Announcements, Crossposted, Journal

BIG DUMB OBJECTS: The sketching begins!

Last week I signed the covers of all the copies of BIG DUMB OBJECTS necessary to fill pre-orders.

This week I begin sketching. You can see the wall of books in front of my sketching station, which, unlike stations for previous books, is configured with gear to allow me to live-stream the process.

The streams, when they happen, will be found at twitch.tv/howardtayler. I’m still waiting on a USB hub and a power strip, so it might be a day or two before I get started.

Then again, it might begin today. I have a lot of sketching to do, and waiting on UPS is not the way to get it done…

Announcements, Crossposted, Journal

Coming Back From the Printer!

Big Dumb Objects is on its way back from the printer!

We had a couple of delays, but yesterday we received our advance copies of the book, along with some advance copies of the slipcase for books 12 through 16.



It wasn’t a big box of books, but it was full of new book smell. Which I wish I could share, because it’s awesome.

You’ve been waiting a long time for these, and the shipping container won’t actually get here until early May, and then I need to begin signing and sketching, so there’s a bit more waiting to be done.

But it’s a measurable wait. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is definitely not a train.

Announcements, Art, Crossposted

Off to the printer

Big Dumb Objects has been sent to the printer.

And it’s about time. Big Dumb time, even.

Cover image for BIG DUMB OBJECTS, Schlock Mercenary Book 16

The cover inset art was done a year ago, and the principal art and story was done five years ago. It was the bonus story which hung us up, and a lot of things went wrong during 2019 and 2020 (including the flooding of my office, and several productivity-impacting health problems), but we finally got that last piece finished a week and a half ago.

From there all I needed to do was assemble the cover, with all the circuits and stuff, write the back cover copy, and clean up some of the interior marginalia. I did all that last week, between December 28th and 30th, and then Sandra assembled the final files for the printer and sent it away.

It feels nice to be finished with that.

Sandra has promised me that on Monday she will unearth the sketches I’ve forgotten about drawing, the ones which outline the covers for books 17 through 20, and I guess it was nice having a two day vacation.

Crossposted, Reviews

SOUL

Movie poster for SOUL, man and cat walking down a fanciful staircase made of piano keys.

I loved Soul.

LOVED. IT.

The mythos was fun, the music was amazing, and the story had more heart in it—more truth in it—than anything in recent memory.

As an added bonus, if you like jazz, this movie has some amazing things to offer.

It’s easily worth a Disney+ subscription. Easily.

Yes, it has death, and after-life, and lots of emotions in it. But one of those emotions is joy, and there’s a lot of it to be found, and if ever there was an on-point metaphor for the film, it’s that the joy is easily worth the price of subscribing to the less joyful emotions.

Writer, Illustrator, Consumer