A Veritable Cornucopia of Blessings
Somewhere outside the realm of logic and linear time lies the Akashic Library, its phantasmal shelves stretching off endlessly into the distance. What forbidden esoterica shall we uncover there today? Read on . . .
So, what's been up with me . . . my last newsletter came out on October 27, and in it I talked about how my family had “spent the middle of October overcome by plague.” But, good news, we were all feeling better! Then when Halloween rolled around, and I was out trick-or-treating with the boy, I felt tired. Unusually tired, the kind of tired I feel when I'm coming down with something. And then the next morning I called in sick to work and slept all day. Argh. I can’t even remember how many times the various members of my family have been sick the last couple of months; right now it’s my wife and my son.
Anyway, it’s almost Thanksgiving. What are you thankful for? I guess I’d say I’m thankful for—Oh! Wait! I almost glossed over Halloween. In an earlier newsletter I mentioned that the kids and I have been watching a lot of Star Trek, and I said something like “Wait ‘til you see our Halloween costumes!” So here are Jackson and I on Halloween (before I started to feel fatigued):
He is a coldly logical Science Officer. You can see his pointy ears better in this one, where we're fighting off some Romulan spies:
Speaking of Jackson, in the last newsletter I said that Jackson, Blu, and I had written a game called Magic Moth Island, and it would soon be available. And now, it is available! Right here! For just three bucks!
Here's a couple of illustrations Blu did for the game:
The three of us were interviewed by Dan Davenport in the Randomworlds RPG chatroom, and you can read a transcript of the interview here.
LIGHTNING MAN 2
I've ordered the print copies of my comic book Lightning Man #2, and they should be here in just a few days! It took me awhile to get the book ready for print because I didn't know what to do for the cover, but eventually I had an idea and drew it. My talented daughter Blu, who you may remember from the picture of a snail a few inches above, helped me color it. Here's what it ended up looking like:
Yeah! I like it! Do you like it? I hope you like it. I mean to please you, Elizabeth.
(It's that time of year again, when I'm teaching The Crucible in 11th grade English, and I pepper my speech with quotes from the play. Witchery's a hangin' error, Abby!)
Lightning Man #2 will be available in December, guaranteed!
THE LOBSTER-QUADRILLE
I'm continuing to serialize Twentysomething Leighton's magnum opus The Lobster-Quadrille through Kindle Vella. Chapter 17: Your Local SPI Chapter just came out on Tuesday. "SPI" is short for "Students for Physical Immortality," a student group I made up when I was in college. I periodically printed up signs and hung them around campus. I don't think anyone else found it amusing, but I did.
You can see all the episodes here.
THE MACHINE
Get back to the earlier question, though, just what am I thankful for? Obviously for my amazing wife and children, I totally lucked out there. For my good-though-not-as-amazing dog. I have a comfortable home, steady work, plenty of food--I can't really complain. We've had lots of colds but no serious illnesses, knock on wood. Objectively speaking, my life is wonderful.
I'm thankful that I am able to channel my creative impulses into various projects, and thanks to 21st century technology I'm able to make PDFs and print books and share them with people across the world. That's pretty cool!
I've always had a drive (sometimes healthy, sometimes not) to create things and share them with people, dating back at least to 4th grade when my friend and I would sit together on the bus to school every morning and show each other the comics we drew. Back then it was an audience of one, but I wanted to impress him. In 5th grade our teacher let us share our comics with the class and I suddenly had an audience of 30. I was hooked! From that day forward, I wanted only to share my work with the masses and bask in their adulation!
The creating has gone well, these last few years, it's just finding the audience that's been a struggle. The good news is I've set up a system, a machine with interconnected parts. I have a website with links to all the stuff I've written, as well as this newsletter, my Etsy store, etc. I have this newsletter, which links to the website and to my various new release. I have Amazon listings for my books, each of which contains an author bio that includes the address for, again, my website and this newsletter. Everything connects to everything else, so no matter where you enter into the system, you can potentially move along to discover the rest. Marketing!
The wires are all plugged in, linking the different components of the machine, but there's not really any electricity (okay, you're reading this so there's a spark, just trust me that there's not a lot of activity going on). The machine just sits there. If I could just get a charge, a surge of energy into any of its ports, the machine would turn on. I think it would work!
So I am thankful that I have not given up hope, that I am still waiting, still looking for that surge. I am keeping the machine in good working order, awaiting the day that it finally comes to life. Which is why it's important for me to get a newsletter out every month. And I've been doing it for 9 months now! Go me!
BOOKS I'VE READ SINCE LAST MONTH’S NEWSLETTER
Doctor Strange: A Separate Reality, Steve Englehart, Frank Brunner, and various
Strange Adventures, Tom King, Mitch Gerads, Evan “Doc” Shane
The Averoigne Chronicles, Clark Ashton Smith
Follow Me Down, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
Three of those are comics--I love comics!--but the fourth, the Averoigne book, is a collection of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith. Back in the late 1920s, early 1930s, the three most popular writers for Weird Tales magazine were H.P. Lovecraft, famous today for the Cthulhu mythos; Robert E. Howard, famous today for Conan the Barbarian; and Clark Ashton Smith, not famous today, but still great.
I hadn't read any of Smith's stories until recently. I was running the classic D&D module Castle Amber for the kids, and it includes a section set in Clark Ashton Smith's fictional 11th century French province Averoigne. I started reading the stories just as background for the game, but I ended up loving them. Some of them are horror stories, some are straightforward adventures, and some are funny. Most have a mix of all three.
You can read them online for free. I particularly recommend "The Holiness of Azédarac," about an evil priest, a hapless monk, and time travel; "The Colossus of Ylourgne," about a giant made of corpses; and "The Disinterment of Venus," about a bunch of monks who get super horny over a statue of a naked lady they dig up in the abbey garden.
And with that we come, once more, to the end. I hope you're doing well, and I'll see you again in December.
Your Pal,
Leighton
www.leightonconnor.com