It’s Here and it’s Hefty

This is really news from June, which I forgot to post amidst the excitement regarding original fiction stuff. For the first time in years, I ordered a physical copy of a book, and of course, it’s the book. I took pains to get my hands on this specific edition, for the sake of the cover, and it meant waiting a good long while for the delivery. I didn’t expect it to be so fat! “A fat juicy masterpiece” nails it.

It’s odd to be reading a physical book. I can’t highlight a selection to save it, and I can’t click on a word for an instant dictionary definition. I’ll admit that a physical book gives better progress feedback, and is able to embody certain sentiments that you can’t really attach to a file. Otherwise, however, it’s a vastly inferior experience.

Which isn’t to say I regret the purchase or the wait. My main reason to get the physical copy, at least as far as I could rationalize it, was that the digital edition misses some words! But really, I just wanted to be able to, like, hug it. Yeah.

Under Her Wing: submitted for publishing!

Almost six years after winning NaNo 2017 with the draft of the novel Under Her Wing, the first work of original fiction I completed since my teens, I finally finished rewriting it, and submitted it to a publisher. And not just any publisher! OFIC magazine specializes in publishing original fiction written by fanfiction writers. It’s a perfect match, but more importantly, it means they’re my tribe, and that made both the decision and the process so much easier than it would’ve been otherwise.

Books of 2023, part 1

It’s not even June yet, and I’ve already read 25 books. If I keep this up, I might reach the unprecedented count of 50 books in a year! This is the first time I’ve had reason to split my yearly reading report in two parts, and it feels good.

As Meat Loves Salt: Dream of a Sequel

Like, literally. Two months ago, I had a dream where I was in possession of an actual, 100% official sequel.

Feeling proud of my Darksiders fanart

Most of these can be found at art.smehur.com and some in the local gallery.
The top row is this year’s stuff.

Darksiders Verse Series: Introduction

I decided to write down, “tell, not show”, outright spell out, my Darksiders Verse in a series of posts. By “Verse” I mean my reading of canon mixed with outright headcanon (HC). Some might argue that “my reading of canon” is HC, but I disagree. Canon can be controversial, and Darksiders canon in particular was put together with less care for consistency and continuity than it could’ve been, so diverse readings of same content are sometimes possible (and I often favor those less literal, obvious and consequently, less popular). If I called this “Darksiders HC Series” I would be conceding points in the discourse that I have no reason (nor wish) to concede. So Verse it is.

Anyway, it’s lately become something of a guilty pleasure of mine to write long posts about why I want to write other long posts instead of writing those long posts I actually want to write — and this is one of them! There will be no Verse here: just all my thoughts and feelings about the act of spelling it out.

Tl;dr: I want to write it down because I no longer care enough to “save it” for rendering through stories; and also because I fear I might forget it.

Which isn’t to say I won’t be writing any more Darksiders stories. At the very least, I plan to finish the Legendary Series, but I may do more eventually. I’m still interested in this franchise (which is more than I could say about Mass Effect, nowadays) — just not as much as before.