Another week down.

Above is the cover I digitally painted to my Maurice the Beaver comic collection that I will be publishing soon. My goal was to do 200 strips and then publish. I’m doing strip 188 today. I started doing these a year ago, September 3rd. I love doing them.

I had written this letter originally as a diatribe against the idiots that support Trump, but I just deleted it, because it’s just speaking into an echo chamber, so I shall move on and focus on more positive things.

The questions is: What are those things?

Let’s figure out what I’ve been doing as of late. It has been a while since I’ve written a novel, so about a month and a half ago, I thought it was high time that I write a new novel. Keep in mind, that I have several books that I am simply sitting on at the moment. I even dug out an old book that I wrote in 2002 and reedited it, so that’s good to go, too. But I haven’t really written anything since I wrote the infamous Boyd McCloyd and the Time-Traveling King (which I plan to publish by the end of September).

But what to write? I’ve always got ideas kicking around in my head, but only a few of them bubble to the surface enough that I want to spend time on them. Whenever I give kids my Boyd McCloyd books, one of their favorite characters is not the yeti or the crocodile or even the title character. One of their favorite characters is Cindy McCloyd, Boyd’s younger sister. So at some point in August, I started playing around with the concept of writing a Cindy novel.

Slowly, the germ of an idea started to grow. I envisioned characters. I envisioned a location. I envisioned a villain. Then, I thought about the motivation for that villain. Then, I thought about the strange nature of the location I chose. Then, I thought about how those characters would interact. Before I knew it, I had a plot and a title. It’s currently called, Cindy McCloyd and the Guilfoyle School for Troubled Girls. I have been working relentlessly on the outline for the past month and I think it’s been cracked. Writing will probably commence within the next couple of weeks.

Simultaneously, of course, I am still working on my movie. This week, I will record the narration for the film and start stitching larger chunks of the movie together. More on that soon.

And in addition to ALL OF THAT, I am also teaching. Yes, I’m a teacher.

MEDIA DIET

Ted Lasso, Ted Lasso, Ted Lasso. As a family, we collectively love to get our weekly notification that there is a new episode of Ted Lasso available. I know that I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, but seriously, this show is really the best thing on television right now.

You know what makes a great show? When you enjoy the company of the characters that you see on screen. We get approximately 30 minutes of Ted Lasso a week, but when it’s over, you can’t help but feel disappointed that the time that you spent with them is over. We just watched this week’s episode and it was just phenomenal; a television show that exists in a world where people aren’t all that bad, and even the crappiest of them have some kind of redeeming traits. There is nothing wrong with relentless positivity. I love that this show has that. More, please.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK

Okay, so when I read an article like this, I am of two schools of thought. My first thought is, “Screw that! No way I’m letting them put that crap in my head!” and my second thought is, “I should be first on board to do this, because it means that I will have an advantage over my fellow human beings and will, therefore, be superior.” I don’t know which of those sides to take, but someday soon, we’re all going to have to decide whether we’re going to let Elon Musk put wires in our brains.

TO BE SORTED

So, during these times of Covid, where we can’t really get out like we should, sometimes we need an aural environment that will help us relax. Maybe you want your home office to sound like a cafe. Maybe you want it to sound like the wind off the Irish coast. Here’s a great website that will provide you with those sounds.

OPEN TABS

In the “this-is-the-kind-of-crap-that-would-have-happened-to-me” category, you have this.

I don’t know what this is, but it’s neat.