I've been radio silent for a long time on all my accounts for several reasons:
1) School - You cannot imagine how work-intensive dental hygiene school is unless you've been through it! Fortunately, I just recently graduated, so at least my free time will be fully mine now, no homework to suck out my evening time
2) Stepping away from social media in general - At first I did this because it was too stressful to keep up with social media and school at the same time, so I cut it out for my own sanity. I'll be coming back a little now, but not with the same regularity, and I'll be avoiding Facebook and Twitter like the plague
3) I was unmedicated - For years I've had untreated anxiety, depression, and PTSD, as well as undiagnosed ADHD. Well, I finally got meds for the first two, therapy for the second, and a diagnosis (with meds to come) for the last. So I am in a much better mental place than I've ever been, and that feels really good!
4) I've started writing - This is the big one. Back in November 2020, I started writing a novel. At first it was just dabbling to see if I had the prose chops to write out the story that was in my head, because it was so elaborate that it would take several lifetimes to do in comic form. But as I did, I discovered a consuming passion for writing, and I've been working on the novel (Forest-Born) for most of my free time ever since. It's about a little girl that gets in fights, a little boy with severe social anxiety, and a pixie that makes moonshine. I'll probably post a few of the chapters here to give y'all a taste (though keep in mind that I'm still on the first draft, so details and plot points will likely change)
What does this mean for my comic series? I'm not sure, honestly. I don't want to abandon them, because I still love the characters and stories in them. But now that I'll have a bit more time, I'm hoping to keep working on them slowly. Maybe I'll have to convert them to a simpler coloring style to save my sanity.
Normally Common Fantasy updates on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but since those are the days I'm in clinic now, the release days will be Monday and Wednesday instead.
Okay, so thanks to my air conditioner kicking on and making a ton of noise, with barely 5 min of silence in between, it took about 2 hours to record those five SoSS strips. With school starting in a week, I'm not going to be able to justify that kind of time consistently (especially when I would rather be spending it actually making comics)
So to still have a way for visually impaired people to enjoy my stories, I am uploading them to the Tapas Novel section. I'll still do the audio recordings, but I don't want to hold up the comic process for them, so they will come as I have time for them.
Here's the Sinners of St. Sebastians novel version for anyone who's interested: https://tapas.io/series/Sinners-Of-St-Sebastians-Novel
Well a lot of people in my family have some kind of handicap (especially loss of hearing; my cousin was born without external ears and my dad was briefly kicked out of school because he couldn't hear the teacher and so was considered unteachable) so I have always tried to be really aware of what can be done to accommodate as many people as possible (though I can't be as thorough as I'd like because I am just one person with limited time and know-how)
Also just some people aren't visually impaired but just can't read comics. My dad is dyslexic, so it takes forever for him to read, so he prefers listening, and my friend is in a similar situation (which is why i double-checked that Tapas novels are text-reader compatible)
Not really comic related, but I wanted to show off my clinic clipboard. Morana is the Slavic goddess of health and sickness, death and life, so it seemed appropriate to have her for clinc. Painted the board with sumi ink to get that nice smooth black, then used acrylic for the rest.
Alright, the first five strips of Sinners of St. Sebastians now have audio readings! You can find links on their respective pages, or you can listen to them all here: https://anchor.fm/sinners-of-st-sebastians
Working on editing the first few audio readings of the SoSS. comics, and how ironic is it that three seconds in, I notice that my own little speech impediment has reared its head. (I have learned to cheat around it, but sometimes it pops up) Whatever, recording is too much of a pain to bother going back to change it XD
Lol maybe one day, but right now I'm more concerned with figuring out how to tell Jørgen's centuries-long epic backstory (yup, that grumpy sweater guy who was in the first chapter for 30 seconds? He's got a backstory XDD) I over-plan everyone's backstories....
Wondering how you can help if you can't go to protests?
Go to JoinCampaignZero.org
This website has info about policy changes to contact your reps about. As someone with tight funds and who is practically housebound during the summer, I hate not being able to do more. But no matter what, government officials are legally required to be just a phone call away. Don’t lose hope and don’t give up your voices.