Category: Story Speculations

A fan sent me a message the other day, asking if there was a connection between my third book, Ghee, and my current on-going series, Chip Masters, Ninja.  I told her that the short and is ‘no’, they are totally unrelated.  The long answer is…well, then I started thinking about it.

Narratively, the two stories are unrelated.  They take place in different worlds/universes/whatever the designation du jour is.  Ghee and Hatsumi were not part of Kageryu’s network.  No ifs, ands, or buts about it.  Narratively, they are unrelated.

Stylistically?  That’s a bit trickier. Continue reading “Ninja Love Story”

I live in twelve-week increments.  I set training goals, business goals, personal goals, in twelve-week steps so that I have a clear deadline and I can break down the task to achieve these goals into their needed steps.  Most of my goals end up being writing and training, with a few professional and personal goals mixed in.  I try to keep my goals on the modest side because it is all too easy to get overambitious.  Plus, if I meet my goals halfway through the cycle, I can always do more. 

As I’m on the final week of the twelve (I take a week off in between), I look back and I’m kind of stunned by how much I got done.  The publishing of RocKaiju was a major (and long-delayed) accomplishment.  The completion and publishing of Proton and the 2017 Short Story Anthology were, likewise, huge steps.  I expect to release a 2018 collection, next year, but I am not yet certain what book will join it.  Rhest for the Wicked 2?  Proton 2?  RocKaiju 2?  Something totally new?  Continue reading “84 Days”

In the early 2000s, when web comics really began to take off, a lot of commentators and armchair critics began to speculate why they were so appealing.  As I came into my artistic identity at that time, web comics had a profound impact on how I viewed the world (artistically and socially, which probably says a lot about me).  As such, I paid a lot of attention to these discussions.

One issue was the democracy of availability.  Thanks to net neutrality (something that has been and continues to be under attack, but thankfully is still in place at this moment), anybody could post a web comic.  So long as people had reasonable internet access, they could read the comic.  Distribution became instantaneous and universal (or as far as the internet reached at least).  There was no issue of shelf space limitations, production costs, sales minimums, any of that.  Draw pictures, post online, and boom.  Instantly available.  Now, available and successful are too very different things (as evidenced by the failed comics), but that’s another discussion. Continue reading “Conventional versus the Avant-garde”