ALWAYS POSTED A WEEK EARLIER ON PATREON

Podcast Updates

This was a fun-filled packed week with 3 interviews. On our Tuesday show, we had back with us the acclaimed and celebrated writer of comics and fiction prose, Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos! She talked about her latest Kickstarter, Zine100: How Not to Be Colonized By Outreach Programs.  She is always a fun person to talk to and I was very happy to spend another hour with her.

On Thursday, the internationally acclaimed and talented comic creator of Plugo Arts, Patrick Lugo came on the show. He talked about his latest Kickstarter: A Tiger's Tale: the graphic novel (vol. 1)

Then I had a special Friday live stream with Janna Morishima, Founder of Kids Comics Unite.  It was very fun to learn about the history of the online community and the directions it will be going to support artists and authors.

Project Updates

I did more formatting of my Dad Joke book.  A piece of advice I saw from Bethany Stahl was to make sure fonts matched the audience.  Initially, I had a standard ‘all caps’ comic font but I can see, that if the font is in word balloons, it is not the best font for the book. 

I changed it back to a more accessibly read serif font.  Honestly, the book looks better now so far.

What I’m reading

This past week I read the Young Adult Graphic Novel, ‘Mega-Dogs of New Kansas’  by Dan Jolley and illustrated by Jacques Khouri. 

This was a fun story that takes place on a distant planet in the future that has been colonized by human settlers.  The story follows two young kids who end up running away from the settlement with their horse-sized dogs.

They end up going on an adventure that is reminiscent of the 1970’s Disney road movie stories, where the characters are put into seemingly endless dangers and challenges while creating opportunities for them to discover each other’s strengths and confront their own internal or external fears.

I really appreciated Khouri’s artwork, with its heavy linework.  This book also shows how important color is to a story, for mood and setting.  The entire book was presented in a warm palette of yellows and oranges, which insinuated to me, a planet with a different type of sun.

Personal Updates

Very excited to see the Omicron numbers going down in our area.  Also excited to hear the news that we could possibly be seeing vaccines available for children under 5 years old finally.  Having an 18-month-old in the home is still putting us in the ‘hesitant to go back to normal’ category.

Despite the cold weather and snow, this is one of my more hopeful times of the year.  The year is young enough to keep new year’s goals in focus, and the days are still slowly getting brighter.  As of this writing, we have 70 extra minutes of daylight compared to our darkest day of the year, December 21st.  it may be the coldest time of the year, at least it is getting brighter.