New Internet Adventure

Greetings friends and enemies!

Welcome to my first quarterly newsletter. This is my attempt to escape constantly trying to feed social media algorithms and instead be able to connect with you all in a (hopefully) more meaningful way.

This new adventure in sharing my work will be a more comprehensive collection of my creative pursuits (visual art, writing, game development, zine-making, etc.) that I’ve been working on for the past few months!

On an internet where niching down is one of the better ways to find an audience and “make it” as an independent creative, I find marketing my work challenging because I like too many things! I admire people who can make a corner for themselves, because I know it’s probably not easy for them either and sacrifices are made on the way, but it’s just not what I want for myself.

The alternative to this strategy is to make yourself the niche. Essentially, center an audience’s interest on your personality or lifestyle rather than what you do or make. Thinking of marketing myself this way honestly makes me feel kind of sick, although, I also think it’s inevitable if you’re doing anything public-facing on the internet.

Eventually, the you that is ‘you’ and the you that is an internet persona that exists in the minds of the audience become two different things. Yikes!

I’m not interested in selling personality, I just want people to see my work — all of it in its eclectic glory. And I am determined not to think too hard about the existential dread of marketing myself (too late) and instead get to the point, which is sharing the stuff I’m excited about!

All that to say: thank you for sticking with me as I find the best way to do this and letting me gush about my projects because that’s all I ever really want to do and maybe one day it can be a part of my job.

Huh, what? You also make games???

I do! You should check this one out, it’s old (2020), but it’s also one of my favorite things I’ve made, ever. It’s a short choice-based game about an acolyte and their god at the end of the world.

Secret art

My office job started hosting these art competitions according to a theme and afterward, they hang all the submissions on the wall for a month. These have been good motivation to make personal art because working with a prompt is easier for me than starting from scratch.

So far I’ve done two, and I think they’re both cute, but I’m sooo paranoid that if I post them on my socials someone from work will recognize them and find my art accounts—my worst nightmare. Maybe one day I’ll be a full-time creative and won’t have to worry about that stuff. T’would be nice!

But in the meantime, I can share them here :^) Don’t tell my boss, okay?

Behind the Scenes

All the illustrations for my new short story zine, Thistlesweet in the City of Bugs, were done traditionally! They were sketched on paper, traced over, and inked onto tracing paper with dip pens and brushes and scanned in with a scanning app to give it that crunchy xerox finish.

Side note: I am working on getting this and other zines available in a digital form on my itchio account as a more affordable and accessible way of reading them. There are some formatting issues, but I hope to get it done by the end of the summer.

Latest Post

Recent Favorites

In no particular order; a collection of things that have been getting me through the horrors.

• Campaign: Skyjacks- A ttrpg actual play podcast about sky pirates (I made fanart, yes, I know it makes no sense—unless you’ve listened to over 100 episodes of this podcast)

• Professor of Magical Studies - A 500k text-based game about being a new professor at a magic college, navigating academia, beefing with your rival, and saving the world

• Mimi - An interview podcast full of inspiring conversations with creatives (mostly of the visual arts variety)

• A Power Unbound - The last book in the Last Binding trilogy. A queer historical fantasy series.

• A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - Four podcasters with writing/games backgrounds analyze every single Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode (and more)

• Jamie Green’s art and videos - My parasocial relationship with Jamie Green has gotten out of hand. I am subbed to their patreon and I do recommend it if you’re also a fan

• Loco Motive - An indie point-and-click adventure about a train murder. I just started this one, but it’s giving me massive Monkey Island nostalgia, so it makes the list

• Also, I started crocheting and it’s pretty fun!

Thank You Freebie

We’ve reached the end of this first newsletter! Many thanks again for reading < 3 As a token of my thanks I’ve included a free PDF of a hand-drawn, undated calendar for you to download and print out or use digitally if that’s your thing.

Upcoming

Fare well until September :^)