Back From the Wilderness
I finished training for my new job Friday and start doing the job for real tomorrow. So far it looks like I’m in a much better place with much better leadership now. I’m still digging my way out of a month and change of being useless, but have managed to get moving on a couple projects.
The Artist Previously Known As Project G
The first order of business is finishing Castaways & Conspiracies, which I told backers they’d have in August. I’m cutting it close, but just got the last of the art in and have started on layout, so I should be able to meet the deadline.
QAGS 3E
I’m officially working on a new edition of QAGS and have started writing about how I got there. These are being posted for my Patreon followers first and added to the Death Cookie a bit later, so if you want to be the first to read them, join the Patreon.
The Final Girl
And here’s a slasher-themed Daz3D render I did, because the internet likes pictures.
Recently Read
The Writer’s Map, edited by Huw Lewis-Jones: A bunch of writers (mostly fantasy writers, mostly people whose names I didn’t immediately recognize) talk about how cool maps are. This is a big coffee table style book where the text is secondary to the cool maps, both historical and fictional. This is a pretty niche book, but I’m a fan of maps so it worked for me.
After the World Ends: When Post-Apocalyptic Movies Were Telling the Future!, Claude Gaillard: This book about 70s-90s(ish) post-apocalypse movies could have used better editing (especially since the author is French and occasionally uses odd-for-English phrasing), but is still packed with good stuff. In addition to expected films like Mad Max and Damnation Alley, there are also a lot of foreign films covered here, include a bunch from an Italian post-apocalypse trend that I never knew was a thing even though I’ve seen a couple of the movies it produced. I got this book as an add-on to Kickstarter for Gaillard’s Barbarians: From Conan to He-Man, which I just started reading.
Recently Watched
I’m currently on the final season of Black Sails. It clearly started out hoping to cash in on the “Boobs & Swords” trend started by Game of Thrones, but actually turned into a good story with interesting characters somewhere along the way.
Deadpool & Wolverine was ridiculously fun, but you probably already knew that. I particularly loved the Chris Evans bait and switch.
I’ve watched a bunch of other stuff since I last wrote a real update long ago, but can’t remember most of them at the moment. The only one that comes to mind is Jackpot!, which is funny mostly because John Cena and Awkwafina are always funny.
This time I really promise to be back before a month has passed. Thanks for sticking around through the drought.
TYTYVM,
Steve
©2024, Steve Johnson