Hello Emberverse!
I hope you’re enjoying this three-day weekend in the US and just your regular old weekend anywhere else I suppose. Here it’s Memorial Day weekend, a time of honoring those fallen and for reflection. Though mostly it’s an excuse to have cookouts and go swimming or whatever. That’s what it always was for my family.
Then again, what spring/summer holiday ISN’T about cookouts and swimming in the US or any other country for that matter? Sure, there’s always some kind of meaning, but if it ultimately brings people together to step outside of their daily grinds to have fun and relax does it really matter?
Yeah, I didn’t think so either. :)
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Here’s a quick sneak peek at what you can expect this time Around the Fire:
For my family growing up, cookouts and dinners were what we did for EVERY holiday. Birthdays, graduations, holidays, summer vacations… they ALL involved either cooking out, cooking in or eating out. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
Needless to say, we enjoyed food! It brought us together.
Cookouts were always popular in the summer. We’d usually gather at either my grandparents house or my uncle’s house. He always had the bigger yard, but he and his wife didn’t always like hosting. He also had a pool for a number of years, so we liked to go grill, swim and play Badminton.
Cookouts are such a common thing to do for families or friend groups. It’s just an easy way to get everyone together and have a good time, right? What’s interesting about cookouts is that it doesn’t matter what your station in life is, you’re all equal at a cookout.
Think about it. Everyone’s there in their casual wear, ready to have a steak, burger, hot dog (or veggie burger like my cousin and myself for about 20 years). Everyone is there to relax, not have to think about work, life and so forth. It’s a level playing field.
Sure, there are exceptions. And depending on hosting, maybe the cuts of beef are better or worse. But ultimately, everyone’s looking for the same result: R&R. They’re looking to be themselves, joke around, eat some food and have a good time.
I grew up with a big family of aunts, uncles and cousins (and sometimes great aunts and uncles and 2nd and 3rd cousins) within a close proximity to each other. We saw each other EVERY week (a lot of us every DAY). We were a big and close family. And when you have a family that big and that close, not all of you are going to get along all the time. TRUST ME!
But when we’d gather for a cookout, NONE of that got carried into it. Or if it did, those members probably just didn’t show up, so everyone else was good. Instead, we just enjoyed each other’s company and had fun.
So as you enjoy this weekend, I hope you get to have a cookout and spend some time with some people you enjoy the company of. I hope you have some fun, get some R&R and get to not think about work, life, etc. That’s what we’re going to try to do.
A Steampunk Carol is HERE!!!
Shifting gears completely from the summer to a holiday themed book. Yep, it’s finally in our hands and it turned out great! Here’s a little video I did to show it off a bit:
We’re locking down orders and addresses over the next few days and then we’ll be shipping them out soon to our backers. And we’ll then make them available to anyone that missed it on any of our campaigns since.
We are still waiting on the collectors boxes and a couple of other things to arrive, but it’s coming together, so we’re happy.
We are headed to Conroe, TX for our first ever Anime con this coming weekend, June 1-2. It’s called KimoKawaii 3 (which roughly translates to weird and cute).
I have no idea what to expect. I’m really not all that into Anime personally, save a few exceptions. But I’m excited to experience the differences (and similarities) between one and a comic con.
We’re primarily going to set up Lisa’s Loops ‘n’ Scoops Crochet stuffies, but we’re also taking some of our books. We’ll have The Last Ember, The Secrets of Willowmyst, In the Land of the Dragon and then our puzzles. We figure those are the books that are most in line with that audience.
That said, we might take a small amount of our other books in case, by chance, anyone’s there looking for something like Pneumatic Cases or Bloom Pretty. Who knows, right?
Still, the focus of the setup is the crochet this time.
For those interested, there will be voice actors from Pokemon, Strawberry Shortcake and Peanuts there.
There’s a documentary/highlight video of the first year (2022) here if you’d like to check it out. It looks like a fun time, so I’m looking forward to it.
Going from Anime to Manga, this new Netflix series is based on two WEBTOON comics called Money Game and Pie Game (the latter being the sequel). I had never read these (though I am now), but the concept of the show won me over.
I’ve never really liked shows or movies with subtitles or dubs, but over the past several years I’ve found myself watching more and more of them. Mostly Korean set ones for some reason. It started with Squid Game, which took me down a rabbit hole (pun fully intended) to Alice in Borderland, Sweet Home, The Devil’s Plan and most recently, The 8 Show.
The premise is a bunch of down-on-their-luck people from different walks of life get an opportunity to enter a game show with a chance to win a large sum of money. It’s very vague in terms of what they have to do or how they actually compete or win. In fact, they have to figure it all out as they go. And let’s just say that over time, things get pretty dark. Like REALLY dark.
It’s a commentary on the effects of social media (likes and dislikes, pleasing an audience, the lengths you have to go to in order to entertain, etc.). Much like Squid Game, but in a very different way.
I really enjoyed the show, even if parts of it were hard to watch. But then so was Squid Game.
If you like stuff like Squid Game, you’ll probably like The 8 Show. So if you haven’t checked it out, I recommend it.
Speaking of Netflix, mine and Lisa’s latest binge is an Australian set series titled The Tourist. It stars Jamie Dornan (50 Shades series) and Danielle Macdonald (Dumplin’).
Basically, this guy is being chased and gets in a car accident. He wakes up with no memory of who is or anything about his life. Macdonald plays a local beat cop in a small Australian town that makes it her life’s mission to help this man.
As secrets unfold and he learns more about his past and who he is things just get comically worse and worse. There is a somewhat dark satirical humor to the show, but it also has a fair amount of drama, romance, action, suspense and adventure.
It’s one of those shows it’s easy to sleep on, but once you start you want to keep watching.
We burned through the first season pretty quickly and we’re eager to dive into the newly released second season soon.
I feel like I’ve taken you around the world with this one (I mean, Korea, Australia, Texas… so I guess I actually did!), but I’ve still got one more thing I’d like to talk about real quick before I let you go. (How’s that for a nice, long run-on sentence?)
Though it might have seemed like a bunch of random thoughts with no connection this time around the fire, while writing it, it made me think about my life’s journey. I then saw how these seemingly random thoughts are actually interconnected in a way.
I talked about growing up with lots of family I didn’t get along with always, but managed to have some good times. I talked about our travels and new experiences, books we’re releasing and working on. I talked about shows we enjoyed and how my tastes have changed or evolved over the years (both in entertainment and in diet).
So really, this whole post is a little bit of insight into and a bit of introspection of my life up to this point. Crazy, right?
And thinking through all of that and what I wrote here it occurs to me how fortunate I truly am.
I’ll save the deeper takeaway from this for a future post because it would make this SOOO much longer if I dove into here. But on the surface, I’ll just narrow it down to the things within this creative leg of my journey I’ve been lucky enough to work on and be a part of.
I’ve flatted everything from Garfield to The Punisher, to Spider-Man, The Avengers, Superman, Justice League and Invincible. You would never know it, but I had a part of those characters and comics. That’s pretty awesome.
I’ve lettered two Image titles and hundreds (thousands?) of indie titles from some amazing smaller companies and indie creators over the past 20 years.
I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing tons of books and interviewing some really top tier creators in my news site editing/writing days.
And right now, I have the privilege of lettering my friend Will Allred’s series, Crossover Division, and designing graphics for Curtis Clow’s Slightly Exaggerated Kickstarter coming soon, as well as one of our own backers, Jon Auerbach’s upcoming campaign (which you’ll be hearing more about here soon).
Not to mention all the things we’re doing on our own!
These are just some of the things I’ve been fortunate enough to do and be a part of. No matter what anyone says, that’s pretty cool to me.
With that, I’ll leave you to enjoy the rest of your weekend (extended or not).
Stay toasty!
-Brant