Weekly Update - 5/14/25

Not been my finest week, not going to lie. Part of it's been that getting QT2:i8 right, and there were a lot of important spinning plates and I kept being unhappy with one or more of them and kept throwing parts of it away. The riot is obviously going to be a big deal in the political backdrop of the rest of Book 2 and even much of Book 3, but I didn't want to focus too much on it, because, obviously, we had the other thing to do as well.

Originally, my first draft of the chapter ended very differently, but I wasn't happy with that, and so I ended up scrapping a lot of that. I'd thought I knew exactly how I was going to do that one when I got started, but sometimes the way through involves a lot more weeding out than anticipated. We got there in the end with something I'm satisfied with.

I'm about halfway through the next Brewster's Brood chapter right now and I'll have that up as soon as I can, and then will roll right on to Before The Storm. It's also been weird because the roommate's out of town, and he took the cats with him, and most of my regular weekly appointments have fallen through this week - no board games on Monday, no poker night on Wednesday - so I've sort of been totally alone this week, which is a bit chilling and quiet. It's a good reminder why I don't like living alone.

I'm going to see what I can get done over the next few days before he returns with the cats (they're his cats, not mine) and we'll see how that goes. I'm off to see OK Go on Sunday at The Filmore, so that'll be loads of fun. And the first weekend of June will be totally lost to me being the head judge for a seemingly endless number of Final Fantasy/Magic: the Gathering prereleases, so I'll try and get ahead of things best I can before that.

For those of you who are public readers and didn't care for all the raw foreign language stuff in QT2:i6, don't worry - I don't anticipate doing that again. It was a sort of experiment. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Most people would've rather I'd just written the translated part. We'll see what I end up doing for publication when we get there.

Speaking of publication, I sent my artist friend the concept stuff for the cover of the print version of If I'm Honest, which I'm hoping to have out before the end of the year, along with print versions of C.A.R.P., Morgana's Gift and Neon Stonehenge. I think NS will be the second one, and I'm planning on taking some photographs of that particular intersection the night of the OK Go concert, and we'll see what my artist friend makes of them.

Also, if you haven't watched Andor and you like anything about Star Wars ever, go watch it, and then prepare to immediately sit down and watch Rogue One again right afterwards. What an amazing bunch of fucking television. If you want to know what people want more of from their Star Wars, look to that - character, story, emotion, realism, human connection. Also, Alan Tudyk is a goddamn otherworldly treasure.

Here's the upcoming public schedule for the next month or so.: 5/17 - QT2:31, BTS 14; 5/24 - CARP 12 & 13 (finale); 5/31 -QT2:32, Neon Stonehenge 11.