Life Updates (Patreon)

Hey all!
Normally, around this time, I post a little chat about something important to me, or something that's helped me in my life as an artist, but this month I'm sick with flu and falling a bit behind, so instead I'm just giving ya a little life update! Also gonna recommend you all drink lots of water, get good sleep, and do something fun for yourself that you haven't managed to in a while, 'cause you deserve it ;)

Other than getting sick (which is the sausage), life has been pretty good on my end. It's been busy as hell, too. I have two upcoming conventions, MCM London and Thought Bubble in the autumn. TB is one of my favourite conventions of all time, so getting a table for that has me pretty elated. It's a con really devoted to comics, both published and indie, so I always come away from it with so many cool comics I'd never find elsewhere.

I just bought flights to go see my family in Toronto, as well. It will have been 2 years since I've seen most of them, and I'm not going to lie, homesickness has been a constant companion of mine for that time. I live in the UK because my girlfriend can't get a visa to Canada as easily as I can get one for the UK. We have plans to move eventually, but jobs and visas need to line up for that, so it's a work in progress. In the mean time, I do get a little sad about how little time I get to spend with my family, so I'm really looking forward to seeing them.

During the trip, I also have a ticket to see Maggie Stiefvater (an author whose work I adore) speak about writing. I've been really lucky in terms of opportunities to learn from authors I look up to. I also had an online writing workshop with C.S. Pacat last year that helped hugely in finishing my first draft of a novel. I'm always looking for new ways to learn, despite being long past my college years, and these sort of online classes and public talks have been super useful in that regard.

Speaking of novel-writing, that's the other big thing going on in my life. I'm writing an online serial that I plan on releasing May 1st. I originally planned on doing this with my werewolf story (which some of you may remember me talking about in my 'I wrote a novel' post a while back). That story is a planned trilogy, and I think it's far too complicated for my first online release. I need way more time to edit it and plan the sequels, so I'm going to come back to it after giving it time to 'rest'. I've had a gay android sci-fi/romance plotted for a while that seemed a better fit for serialization, so I've been writing that and hired an editor to help me polish it up. To say that I'm nervous as hell about putting my writing out there would be an understatement. I've been writing since I was 11 years old, but almost none of it has ever seen the light of day (which, with the early stuff, is REALLY for the best lol!). I'm also excited though. It feels like a big step, one that I've put off for a long time due to lack of confidence, so in a way just the decision to share my writing online feels like an accomplishment. The genre/content of my books is pretty different from my furry work, so I don't want to bog you guys down with the details about it, just wanted to share some of the other projects and things going on in my life!

I finished writing the script for The Sword of Souls as well, which is possibly my favourite script of any furry comic I've done to date. Super excited to get dug into that! I had the outline as soon as people voted on the idea. The script I fleshed out on top of that outline. Often times, I find small things do get tweaked as I go, but an outline and script are pretty important for me. It's easy to get lost otherwise XP

Writing this has made me realize that I multi-task a lot, so maybe I should make a post next month about balancing so many different projects at once? As it stands, I have my two furry comics (Cinderfrost, The Sword of Souls), Patreon work (sketchbooks, pinups), some commissions, my humanoid comic (The Crooked Kind), my novel (Static Crush), and 2-3 conventions a year. Let me know if a post about that sort of thing would interest you?

Other than that, hope you all have a wonderful April! <3