Now here’s some weird music for you to enjoy before we really get started.
When you’re reading on a screen, you can lose a lot of the “contact” of the paper. The intimacy, if you will, can be diminished to a cold, unfeeling transfer of data, but I do not hate the machine. By it’s nature as a machine, it cannot understand, nor be responsible for what things I attribute to it.
They can do some very special things now, too. The machines are changing.
Late at night, sometimes I read with the red light mode on, with the darkest, grayest template I can find.
My bed becomes a faint-light chrysalis of knowledge that I, the lucky acolyte, may read inside. It may sound trivial to those reading this in the waking world, but let me tell you, when it’s late at night, and the music is on repeat, it takes you somewhere else where the “reading device” is not simply a part of your environment like a book may be (you do still have to turn the page, after all) but a seamless, bodyless interaction with the words on your screen.
That is something new that the machine can do, and I’ve finally come to enjoy that more than paper books. Once we learn how to make “devices” a better psychic augmentation to us than books can be, we can place their vanilla-scented bodies firmly into the world of the living, where physical books will be honored as the grand pieces of art they are.
Imagine, someone loving words so much that they put them on a physical object. Have you ever heard of anything so outlandishly wholesome?
…
Next month, it’s going to have been about… eight years, hasn’t it?
Wait, let’s look back at the older blog…
April 26, 2014.
So it’s been over ten years.
I’ve had some successes, but oh, how much more there is to do.
The best is yet to come. I will not ever give up. I am doing this for a reason, and I think it is to write important stories with important characters within an important world.
But… it does make me wonder: how much time, how many hours have I devoted to this? It feels like I’m still so far away from even living off of the books so I can do this full-time. I’ve carved out an entirely different identity, multiple, during these ten years, but even so, I keep coming back here: a four-eyed fellow on a mission in some secretive office somewhere in the woods, working on things altogether unknowable to the general public at large. The Great Work will be completed. So long as I draw breath it will be completed. How blessed I am from all directions – all that needs to be done is to orient those wonderful things to maximum advantage.
There are so many more lessons to be learned, and I will only face forward to learn them.
Here’s to a (belated) next 10 years!
…Now if only I could get a book out before the end of the year!
Featured Art of the Month by toloma_8:
I think this is probably the coolest looking depiction of Monument yet – good show!
Reflections: Disappointment as a Catalyst for Improvement:
This is a phase where I’m going through a great deal of artistic resistance. Not simply in the realm of submitting art for acceptable by publications, but in projects in general.
Within this year, I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words in projects that are now possibly not seeing the light of day at all, and there’s a deep pain to that, realizing that more than half my efforts this year have potentially been put on hold at the whims of someone else.
Those game projects? Most certainly not happening. It takes a team for those kinds of projects, and if only one person steps out after everyone’s committed, then it simply cannot happen. Multiple publishing and other agreements for projects talks fell through, and it’s getting to a point where I’m beginning to honestly wonder why I’m trying so hard to connect with other people like this when the investment in time is so great, and the rewards are so often nonexistent. I don’t mean to say primal blocks of social interaction like friendship is something to be sidelined: I believe one’s friends are the wealth one can take anywhere, especially now in this new age of digital connection.
What I want to communicate is that… if I don’t really need a publisher that bad, why do I need one? If I need people to work on a game with me, then why don’t I simply hire them?… The form of the art itself has changed, and if someone’s opinion or ability to follow through will prevent me from putting out what I have to put out, then perhaps I should simply continue on without such gatekeeping.
That said, there is no use reflecting on past pain unless it’s to develop oneself. We can always choose to be bitter about what’s happened and what feels to be wasted, but if we alchemize these little tragedies into lessons for the future, we can do better.
It’s been on my mind a lot – sorry for the rant.
Parting thoughts, and why you’re still not seeing much new stuff from me (for the time being):
With all that said, things have been okay. While work and family, have been keeping me expressly busy just the way they should within their nature, this year more than any other I’ve made a truly enormous amount of adjustments to my production pipeline. I’ve probably written more this year than any other, as well. Including everything that you will and will not see, I’d estimate somewhere over 250,000 words have been put down, which makes me particularly proud.
I am working quite hard on the new website, and even from last month’s post it’s taken on a new and exciting form. As more and more assets come in for the site from artists and designers, and I get the final little ribbons tied in, it is truly shaping up to be the kind of website that will make for an unforgettable experience… it’s just going to take a bit longer than expected. Rest assured, however: it is on the way, and will be excited to see you.
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a project update, so here you go:
-XForce: Book 2 draft done: looking to publishing sometime in the near future, roughly 50,000 words into book 3
-Nocturna League: Season 3 is about 80% done. Writing the second half of the final (longest) episode currently. Shaping up to be my favorite one yet.
–Courts Divided (I know you’ve been waiting on this one): Book 5, aka the thrilling series finale, is getting its cover made now. Looking forward to showing you!
-Game project(s) indefinite hiatus. Very good chance these are going to go the way of the dodo bird… still open to the idea, but
-Lots of short stories, I may try to publish a collection… might be a cool thing to tide folks over with
-Notice Me: Still happening. Lots of little cute art bits to do with this one so I’m still working it nice and slow to make sure it comes out just right
That’s all for now. I’ll see you next time.
All the best,
Kell
