Schlock Mercenary

I’ve been sick for over a month now. The good news is that I’m not down with fever and body-aches anymore, but I’m still exhausted all the time, and my voice is a ragged wreck of a thing which is painful to use. I can only imagine what it’s like to listen to. This has had an effect on my work, obviously. Keeping up with the comic strip, which is Job One, has been a struggle. Other stuff has fallen completely off, and I feel pretty badly about it because some of what has fallen off is some key tasks for delivering the next Schlock Mercenary book. I haven’t reviewed any movies in a while, either. I definitely feel well enough to sit down for a couple of hours and watch something, but I don’t feel good about taking this cough into a theater. My hope is that by the time February 29th rolls around (carrying with it the beginning of my 53rd year as a corporeal Earth-human) I’ll be back in good health, and getting stuff done again. Really, that’s all I want for my birthday.

The tl;dr—I’m on the mend, but miserable and exhausted. I lost about five days during which I bathed zero times, sweat all the way through my clothing four times, and didn’t draw any comics. Today I DID draw some comics, and I successfully bathed! Anyway, there’s my excuse for the dearth of updates. I’ve been busy working extra hard to not die, because it feels like the extra effort might provide a useful buffer.

It’s Typecast RPG Night¹. Last week we discovered that Vaeron’s cloudscape civilization—massive flying cities kept aloft on the backs of dreaming gods—is kept intact at a price: human sacrifice is what keeps the dreamers asleep, and if they wake up, they’ll destroy the world². At least, that’s what we’ve been told… I don’t know how tonight’s session will go, but I think one of our activities will be deciding whether or not to burn it all down. The show starts at 9pm Eastern, and in addition to all the fun role-playing from Dan, Brian, Mari, and me, there’s an art-cam! And I now have some markers that do GLITTER. Join us!³ Follow and subscribe at twitch.tv/typecastrpg! ¹ Assuming “Tonight” is Tuesday night, January 21st.

The wedding was beautiful. The reception was lovely. The day was exhausting, but only because it’s hard work packing that much joy, delight, and awesome into one contiguous sequence of waking hours. There’s a thread of photos on my Twitter feed, and if you follow Sandra_Tayler on Instagram there are plenty more. Thank you, everyone, for the congratulatory wishes, and support, and for your patience with us as we rescheduled all our business deliverables in order to have some make-the-family-bigger¹ family time. ¹ That may have sounded a little lewd, but I footnoted it, so it’s totally okay.

Our oldest daughter, Keliana, is getting married on Wednesday. This has been playing merry Hell with my schedule, but it’s the very epitome of “merry Hell,” because we’re all quite happy. Tyler and Keliana are very good for each other, and to each other, and the old saw about not losing a daughter but gaining a son seems to apply pretty well here. I mean, except for the part where they’re not living with us because they’re off to have their own adventures. (If it’s not obvious, the illustrations in this post are Keliana’s work.)

A new season of Typecast RPG begins tonight¹. The party must leave the snowy wastelands (which we all hated) and pay a visit to the Verdenfleet (which hates all of us.) There will be big changes for some of the characters, including a bit of apotheosis-justified retconning. Dungeon Master Dan Wells and I discussed my bard’s character last month, and have determined that I play him more like a cleric. So, instead of leveling from Bard 4 to Bard 5, or Bard 4 to Bard 4/Cleric 1, we’re using his meeting-with-deity from the end of last season to justify leveling him from Bard 4 to Bard 3/Cleric 2. The show starts at 9pm Eastern, and in addition to all the fun role-playing from Brian, Mari, Ethan, Charlie, Dan, and me, there’s an art-cam! And I got some markers that have GLITTER. Join us! Follow and subscribe at twitch.tv/typecastrpg! ¹ Assuming “Tonight” is Tuesday night, January 7th.