmachine and query for poetrytetto. It was an odd website that existed in the late 90s, early 00s.

here we go
gnormal

all the people make the sparks
with ink and water railing
wailing soft as we can blare
we’re spinning fast and flailing

people decompose with love
everything we make is heat
believing that we might be warm
we burn our skin
and smell the meat

all our paintings, all these poems
photos, songs, and artful groans
tapes and logs, and stapled tomes
smoke that’s cooking our own homes

it’s all we weep, our glowing wake
we heave it when we sigh
all we are is all we make
saline across the sky

warm and red on cold and black
we leave our steaming trails

you and me are comets we
are comets with streaming tails

when you die, no one is going to look at your hard disk.
staple your poems to phone poles, wherever you go.

Concerning Style

Posted on December 2, 2024 by Byrd

It’s funny, I put a bunch of time into creating these model sheets, but my style and ambition changed pretty significantly. It was still good to get these looks out, even though I’m now illustrating in grayscale, and I keep having to ask myself “which shade is Robert’s beard?” and “does Samantha have shorts or stockings?”.
You’ll note that originally, Robert and Patrick were brothers. They are no longer in the series I’m producing now.

Concerning Celestial Horror

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Byrd

In my earlier writing, celestial higher beings were benevolent and kind and all-knowing. The older I get, the more they’ve become alien and unknowable and horrific. Horrific in the sense of never knowing or understanding these higher beings.

Celestial horror for me is a mix of the impossibility of establishing communication (Orson Scott Card’s Descoladores) the cosmic unknowable (H. P. Lovecraft’s Cosmicism), topped with a bureaucracy that is crushing and insurmountable (Douglass Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide).

I’m sure not all of that communicates in these, but I’m working on it. These are the beings that Zenith calls to Earth in This Bitter Earth.

Concerning the Hiring Practices of Absolution Corp

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Byrd

This guide is to be used in interviews for potential testers of Total Virtual Reality (TVR.

Interviewer: Welcome to TVR Debugr Training! We’re glad you’re here. What’s that you ask? How do you know this isn’t a TVR simulation? I’m glad you asked!
QUESTION: Do you believe in god(s)? Y/N?
– If yes: Do you believe in a kind god(s) or malevolent god(s)?
– If no: congratulations! You have been offered conditional employment as a TVR Debugr!
– If kind god(s): why do they allow bad things to happen (Multiple Choice)?
1) Because we need bad things for a believable simulation = REJECT CANDIDATE
2) Because god(s) are testing us = REJECT CANDIDATE
3) Good point, if I were god(s), I would make a better simulation = ACCEPT CANDIATE
– If malevolent gods(s): congratulations! You’ve been offered a position in our live simulation
validation division; where you continuously validate that all bad things happen for verifiable
reasons, thus validating that no bad things happen because of the choice of malevolent god(s),
thus proving this reality is not a simulation.
Interviewer: At Absolution Corp, we continuously validate that our reality is the prime, so you can rest easy, knowing that your work is fulfilling, rewarding and most important of all; REAL!