Schlock Mercenary

I just returned from GenCon Indy, which I quite enjoyed, but which exhausted me. Next week I head to San Jose for WorldCon 76, for which I must be well-rested. It needs to be a quiet week here. I’ll post my WorldCon schedule prior to the event, but beyond that I shouldn’t expect much in the way of blog updates. Such energy as I have will be spent making comics…

I’ll be at GenCon Indy this week. I’m sharing space with Jim Zub (Skullkickers, Avengers: No Surrender, Wayward) at booth 1649 in the exhibit hall. It’s a huge place, so here’s a map: We’ll have loads of merchandise, including Planet Mercenary books, Seventy Maxims books, and of course Schlock Mercenary books, including the latest volume, Random Access Memorabilia. I’ll also have a portfolio containing close to a hundred pieces of original Munchkin: Starfinder artwork, some of which will be available for purchase. (We won’t have copies of the game, but if you bring your copy to the booth I can deface it.) And speaking of Munchkin: Starfinder, I’ll be playing the game at the Worldbuilders charity event on Friday evening, and I’ll be hanging out in the Munchkin Tavern on Saturday. Here’s my full schedule of events OUTSIDE booth 1649. Thursday

This September I’ll be at WXR 2018, the Writing Excuses Workshop and Retreat, which will sail from Galveston Texas on a really big ship. The event begins on September 22nd, and wraps up on September 30th. There’s a day of prep sessions in Galveston, on the 22nd, and then head out into the ocean. If writing retreats are your thing, and if you’re interested in learning from industry professionals, you should consider joining us. It costs about what a Caribbean cruise costs, and it’s coming right up so scheduling time away from home might be tricky, but if you’ve got the discretionary resources to make it happen, it’s absolutely worth it¹. All the relaxation of a 7-day cruise, with all the motivational super-charging of hanging out with writers. The links take you directly to the registration page, which has a handy FAQ down at the bottom. ¹ Here’s a page linking to testimonials from attendees at previous WXR events. I wouldn’t say “it’s absolutely worth it” without some backup.

I began creating Schlock Mercenary in March of 2000. That’s 18.25 years ago. It’s 91% of two decades. It’s longer than half my children have been alive. It’s longer than a lot of things. Book 18, Mandatory Failure, is wrapping up. A week from today we’ll see the first panels of Book 19, A Function of Firepower, and as currently outlined that book should run for about as long as this one did. Sometime in or about the early summer of 2019, Book 20 will begin. That book, which will run for about the length of a book, is outlined in a manner that should wrap things up satisfactorily. The twenty-year-long (by then, anyway) Schlock Mercenary mega-arc will draw to a close. It might be useful to consider books 18, 19, and 20 as a trilogy, especially in light of the fact that trilogy-style is the way I’m writing them. Book 18 will end with some unresolved threads, which Book 19 will pick up. Book 19 will will also end with some unresolved threads, which Book 20 will pick up. As to what comes after Book 20, I remain firm in my twin commitments to 1) keep making Schlock Mercenary and 2) not launch another twenty-year story arc. We can talk about those plans in a couple of years. For now I have some comics to ink.

Yesterday evening I finally¹ finished the last of the numbered sketch editions for Random Access Memorabilia (book 13), and then promptly bemoaned the fact that I didn’t feel “done” with stuff because there are still so many things on my plate. These include finishing a week of comics this week, laying out the covers for Broken Wind (book 14) and Delegates and Delegation (book 15), lettering the bonus story for Delegates and Delegation, and posting movie reviews for Oceans 8 and Solo². The only other thing I’ve actually finished this week is the line art for the “Munchkin Starfinder³ Bookmark of Schlock Treatment”. I can’t share it here, though⁴. I think it’s a GenCon Indy exclusive. It’s noon on Saturday, and I have a week of Schlock Mercenary scripts on my drawing table. Maybe I’ll get them all penciled and inked by the time my work-week ends at midnight, but even if I do, I’ll still be looking at that other stuff on my list and bemoaning its ongoing unfinishedness. ¹ The sketch editions took more time because we relaxed my schedule a bit, and this let me spend a bit more time on each sketch. They’re still just sketches, but I think they’re better than the ones I was doing for earlier books. Not that I expect anybody but me to notice.