Happy Spooktober
Hello folks, here’s what I’ve got going on right now.
It’s Spooktober at World Anvil, so I’ve been writing horror themed articles. Most of them so far have been for the City of Ten Thousand Daggers setting, but I’ve also written entries for Diner Punks, Milieurth, and even the Hex Ficton. I’ll do at least 3 more this week so I qualify for the badge, more if I have good ideas. Since I’m writing for multiple worlds, this page is the best place to find all the Spooktober articles in one place (the ones I’ve written articles for use the «Title» format). I’m also cross-posting them at The Death Cookie.
The Chapel d’Angoisse adventure is currently in the editing stage. I’ve got art and maps and it’s short enough that layout shouldn’t take long, so look for it soon.
The print edition of Castaways & Conspiracies is now available at DriveThru.
Work on QAGS 3E continues, and the second playtest a few weeks ago was a successful test of both the system and the project I’m thinking about for Zinequest in February.
Here’s a Viking I made using Daz3D and Photoshop:
Recent Reading
The Kentucky Book of the Dead by Keven McQueen is a collection of hauntings and death-related news clippings—strange deaths, funny epitaphs, that kind of thing— from around the state (mostly from the 19th Century). It reads kind of like a Charles Fort book, right down to the occasional dry humor. My only complaint is that there’s no mention of Paducah’s favorite mummy, Speed Adkins.
I’ve also read through three more zines from the pile: Pixie Punks by Andrew C. Hand, Glam Metal Monster Hunters by Michael Francis, and Big Eye Chungus by Levi Combs. I posted a review of the first two at The Death Cookie.
Recent Watching
Venom: I think I got into comics after Venom stopped being cool and my knowledge of the character is based mostly on the third Raimi movie, so it took me a while to get around to this one. It was actually surprisingly funny and I’ll probably watch the other two when I get a chance.
Ready or Not: This one is exactly what the trailer says it will be. No complaints.
Mythica: Stormbound and Arena Wars were both selected more for their runtime of less than 2 hours than because I really wanted to see them. One has the awesome starpower of Michael Madsen and his big weird plastic head along with Eric Roberts. The other one didn’t have that kind of starpower and was about par fo the course for a Mythica movie.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare wasn’t the usual Guy Ritchie movie, but was a whole lot of fun and probably as close as we’ll get to a Rifle Brigade movie.
Maxxine continues Ti West’s streak of great retro horror movies starring Mia Goth. Watch it. If you haven’t seen X and Pearl yet, watch those first. They’re all great.
Raising Hope: I watched this series back in the early days of Netflix, but started playing it in the background yesterday because it’s relevant to the Zinequest project I mentioned earlier. I just finished the first season and managed to grab several useful notes from it.
That’s all for this issue. See you in 2-3 weeks, more or less.
TYTYVM,
Steve
©2024, Steve Johnson