So.
I'm back.
Not that I was gone, I was around, just... Yeah. It's been a long few years. I know a lot of folks will read this and go "yeah, so what?" and that's fine. I'm not looking for sympathy; very little of the bad of the last few years was about me; most of it was close family and friends. Some was about me and that's been the stuff that bumped my "return" back maybe a year or two longer than it was going to be but, hey, I'm back.
Let me tell you something about "coming back," as I put it. It sucks. Big time. Stuff that you used to almost take for granted, is now three times harder than it ever was. The pandemic doesn't help. I used to get my books printed in the US; might not be such a great idea now, right? Never mind the Canadian dollar that dropped from 90something when I started publishing comics to the low 70s that it is now (some quick math tells you it COSTS an extra $1000+ to do a comic book now- on art budget alone- let aline the increases in shipping and printing costs!) it's literally been learning to do everything all over again.
Writing. Website updates. All of it is like relearning to ride a bike. I have a beautiful website designed by the remarkable Rod Salm (here's the link: https://s17.ca/) but damned if I could remember how to edit the damn thing! I gave up on the blog part and that's why I'm back here- with a new blog name and everything; it feels more appropriate anyhow to do a blog off the main S17 site since not all of this is ever going to be just about the books. Once Rod teaches me again how to link this to that site, it'll be on there too.
Writing comics scripts is unlike anything else; there's more than a few novelists and screenwriters who have struggled in making the transition and I, not having touched a script in a couple years, struggled getting back into it. Luckily (sort of but also not?) I won't be publishing any new scripts or books until next year so there is time to catch up. I was also fortunate that in the interim, many folks who were making their way as up and comers (like I'm this grizzled veteran in the industry or something, huh?) had asked me to look over scripts and provide feedback/assistance in making it a stronger script and that helped keep my toes wet, as it were. There's nothing like ripping apart someone else's work to make you see where your own needs to be shored up.
What am I going to do with this blog? A little of this, a little of that. I'm going to go over some of the stuff I've published and talk about what worked and what didn't, some behind the scenes stuff (like a director's commentary), talk about some future projects, some stuff I'm starting work on and, of course, the Dungeon and Dragons campaign that I've been Dungeon Mastering for two years now.
D&D was something I was always interested in growing up but only ever got to play a handful of games, almost all of them in my late teens, and only recently, with the smashing success of the Critical Role D&D streaming show, was able to convince people of how much fun role-playing games can be. I'm extremely grateful as not only does it allow me to finally play (yes, I'm running the game as DM but it's still "playing" it well enough for my concerns) but it also very much helped me work out my creative muscles and the worldbuilding kept me sane when I had to step away from publishing.
It may SOUND like it's fun to write a story for the sake of telling it but without SOME kind of audience to share it with, to me it's just a waste of time. Very much like making a comic book, playing a tabletop RPB is about collaborative storytelling- it's not passive, so having players to riff off of like I would the artist of a comic, made it a good outlet that had all of its own challenges and rewards; I'll get into them on another blog some time.
Well, if you've stuck around this long, I want to say thank you for taking the time to read all this nonsense and I hope to see you stop by again sometime. The comments should be open so feel free to fire away any thoughts and/or questions you might have!
Stay safe and read comics! 😎
- Andrew
