Today’s newsletter is gonna be all over the place. Kind of like the March weather in Southern Michigan, which has swung from the 60s to below freezing within the same week. Yesterday, we had snow. Tomorrow, it will be back to 60 degrees in the afternoon. It’s that time of year where it is perfectly normal for your average Michigander to be either dressed in shorts, a hoodie and Crocs or lined jeans, boots, and a puffer jacket.
Last week, I submitted my mentorship applications. I’ve never applied for a mentorship before or written a manuscript or created a book dummy or spent much time reflecting on why I want to make books. And now it’s done. I feel pretty good about that, whether I make it as a mentee or not.
As a treat, I went to see The Bride! last Friday. I loved the trailer and I was pretty sure I was gonna love the movie. And boy, did I love the movie. Everything about it was unexpected – the plot, the characters, the story arc, the dancing, etc – and brilliant. There’s so much love in this story – not just in the literal love story between the characters but throughout every aspect of the film’s craft. The costumes, the lighting, the acting, the dialogue, the choreography, the photography… lemme just say if you’re dying to talk to someone who also would love to geek out about The Bride!, hit me up.
I wanna recommend a couple of recent comics. One is Carla Speed McNeil’s self-published Settlers of the Storm Worlds. Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder is my favorite comic series of all time. She is the master of facial expressions and an uncanny ability to sink the reader deeply into each moment of her story. Settlers of the Storm Worlds is the story of a magical family journeying from one world to another and getting caught in the eye of a hurricane along the way.
Another is Karl Kerschl’s Death Transit Tanager. It’s the story of a young woman who helps lost dead souls make their way to their final destination. A great blend of fantasy, sci-fi, amazing draftsmanship, great character development, and wry, clever writing.
Third, and last, is Linnea Sterte’s Garden of Spheres. Sterte writes that her intention with the stories in the book was “to define/refine a world I’d been carrying around half-formed in a my head for almost a decade… to place a character there and have her wander around and as she did so, I would have to render the places and people around her in some detail.” Sterte doesn’t waste a single line or bit of dialogue telling her stories and yet to call it economical would deny the layers of worldbuilding contained.
And, as promised, here’s a little doodle:
