068: when is June?
Hullo.
I like to think that every piece of writing poses a fundamental question that needs to be answered. This newsletter is an exploration of the question "can I write a newsletter before going to see a preview of Han Solo?" I'm very deep, me.
Contents!
Sunless scoop
Murderous Crustaceans In Space
We love you Phil
Links
Inevitable Snap Joke
Bye!!!
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Here's an announcement for you. I've written an officer for the next update of Failbetter Games' Sunless Skies. That's out on June 6th.
The response here is either a "Oh, yay!" or a string of questions including "What's an officer?" "Who are Failbetter games?" "What is Sunless Skies?" "When is June" "Who are you and why are you in my inbox?" "What is the purpose of existence?" "When will Kieron think this run-on joke stops being funny?" I'll try and answer some of them.
Failbetter basically have been making narrative games since Echo Bazaar, which mutated to the excellent browser-classic Fallen London. Sunless Sea was an marine exploratory game set in the same universe, and Sunless Skies is its sequel. Both of them are essentially something akin to Sid Meier's Pirates with pre-written adventure-modules and quests instead of the more systemic minigame approach. They're good at it. I mean, as I was doing a final pass on my work, they got nominated for a Develop Award for writing.
(Am I shameless enough to claim that I'm Develop Award Nominated for jumping on the bandwagon at this late stage? I suspect not.)
I've struck up a friendship with Failbetter's Olivia Wood, who suggested I may be interested in doing an officer. At which point, I asked her "What's an officer?" "What is Failbetter games?" "What is Sunless Skies?" "When is June" and so and so forth.
An Officer is a character who you bring aboard your ship as an NPC, and lead to a series of missions and quests that you complete on your journey, forming a narrative. If you're thinking of the team-mate quests in something like Mass Effect, but text based, you're probably on the right lines. It's... a short story worth of content, I'd say? Perhaps five-thousand words.
I've taken to describing the job as dropping a guest verse on someone else's record. Well, a sprawling epic concept album. It's a huge narrative universe and its been highly entertaining to explore a corner. Working with Narrative Director Chris Gardiner we found someone suitable for me to write, and instantly fell in love with the concept. I think you'll like her.
Here's a trailer. As said, it'll be out on June 6th, which will allow you to crack into her arc, though you'll have to wait for July 18th to complete it, as that's when the next region opens up.
And lo! another thing struck off my writer bucket-list.
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Out this week! The penultimate episode of MUTINY ON MON CALA which basically balances between poles of story, and tips. This is kind of the last burst of fun before HOPE DIES and issue 50, though – as the cover hints – there's also a lot of darkness here.
This is absolutely one of my favourite covers, as well.
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Talking about awesome covers, the August Solicitations have gone live, so we've released the covers for the last issue of MOTHER INVENTION. The other cover and the text is here, but let's show what Phil Jimenez (coloured by Dee Cunniffe) brought to us.
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I had a lot of mails about Lemon last week, which I'm grateful for. It's sad, but your thoughts were appreciated. C put this little video of Lemon chilling in our garden, which sort of captures her at her most contemplative.
As much as I adore Shut Up & Sit Down, I love when Paul Dean takes her particularly polite aim on something bigger. Here he writes about his experiences of immigration, and immigration generally.
Queer Genre Comics Creator? Have a look at Shout Out Anthology, which is taking submissions right now. Andrew Wheeler runs a tight ship.
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I finally read Naomi Alderman's The Power, which I suspect most of you will be aware of, due to its considerable (and deserved) profile. It's a story about what happens to society when women gain the ability to perform electrical shocks through their hands. As in, how the world changes when the average ability to perform physical violence moves from one gender moves from one to the other. I was a little worried about the essentialism of the concept, but Alderman's much smarter than that, side-steps the obvious problems (in fact, digs into them) and uses it to methodically to talk about everything that interests her. It is as the title suggests – a book on power, what underlies it, how it is used, how it corrupts. It offers no easy answers, by which I mean, it does not lie to you. I always find that admirable.
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I just finished off a draft of WicDiv 38 and 39 this morning. I was writing them together, as there's a bunch of structural issues to nail down, in terms of information flow and meaning. As always, it's a case of balancing things. It's a quieter end than many WicDiv arcs, in terms of genre theatrics – normally the last two issues are the hardest for Jamie to wrestle with, but Mothering Invention definitely peaks in the middle two in terms of the ordeal. A few more passes and I'll take them to C and see if it works. It does mean that I have only six more issues of the series to write, which is the sort of thing which makes me wan to run and hide beneath the duvet a while.
A lot of movement on 24 Panels anthology this week as well. The final parts of the curated half have been nailed down, and pages are arriving from artists. In fact, Alan Moore's script has just arrived in my inbox. It's worth noting that the open-submissions are still open, and if you want to do a story, you have until the end of June to send it in. Go see the site for all the details.
Heading into next week, as well as finishing off WicDiv 36 and polishing 37 and 38, I suspect I'll be doing a lettering draft for the first issue of Spangly New Thing. Spangly Artist is onto the second issue now, while also doing tweaks on the first issue. This is one of the side-effects of them having the first three scripts, in that they can work widely, according to their interests. I'll say this: it's astoundingly beautiful. I've also got another couple of anthology pieces to think about – one prose, one comics. I should start on one or the other, or ideally both. There's also the tight plotting on the second half of my Star Wars run, which I suspect I'll want to nail down in the next two weeks.
I also bought a Filing Box for A6 cards to store NPCs in my Blades in the Dark campaign. This is character growth, of a sort.
Bye!!!!
Kieron Gillen
London
23.5.2018