Revenge of the Lobster-Quadrille
Somewhere outside the realm of reason and sanity lies the Akashic Library, its phantasmagorical shelves stretching off endlessly into the distance. What esoteric lore shall we uncover there today? Let’s find out . . .
Hello, I hope you're well! Last time we chatted I told you that Laser Ponies (the cool game my friends and I made) was nominated for the ENnie Award for Best Family Game. It brings me no pleasure to inform you that we did not win, but still, my wife, my daughter, and I had a good time going to the awards ceremony at Gen Con:
Here's the point in the ceremony where the book's cover flashed up on the screen:
Then they announced the winners, and, well, it did not go as we had hoped, but it's an honor just to be nominated. And I'm serious about that--out of all the hundreds of submissions, only five games were chosen as finalists for the Best Family Game category. Laser Ponies is an appealing product, largely because of the beautiful work Lindsay did with the artwork and Josh did with the layout. I'm also pretty sure Hex Games was the smallest company to be nominated for any of the awards that night. We don't have a ton of money or a huge staff, but we've got heart!
But enough about that. I spend so much time here promoting myself, let’s mix it up. I’m going to talk about a book by someone else . . . a young author named Me, Twenty Years Ago.
THE LOBSTER-QUADRILLE
Sometime around 1998 I was just out of college, sharing an apartment with a college friend, and working a series of crappy jobs. One day I started writing a random, stream-of-consciousness story about a hardboiled detective. My biggest influences were two writers I was really into at the time, Raymond Chandler and Lewis Carroll. After I wrote a few pages I decided, what the hell, I would commit for the long haul, and turn this crazy nonsense into my first novel. I started serializing the story on The Death Cookie online magazine, under the title Zaxalaqualixia. I eventually had to admit that the title was a serious obstacle to potential readers, so I renamed it The Lobster-Quadrille, after the Mock Turtle's song in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Good news, I eventually finished it! I revised it, made it the best book it could be, and submitted it to some publishers. Bad news, it got rejected! Which in retrospect makes total sense, because I wrote the book purely to entertain myself, based on my interests, with no thought to commercial considerations. So if you ask me, it's a good story, very entertaining, just the kind of thing I like to read. But I can see how it's not for everybody. It's weird.
When I created my Twitter account in 2009, I named it @johnnyampersand, after one of the lead characters in The Lobster-Quadrille, and I figured I would be promoting the book in the near future. Well, the near future came and went, but I'm finally sharing the book with the world. I am serializing it via Kindle Vella, as you can see here. The first chapter, A Man Walks Into a Bar, is right here. As of this writing, I've released four chapters. You can read the first three absolutely free, and the fourth costs, like, 30 cents or something. Totally worth it! Read it on your phone!
The story begins when a private eye named Johnny Ampersand goes to a bar and meets a cute girl named Ingrid. They hit it off, things are going well, when suddenly a man with a lobster for a head barges in and shoots Ingrid. Johnny, thinking Ingrid is dead, vows revenge, and chases after the lobster man; Ingrid wakes up alone, confused and delirious. Both of them embark on spiraling, dreamlike journeys through the city, becoming embroiled in a conflict among occultist factions.
The book I'm serializing is the same one I finished back in 2005. If I were to write it now it would be very different, so I'm not changing anything, and am respecting what younger me did. Except for one thing . . . When I started writing this story in the late 1990s, I meant for it to be set vaguely in modern times, with no specific year given. A few years into the 21st century it became clear that the story had become dated--specifically, no one in it has a cell phone or seems to be aware of the internet. I either had to update the whole thing or set it in the past. I decided to go with the latter option. Now that the 90s is a bygone historical era, why not? I rewrote the first few paragraphs to reference the Clinton impeachment and set the story in 1999. Everything else is as I wrote it back in my youth, with only a few tweaks for stylistic reasons.
Anyway, check it out, read the chapters, like and share and review and fave! I'll be able to stick to a regular release schedule for this one, since the whole thing's already written. 
LIGHTNING MAN VS. SILVERSTRYKE!
I finished drawing the second issue of my comic book Lightning Man. It's 20 pages long and it's all fight scene, Lightning Man vs. the white supremacist cyborg Silverstryke. You can read the whole thing here. I'll print up paper copies in a couple of months, once I get some of this other stuff done. I'm busy, I've got a Kickstarter to fulfill!
HEY, WHAT ABOUT YOUR KICKSTARTER?
Thanks for asking! I received my copies of Akashic Titan: Blue Bolt from the printer, and they look great. 
I'm now in the process of mailing them out to the KS backers. Once that's done I'll make the book available to the general public. Expect more news about this in next month's newsletter!
BOOKS I'VE READ SINCE LAST MONTH’S NEWSLETTER
Saga of the Swamp Thing, Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben
Swamp Thing: Love and Death, Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, and various
The Fall of Babel, Josiah Bancroft
Arcadian Comics had the paperback collections of all of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run on sale super cheap, and my loving wife got them for me for Christmas. And I was well pleased, and I reflected, isn’t it crazy that I’ve never read all of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing? Then I hit volume 3 and I was like, oh yeah, that’s right, volume 3, that's where I stopped the last two times I was reading Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, and I got stuck again. I guess I don't really like volume 3. Maybe I should skip it? Don't get me wrong, it's got good stuff in it, including the first appearance of John Constantine. I don't know, I'll make another go at it soon, but I moved on to reading other stuff . . .
I was eager to read it The Fall of Babel by Josiah Bancroft, as it's the fourth and final book in the Books of Babel series. I read the first book in the series, Senlin Ascends, in 2018. It was delightful, and got me back into the habit of reading fantasy and science fiction books, a habit that has brought me much joy the last few years. Thank you, Josiah Bancroft! Having read all four I can confirm that it comes to a satisfying conclusion. Thumbs up, recommended!
Is it weird that when I write about books and movies I almost never say anything about the premise or plot? That probably makes it less meaningful as a recommendation, doesn't it?
FIRE TRUCK MUSEUM
A few weeks ago I went on a trip to Michigan with my family, and while we were there we went to the Antique Toy & Firetruck Museum in Bay City. It was a soothing balm for my soul. It's just room after room of toy fire trucks, all shapes and sizes, from all different decades, with very little rhyme or reason to the organization. You just walk and look at the toy fire trucks. I don't know about you, but I was really into firetrucks as a kid, and looking at all these display cases filled me with a great sense of peace. So much bright red, so soothing. Then you walk into another room, and now you're looking at actual firetrucks. Real ones! I would have happily started over at the beginning and walked through it all again, but my family was ready to go. Something to consider if you're in the Bay City area but be aware that the museum is not always open. It's staffed by volunteers, and you may have to make an appointment so someone can come out and let you in. 
On that happy note, I must bid you farewell. Godspeed, my friend.
Your Pal,
Leighton
www.leightonconnor.com
