It’s March. It’s snowing outside the window of my new apartment right now. We finished moving everything in on Friday night, losing several prized pieces of furniture in the process, both thanks to my ineptitude at carpentry and our new entryway being as tight as a dungeon corridor. Our coffee table broke, my work-shelves broke, a hand-me-down bookshelf broke. It was a real disaster. But worst of all was our couch. It was just too big. We really banged up the walls trying to get it in the apartment. Took the door off the hinges and everything. But to no avail. It’s now sitting out in the alley with a lot of other things we didn’t have room for anymore. I hope it finds a home.
The last two days have been spent unpacking and we’re still not done. It’s been a rough one, to say the least. Toughest move I’ve done, for sure. The whole last month has been tough though, so ending it with a move is fitting. Maybe we can leave behind the bad energy that was clogging up our souls and start fresh. I don’t know if I believe in that kind of thing, but whatever.
I’ve been officially diagnosed with carpal tunnel and also “tennis elbow” due to how I sit at my desk. I spend a lot of time at my desk working on whatever project is in front of me to the detriment of my body and my health and it’s catching up to me. I consider it a casualty of capitalism. It would be nice if I could take a break but in order to work for myself, at this point in my career, I have to make a lot of stuff and that means a lot of work. But I am taking more measures to rest my wrist and work on desk posture. This is just another on the list of things that I’ll be dealing with for the rest of my life haha Getting older sucks sometimes.
Progress on The Wizards and the Wastes has been rough too. This is my first time working with an honest-to-god printer instead of a print-on-demand place, and I realized my printing lingo is sufficiently lacking. I don’t understand a lot of what’s being said or asked of me and I'm doing my best. Lots of back and forth emails, questions and answers, boring phone calls.
I got the proofs shortly before the move and it turns out through all the conversation, I had asked for Black & White interiors, even though I was positive I had specified color interiors. Correcting that meant using a different paper weight, which is apparently being taken up by several other books at the moment and the foreseeable future, to the point of not being able to have a proper deadline if I stuck with that type of paper.
So I made the executive decision, as this business of one, to change the type of paper and the type of printing. We’re going with a digital inkjet printing instead of the offset printing I was hoping for. This is to make fulfilling the book possible. Simple as that. The only difference for you all reading this who backed the project is that it won’t have a sewn spine. Which sucks, but it hasn’t mattered for any other book I’ve made, and the personal touch of Sheridan, along with the paper quality, book quality, and beautiful dust cover won’t mess with the artistic quality of the book at all. It’ll be beautiful, glorious, and to you by July (most likely).
The current ETA for printing is next month, which means I might get them in April or June, I’m guessing. They’ll give me more updates as I get the new proofs and confirm everything. But even in the black & white proofs, everything looked good. The artwork looks exactly as I imagined in on the page. The text is pristine. I get giddy every time I think about holding one of these books for the first time.
Beyond those three hiccups, my partner’s work has been struggling to give them hours. We’ve both been in a depressive state. And there’s a lot of horrible things going on in the world. I’ve submitted “My Body is a Cage” to the TTRPG Bundle for Trans Rights Texas and that is live now. “.dungeon” was also submitted to a bundle to support Ukraine, but I don’t believe it’s gone live yet. This is about all I, as an individual, can do in these times and I hope others can find it to support in the little ways we can.
In lighter news, my latest project is being released this month. It’s called “Character’s To…” and it’s a system I’ve been fiddling with for a while and decided to take it to layout last month. I’ll have more to say about it when it’s released, but it’s a diceless system based around American cartoons and Japanese anime. It’ll be cool. I promise.
Have a good week,
John