Hello, friends!

Let’s get website updates out of the way first, because I’ve got two today:

• The Failed Technomancer chapter 12 has been posted! The full introduction of the bloody-mouthed rozie. What’s 64Bit going to do?…
• The language article has finally been completed and posted! Well, here’s the actual title: How Average SFF Authors can Create Fictional Languages. (Mightchange that title when I think of a better one.) As you can probably guess, the article is a primer on how to make your own fictional languages for your worlds and stories. I provide several methods, many examples, and a lot of useful resources. If you have any interest in this, check it out, or share with friends!

And now, on with more of the show!

Quick Recommendations

I keep discovering cool new things that I want to share with people, so I’m going to give these ideas their own section and see if I like it.

I have two recommendations in a similar vein today: Lackadaisy (the cartoon) and The Amazing Digital Circus. Don’t let the YouTube links fool you: these are both full-length episodes for in-the-works TV series, both produced by great writers and animators, which will (to the best of my knowledge) ultimately be released on YouTube for anyone to watch.

What an amazing world we live in.

Anyway, why these shows? Well, I can state for both that the animation is gorgeous (and nicely stylized), that the writing is clever and funny (despite both representing completely different genres and themes), and the voice acting is top-notch. So let me give you a quick summary for both before moving on.

Lackadaisy is a 2D cartoon based on a popular webcomic of the same name. Judging from the pilot, Lackadaisy is going to center around the exploits of the owners/employees of a speakeasy in a town or city district named Lackadaisy. It’s got a fantastical charm to it, aided by the fact that the main characters are all anthropomorphic cats with squirrel-like tails. Set in the Prohibition, the pilot nails its tone and introduces compelling, entertaining protagonists and antagonists alike in all sorts of flavors.

The Amazing Digital Circus is a 3D cartoon about a girl who one day wakes up in the titular circus. She doesn’t remember her name (“Pomni” is later given to her), how she got there, or anything else about herself; meanwhile, everyone else around her seems completely insane, and now her life is controlled by a weird magical ringmaster with dentures for a head. The show promises lots of surrealism and bizarre humor coupled with touches of existential horror that adds a sharp edge and genuine tension to a variety of scenes.

Both shows are pretty friendly to extremely wide audiences.

Bloggyness Review: The Crimson Campaign (Powder Mages, Book 2)

I read this book way too fast. My book budget is cleaned out until November, and this book was supposed to last me the rest of the month… And it was a long book!

The Crimson Campaign is the followup to Promise of Blood in Brian McClellan’s Powder Mages trilogy. And this book slaps. It exceeds Promise of Blood in every way. The stakes are higher, the tension builds more and is teased out longer, the characters grow significantly in strength and are still challenged to the very cores of their beings, and the twists are… well, twistier. I gasped aloud at multiple points in this book.

Compared to how much I droned on about Promise of Blood last week, this might seem a pretty brief review, but as a sequel I have a lot less ground to cover. There’s still Privileged, Powder Mages, and Knacked; the setting is still black powder–level technology in a world just starting to get over monarchal reign (in certain places); the characters are still generally hard-as-nails while housing deep emotional cores; and more. I distinctly remember, at 11 o’clock PM, thinking to myself, “I can’t take this anymore! The tension is too high! We’re near the climax, right?” then realized I was only halfway through the book.

Perhaps that’s the one nitpick I can give The Crimson Campaign—it’s almost physically stressful to read, given how much the characters go through and just how long and high tension is played out before there’s any relief. Some people might not enjoy that, but I did.

Writing Updates

As I mentioned earlier, the language article is finally done! I can cross that off my to-do list forever.

Beyond that, things are pretty similar to last week. I would like to submit The Courage in a Small Heart to Writer’s of the Future this week or next, and in the meantime I’m doing some more worldbuilding and preparing for the next story in that world. The Betrayed Technomancer and Inner Demon have essentially unchanged statuses, unfortunately.

Send-Off

What unexpected gems have you found floating through the internet? TV series, webcomics, books, it doesn’t matter—just let me know!

Have a great week!