Well worth the wait

I've had a really tough year and a half.  I don't want to talk about anything in detail, so I'll just state two things:

  • God absolutely does miracles.

  • Sometimes those come after really unpleasant trials you would never have chosen.

    I imagine you'd love to hear news.  I can't give any specific timeframes.  Here are the updates I can give.

    #1: I am working on a book called Retrograde.  It has a phenomenal plot twist.  I am going to leave you in suspense and mischievously say nothing more about it.  ;P

    #2: I got stuck for awhile on Sukanil School of Magical Studies (due to feeling the climax I had planned for Rulisa was weak), but now I think I've figured out how to fix that, and it's gonna be great.

    #3: There will be more books in the Wicked Witches of Restva series.  Probably three more.  Book four is gonna be neat.

    #4: I haven't made any progress at all on lettering To Prevent World Peace, but have done a lot of scripting, drawing, and inking.  Most of the reason I hit such hard burnout with it was that the update schedule was forcing me to rush towards a final climax that just wasn't ready yet in my mind.  It needed more time to gel — a lot more time.  It has been gradually gelling over the past few years.  I think I will probably finish all the scripting/drawing/inking work for the rest of the story before I do any more lettering.  So progress is probably going to be invisible to you guys for awhile, and then there might suddenly be a regular update schedule again, out of the blue one day.  (Wry grin.)

    #5: I have a third webcomic I want to make.  I am pretty certain that 1) there will be no fixed update schedule, and 2) I won't do any computer work for it except for scanning, posting, and maybe making the most minor digital tweaks to fix obvious errors.  I've discovered that I love physical art, and I hate digital art, so one of the reasons I wound up burned out on To Prevent World Peace was that lettering took up most of the time, and it felt like a burden.  I will finish To Prevent World Peace in the same way I started it, because it's important for a story to maintain consistency.  But when I start my third comic, I am going to use a workflow I love, which means hand-drawing and hand-lettering every page, perhaps even hand-painting them.

    My next comic is called Magical Girl Pawn Shop Sparkle, and it's the story I originally wanted to tell in the magical girl world, before To Prevent World Peace decided to eat my brain.  There are a lot of fascinating questions in the worldbuilding that aren't explored by the plot of To Prevent World Peace . . . because they belong to another story entirely.  (Yes, you'll find out what the heck happened with Sunny.)  I hope you'll love it.

    #6: I've been studying art.  Expect a different (and much nicer) art style for my third comic.  As I mentioned, I might paint it.

    In late 2019 through 2020, all my creative systems broke.  In hindsight, it's obvious there was a lot of garbage in those systems, due to a) trying to impose systems on myself that have been good for other-people-who-are-not-me, b) implementing some terrible advice from people that I used to respect (and now think I was an idiot to have ever listened to), and c) a deep-seated, very unhealthy belief that I could only ever be loved if I overachieved and did everything perfectly.

    I have decided to remove the garbage, which means rethinking a lot of very important things, and rebuilding a lot from scratch.  That's why it's taking so long for me to be ready to publish new things.  The creative pipeline needs to be rebuilt, then refilled.

    Building new systems takes time, but it's well worth it.

    I hope you will be thrilled by the results of the wait.