Mutant Pizza

Well well well, fancy meeting You here;

It’s February! Black History Month, Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, sometimes Leap Day — possibly other special times. You get it. There’s a lot that happens in this short month! I’ve been working my way through East of West, a phenomenal comic book series by Johnathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta. On top of that, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks studying the Avatar Legends TTRPG book to host an upcoming short campaign in the not-too-distant March-to-April era.

I’ve also been nibbling away at my various projects. Cuisines in the form of board games, short stories, and a NEW thing. I love the lustful spark of NEW things. They’re NEW.

Pssst, ask me what the NEW thing is…

…What’s the new thing?

A webcomic! To practice my illustration skills, work on my style, and work out all of my lil’ ideas and witty, uh, witticisms that I couldn’t quite fit into a project, I’ve started illustrating a weekly webcomic, called The Oak Tree. You might’ve been made aware of this comic, what with my new-fangled approach of heartlessly spamming y’all with emails about my toil. Okay, it’s hardly toil, it’s FUN. The Oak Tree is a hot new webcomic featuring conversational and situational comedic brouhaha between two cookie, zany, lovable, flawed characters who you’ve never seen before in weekly comic history: an orange cat that bears no resemblance to any other illustrated orange cats you may be aware of, and a black dog of the same copyright-avoiding sentiment.

Read the Oak Tree every Thursday! You can even read prior episodes through the magic of ✨the Internet.✨Yeah, that’s right, the Oak Tree is proudly displayed on what experts call a webpage. Read it! Do it, do it!

Okay, okay, fine. What else is new?

I’m plucking away at a short story that, as I’m sure you’re used to, I can’t mention much about as I’ll be submitting it to various publications. I’m enjoying writing it, but it’s been a challenge slotting it into the puzzle of my other ongoing projects.

The various squiggly vacuum tubes that constitute my brain are shooting messages back and forth, working through the most prudent time to edit some of these stories that linger in varying forms of prenatal “rough draft” and “slightly better rough draft.” These complex systems of the mind have agreed on the most professional of writerly decisions on this: I’m going to wing it.

My goal still stands, to spend this year writing and polishing and rewriting and repolishing ten shorty stories, then submitting to at least 50 calls for submissions. So far, I’ve submitted to two — only 48 more to go!

This is boring. Please talk about something fun to play…

Board games! I’m working on them! You may have seen some of my healthy email spam on the two board game projects I’ll be focusing on this year: a one-page TTRPG and a two-player tableau builder. As aforementioned, I’ve furiously typed up some design journal entries on them. Peruse them at your pleasure using the World Wide Web links below:

• One-page TTRPG (Strange Friend in a Strange Land)
• Tableau builder (Psychic Battle)

If I have time this year, I want to release a second edition of my debut board game, Nine Muses. Mainly, I want to alter how some things work in a way that reduces the amount of components in the game, thus reducing the price of the physical edition.

Don’t tell anyone, but I have a lofty goal to make a tile version of the game that includes rigorous player-on-player debating action. That’s right, chumps, I’m going to design such an experience that you are required to debate. To speak over one another in the pursuit of knowledge. To override your code of etiquette with a code of ethics. To dispose of all sense of decency and empathy you have for your fellow players in the cold, calculating pursuit of truth. Did I mention there would be tiles? It’ll be fun!

Wait, things look different here

Yes, the Pizza has gotten a shiny new aesthetic transformation. In other words…I clicked on a new WordPress theme before moving on with my day. I like this theme, it feels more Pizza, you know? You know.

I’ve tweaked the nav, fighting with the email Subscribe button. Streamlined it, simplified it, made it more clickable. Don’t you want to click a menu item? Explore my catalog? Digitally thumb through my creative knick-knacks? Yeah, I thought you might.

My level of ‘hi there what’s up here’s an email about my latest thing-a-mo-bob’ has increased exponentially, your Junk Folder has likely noticed. Look, I’ll be frank: If this level of electronic mail frustrates you, I believe there’s a way to narrow the scope of what types of email notifications you receive but I have no idea how to modify that for you. If you find out, congrats! Otherwise, feed your indulgent Junk Folder — I’ll never know.

That’s all I have for now, until next time…