Somewhere outside the realm of logic and linear time lies the Akashic Library, its phantasmal shelves stretching off endlessly into the distance. What arcane esoterica shall we uncover there today? Read on, traveler . . .

Happy New Year's Eve! Wow, cutting it close in getting this newsletter out before the end of December, I know. You've probably been waiting in suspense since last time, wondering if Blu and I could pull it off--well, don't worry, we did it, we finished the third Swann Castle book! The Old School Essentials edition is done. We sent the PDF to our Kickstarter backers, we've placed our order with the printer, and it will go on sale to the general public early in 2024. Now I can focus on my next exciting game project, which I'll announce here in a minute.

First, though, let me remind you that if you're interested in Swann Castle, you can buy a PDF of the QAGS edition at DriveThruRPG here or at itch.io here. You can even order a print copy here. You can buy a PDF of the Troika! edition at DriveThruRPG here or at itch.io here, and you can also order a print copy here. Lots of options!

GET READY FOR THE NEXT BIG THING
Swann Castle's been dominating my creative life for most of 2023--now that it's done, what comes next? In February, Steve Johnson, Josh Burnett, and I will be launching a Kickstarter campaign for a rules-light sword & sorcery game. Steve and Josh are two of my best friends and favorite people in the world, and they are also extremely talented game designers and writers. I'm super excited about collaborating with them on this.

Last month I teased this project by sharing the beautiful front cover illustration by James V. West. This month I'm ready to share the logo, also designed by James. My friends, the name of the game is:

The title comes from Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote:

Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.

My friend, we are going to take you to secret worlds incredible. It's not going to be a massive tome, just a short, focused, rules-light game, complete in one book, with everything you need for countless hours of sword & sorcery fun. I'll go into more detail next time, obviously, as we prepare to launch the Kickstarter in February.

LIGHTNING MAN IS RETURNING SOON!
Another project I can return to, now that Swann Castle is done, is my comic book series Lightning Man. During this holiday break I've drawn the first few pages so that I'll be ready to start serializing issue 4 in January.

Here's what page 1, panel 1 currently looks like:

If you haven't read Lightning Man, DON'T WORRY, you can read the story absolutely free right here. If "absolutely free" rubs you the wrong way, you're also welcome to buy handsome printed editions of issues 1-3 here.

BOOKS AVAILABLE THROUGH KINDLE VELLA
The frustrating thing about life, and existing in linear time, is that there is a finite number of hours in each day. And if you spend some time with your family, and you finish up Swann Castle, and you draw a few pages of Lightning Man, and you do some work on Million-Colored Sun, it turns out you don't have enough time to write another chapter of your serialized novel.

But there are currently 28 chapters of my science-fiction adventure Armistice Hawkins and the New Architects of Creation available on Kindle Vella, one of which came out just last month. You probably haven't read them all, so why not make it your New Year's resolution to get caught up?

And as always, you can read the entirety of my occult detective novel The Lobster-Quadrille on Kindle Vella. If you like surreal detective stories, go ahead and start at the beginning.

BOOKS I'VE READ SINCE LAST MONTH
Darkness Weaves, Karl Edward Wagner
Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, Brian Murphy
The Immortal Hulk Omnibus volume 4, Al Ewing, Joe Bennett, and various 

I was reading Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, when I got to the description of Karl Edward Wagner's Kane stories. I'd never heard of them before, and I was curious, so I paused in reading about the history of the genre to read Darkness Weaves. As you can see in the blurb on the paperback up there, in this book "Kane leads the avenging forces of a sorceress linked with the devils of the deep". As sword & sorcery writers go, Wagner is not on the same level as the great Fritz Leiber (though really, who is?), but he grabbed my interest and kept it until the end. The story moves very quickly, chronicling political intrigue, war, and the fate of nations all in just a couple hundred pages (I assume; I read a digital copy).

After that I went back and finished Flame and Crimson, and I highly recommend it. A really informative, enjoyable overview of this classic American sub-genre. You may be wondering, "But why should I even care about sword-and-sorcery fiction?" I'll let Murphy answer that question.

In Chapter 10: Why Sword-and-Sorcery, he writes, "Sword-and-sorcery fills an aesthetic void left by high fantasy. It brings to center stage the outsider, the hero on the periphery. Instead of the king-in-waiting Aragorn, or the conservative, lover of hearth-and-home Bilbo Baggins, sword-and-sorcery offers the likes of Gray Mouser and Elric of Menibone--lusty nonconformists, disaffected political anarchists, wanderers, and wayfarers. Its heroes offer a voice for the disaffected. They enjoy life and its basic pleasures; they reject positions of authority because they know the dreadful ethical and spiritual compromises these positions often require."

MOVIES I’VE WATCHED SINCE LAST MONTH
Godzilla Minus One  
The Kid Detective
Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire

And so my year of watching more movies ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. Still, I really liked Godzilla Minus One. I'm a big Godzilla guy, so people don't trust my recommendation on this, but I swear, even if you're not a Godzilla fan you'll probably like it, it's a real crowd-pleaser.

Hey, since I've been keeping track of all the movies I've watched I can tally up the numbers. Looks like I watched . . . 61 movies in 2023. All right! That's up from 48 in 2022. Not as big a jump as I had intended, but still pretty substantial.

On a related note, I read 52 books this year, most of them comics. Which is down quite a bit from last year's total of 67 books. That's what happens when you watch more movies.

I want to watch more movies and read more books; I'll try to find a good balance in 2024. See you then!

Your Pal,

Leighton