busybee comics

I wish I could say I’ve been too busy to make comics, but that just isn’t true. For the last several weeks I’ve been pretty sick with one thing after another, and it’s gotten in the way of everything (day job, music, and comics). I started out with a cold, then I got a stomach virus, then my cold turned into bronchitis, and even before I could get the bronchitis treated I ended up getting some other intestinal thing that’s given me terrible diarrhea for the last week, and I’ve been unable to eat anything of substance and of course that’s probably going to lead to even more problems in the long term. Also, if my intestinal problem is bacterial in nature it will probably require hospitalization, as I have bad reactions to most antibiotics so any treatment will require close supervision.

So anyway, I haven’t worked on any comics (aside from the one posted today, which I drew the day it happened and only managed to finish just now), and since I’ve missed so much work I can’t in any good conscience take any time off for Further Confusion, so I’ve cancelled my vacation time for that (assuming I was even going to be well enough for it anyway, which is looking pretty unlikely at this point). I was really looking forward to that, but I’m looking forward even more to not being sick, and being able to go back to work.

Okay, in actuality, Lumines Electronic Symphony hasn’t been something that’s gotten in the way of me working (visibly) on comics, since it’s just a way that I unwind when my brain doesn’t want to do anything else. The reality of what’s going on is a bit more interesting, I suppose.

First of all, Werner has been quite a challenging cat to take care of. I don’t mind that I have him, of course, but he is quite a lot more of a handful than I was expecting. It’s taken a lot longer than expected for him to adjust to his new home, and it’s obvious to me just how bad of a fit his previous home was for him (so it’s to his previous owners' credit that they decided to re-home him). But anyway he tends to take up a lot of my free time.

And that free time is pretty limited right now; work has been keeping me very busy (in a good way, mind you). Ever since being made team lead again, I’ve been putting in a lot of hours Getting Stuff Done. It’s also pretty likely I’m going to be spending more time in Japan (especially now that my health issues seem to have cleared up, yay!) — incidentally this makes for some interesting problems with Werner, but I’ll figure something out.

On the comics front, Book I of Unity is now being printed. The Kickstarter backers will get their copies very soon (hopefully within a week), and after those get sent out (and I get around to finishing the Kickstarter rewards, which I’ve been quite remiss in working on) others will be able to buy it online (for, say, $15 + shipping). Also, pretty much on a lark I also made a Kindle edition, if you want to spend $5 on a lower-quality version than what you can read for free online already. It does have the all-new chapter title pages, and the terribly self-deprecating preface, although it doesn’t have the comic notes since I couldn’t figure out a decent way to present those on the Kindle. But for the next three months, at least, that’ll be the only way you can get it in ebook form. If that’s your thing, I mean.

Anyway, there’s a lot of other stuff going on in my life right now but it’s mostly boring. Hopefully I’ll find some time to start working on more Unity comics, as I seem to keep on accumulating story ideas and even writing partial scripts for them! The next one I want to work on is called “Blackout” and I think it’s pretty interesting, although I’m biased, of course.

Obviously I’ve started another series. Hopefully I can write the middle of the script before I get to it!

Also in case you missed it, you can buy Unity Book 1: Ascent over at my former employer. Someday I will put together a merch page. That day is probably not today.

I’m going to be traveling Friday thru Sunday for a family member’s wedding, so don’t be too surprised if comics don’t get posted on time.

Sorry about that - I forgot to upload the comic before posting it, and forgot to check to make sure it got posted correctly before going to bed last night. Fortunately, today’s comic wasn’t terribly important to the story anyway.

(Also, sorry if you got a bunch of duplicate entries in your feed reader; I made some changes to the feed so that I could “bump” an individual entry if necessary, and that required bumping everything. Of course, not every feed reader will even support that, so if you didn’t get a bunch of duplicate entries, oh well.)

I haven’t been in a particularly good mood for making comics lately. Real life keeps on getting in the way.

Life’s continuing to have been crazy lately. I miss working on comics though. Also after I finish Blackout I have another idea for a story which runs parallel to it (but which wouldn’t fit in Blackout’s narrative framework). Hopefully I can do it sooner rather than later. I wonder how confusing my archive will get if I have this story posted as a sub-story of Blackout, which in turn is a sub-story of Unity…

Anyway, this week I’ll try to get a few more comics done than usual, and then the next week I’m on vacation in Seattle (and by vacation I mean I’m performing music live and you should totally come see me suck on stage!) and then after that things are going to get really crazy. Probably.

Hey folks, this story is almost done and I’m trying to wrap it up pretty soon. I’m moving back to Seattle in a couple weeks! And then I’ll have some time off before I start my new job. There’s other stuff I want to work on too though. Fortunately, this story is almost at its end (I think there’s like 10 more strips to go? I seem to always end up making arcs last 25-1 for some reason, and it’s never purposeful but maybe it should be!) but anyway yeah, I’m crazy busy but in good ways right now so that’s why I’m not posting comics very often.

I just learned about how the generation ships in Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri are called “Unity” ships. How many people thought I was making a reference to that? Because until just now I really had no idea, having never played that game.

So now you know.

(All references to Star Control 2 are totally intentional, though.)

I was hoping to get the rest of this series drawn before my big move, but unfortunately I just didn’t have enough time. So this will be the last strip for a few days at the very least. Speculation about where this is going is encouraged!

So I’m in Seattle now, but unfortunately I’m stuck using a crappy 720p TV as a monitor for the time being, which is somewhat less than pleasant to do comics on. Hopefully I’ll manage to get a better monitor sooner rather than later.

Of course, I’m also starting my new job in a week, so I’m not sure how much time I’ll be able to spend on comics after that happens (but I have plenty of free time right now so I should be able to finally get Blackout finished, at least).

I have the rest of Blackout scheduled (there’s only 35 strips, one after today’s). After that I have no idea how long it’ll be before I get to comics again. But that’s why you subscribe by RSS, right?

I’m still busy unpacking way too much crap into my new place (no, there still isn’t a pole) and as always I have too many other hobbies and I’m terrible at drawing anyway so, yeah.

Just as a reminder, you can buy Unity Book 1: Ascent for a pretty low price! It contains the first 255 Unity strips, plus added interstitial artwork and all the self-deprecating popup commentary (with new meta-commentary) collected in one place.

Buy copies for all your platypus-loving science fiction fans today!

A bunch of other people have commented on being unable to figure out the not-quite-typical navigation for this site, so I’ve redone the navigation stuff to hopefully make a bit more sense. Let me know if it doesn’t, in fact, make more sense.

So, I make comics for the love of doing it, but part of what keeps me going is knowing that people are reading it. I cherish every conversation that people strike up with me about it, so there’s no better way to keep me going than by participating in the dialog!

Well, okay, you can also buy my stuff, but that’s ancillary.