Artstuff

In my first newsletter I mentioned wanting to create more physical things. Like books. Tails of Valor and Tails of Terror are currently available at the Golden Goblin website. I spent a good part of 2018 and 2019 working on the illustrations for these volumes. Tails of Valor is a collection of role-playing game scenarios for the Call of Cthulhu setting/rule set. It’s a sequel of sorts to Cathulhu, from Sixtystone Press. Cathulhu is a version of CoC that allows players to role-play as cats. Cats deal with the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos differently than puny humans.

Tails of Valor features three scenarios –

Triumphus Felis Ferae (set in 41 C.E. Rome) by Jeffrey Moeller

Shadow Harvest (set in 5th Dynasty Egypt) by Stuart Boon

The Undesirables (set in Dark Ages France) by Oscar Rios

Tails of Terror is an anthology of sixteen horror stories featuring cats as protagonists. I provided title page illustrations for each story. A sampling of those illustrations are below. I’m not going to say which illustration goes to which story. That’s a surprise for folks who purchase the book.

Tails of Terror was edited by Brian Sammons and features these stories –

• Brown Jenkin’s Reckoning by Edward M. Erdelac
• Derpyfoot by Christine Morgan
• The Cat in the Pall by Pete Rawlik
• Ghost Story by Brian M. Sammons
• Palest of Humans by Don Webb
• Bats in the Belfry by William Meikle
• Satisfaction Brought Him Back by Glynn Owen Barrass
• The Bastet Society by Sam Stone
• The Veil of Dreams by Stephen Mark Rainey
• The Quest of Pumpkin the Brave by Oscar Rios
• The Cats of the Rue d’Auseil by Neil Baker
• The Knowledge of the Lost Master by Andi Newton
• The Ruins of an Endless City by Lee Clark Zumpe
• A Glint in the Eyes by D.A. Madigan
• A Field Guide to Wanderlust Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
• In the End there is a Drain by Tim Waggoner

My thanks go to Jeffrey Moeller for requesting me as illustrator for Tails of Valor. Big thanks also to Oscar Rios for taking a chance on me. It was great to get back to work. I’d been passing on commissions for a few years because my postal job had taken up so much time and physical energy. This project was an important part of helping me get some sanity and peace of mind again. Thanks also to Mark Shireman for his design work on both the books. They look fabulous.

Story Seed #28
Looking through a photo album you see that some of the photos have changed, they depict events differently than they used to. 

There’s your uncle, laughing and smiling at a family picnic that he didn’t attend. There’s your mom and dad holding hands in a Christmas photo. You know they were fighting that year. You know you hadn’t been able to catch them in the same room together. There’s your best friend casting a mooning look at the girl who never noticed her. The girl is returning the look.

These aren’t new photos. These aren’t digital things that could be altered in Photoshop. These are prints that have been sitting in these albums for years. What happens when you show them to other people – the people in the photos? Will they remember the same events, the same life?

Lifestuff

Letter carriers advance in their careers mostly by seniority. The longer I’m with the post office the more personal and sick days I accrue. I get regular, scheduled raises rather than having to ask for them. When a route becomes available the person with the most seniority will beat out other bidders to claim said route.

Last Wednesday I senioritied into a parking space. Our station is located at the Westwood Mall in West Seattle. I’ve needed to park in the Mall’s parking lot since I started with USPS. Our station has a fenced parking lot for our delivery trucks. There are parking spaces for employees along the western edge of the lot. I didn’t get a spot in there. I got a spot along the drive into that parking lot. I got the second spot from the entrance.

I was notified about my new status last Tuesday by other carriers who had seen our new parking chart. On my own I wouldn’t have looked at the chart. I’ve been assuming that I wouldn’t have an assigned spot for years yet.

It’s a little satisfying to have lasted this long. I’m not going to get used to it. If carriers with greater seniority transfer in I’ll be back out in the mall lot. It’s nice for now though.

NewsletterStuff

I was inspired to (re)start writing a newsletter because I’ve subscribed to a number of newsletters and getting them in my inbox over the week helps me get outside the bubble that my version of the internet wants to keep me trapped within. Facebook shows me more of what I already “like”. Amazon shows me more of what I already “like”. Youtube shows me videos similar to the ones I’ve already watched. Google shows me more of what I’ve already searched for. Getting more of what I’ve already gotten makes me dull and stupid.

The newsletters send me places I wouldn’t go on my own and make me think about things I don’t automatically think about. This week I’m linking to Orbital Operations, from Warren Ellis. I’ve found a lot of the other newsletters I read via his newsletter. He’s a writer of comics and television and novels and other things who, when he has time, writes about science and the future. When he’s short on time he writes about his current projects and links to interesting things.

Subscribe

To get the subscription link, click on “Home” in the menu bar under the site banner. A whole list of links and nonsense will appear on the right. The subscription link will be under the search field at the top.

That’s it for this week. Be as good as you can. Forgive yourself when you screw up. Make amends when necessary. See you next Tuesday!