The Cleaner

First of all, let me announce that we will be at tables P-13 & P-14 in Artist’s Alley at the Emerald City Comicon! Come see new art for Wayfarer’s Moon and Capes & Heels!  Thrill to see the cover for Art the Wanderer! And if you ask nicely (or at all), I’ll tell you the latest news about Wayfarer’s coming back!

With that being said, I cleaned a bit today. Well, actually, I cleaned a lot. I have this problem when it comes to cleaning. I hate doing it, so I put it off until the carpet gets crunchy. However, once I start cleaning, I tend to go a little (more) nuts and clean everything. I will even rearrange closets, just because I happened to open a door.

Anyway, it all started because of taxes. I had a whole stack of tax forms on my desk that was starting to overlap with other stacks of important things and I was worried that they would form one huge, massive stack that would gain sentience and make me buy it binders and ice-cream.

Therefore, during lunch I stopped by Staples and bought one of those rack thingies that you put papers in. Actually, after glancing at the receipt, they’re called ‘sorters.’ Anyhow, I bought a sorter, took it home, and put it on my desk. I then spent a few minutes putting my papers into the discrete lanes of the sorter, just in case an IRS commando team infiltrated my department and demanded to see my W-2 ‘or else.’

With that done, I noticed that I had a whole stack of old mail on my desk as well, so of course now I had to go through that and make sure that nothing in there needed sorting. That’s actually a lie. I looked carefully at the first ten-ish envelopes and then decided that if I hadn’t dealt with it yet, it probably wasn’t important. The whole stack then went into the garbage.

And that’s when the cleaning started. There were some pieces of paper that had random notes on them. Into the garbage they went. Old Comic-Con brochures? Garbage. Anything that didn’t have an immediately obvious purpose? Garbage.

And I was off, cleaning everything. I rearranged my bookshelf. I moved stuff out from under my desk and into a new place. New stuff then went under my desk. I then happened to wander into my bedroom and started to rearrange the bookshelf in there. And then I looked in the closet and started putting things on hangers. Then I arranged the stuff on hangers by type. 

I knew I had a problem, but I just couldn’t stop. Boxes were moved. Comics were alphabetized. I found things I didn’t know I owned. Why did I have a 1947 yearbook and a porcelain clown with no head? I have no idea.

NOTE: Headless porcelain clowns make really good pen jars. Plus, you get the enjoyment of metaphorically stabbing a clown every time you put a pen in it.

Three hours later and I was shirtless in the kitchen with a machete in one hand and a jar of Vicks VapoRub in the other, yelling incoherently as I tried to kill the thing in the freezer. It was then that I knew I had to stop, as the thing I was so desperately fighting turned out to be a really old bag of frozen peas. I don’t even think it was animate in the first place.

So, now the apartment is half-clean, which I’m now okay with. The freezer isn’t looking too good, but that’s what renter’s insurance is for.

Cheers,

-Jason

Valentine’s Day

First of all, I’d like to announce that we’ll be at the Emerald City Comicon at the end of March! We’ll have art from our two new projects: Steam & Blood and Capes & Heels. We’ll also have some Wayfarer’s Moon pieces by our new artist. So come by and say ‘hi,’ or just tell us we’re doo-doo heads for not getting Wayfarer’s going soon enough.

‘Doo-Doo Heads’ being a technical term.

With that said, it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow.

As usual, I will be single again, unless I happen to meet a girl and start dating her in the 3 hours until Valentine’s Day actually starts. Seeing that I’m not anticipating leaving my house before then, she will have to physically drive into my apartment or at least make enough noise on my doorstep that I’ll go investigate.

So, in all probability, no.

As dreary as that sounds, I do have a plan. A terribly cunning one, if I do say so myself: I’m going to buy myself a Valentine’s present. It’s not so weird if you think about it. After all, I am my own best friend. I do everything with me, I know exactly what I like, and in all the years I’ve known me, we’ve never broken up or really had harsh words of any sort.

So yes, I am perfect for me.

In fact, I’m planning on surprising myself by buying a replica sword online. See? None of you would have thought ‘Gee, what should I get Jason for Valentine’s Day? Oh, I know! A sword!’ No, you would’ve gotten me some chocolate or a fifty-gallon drum of Nair or possibly a dead ninja. Not that I wouldn’t like those things, it’s just that deep down in the crevice where my heart should be is a little, empty spot that looks just like a Gross Messer.

Yes, I have a thing for large, two-handed hacking instruments. See, you didn’t know that did you?

Anyways, I’ll be so surprised when the sword arrives, I’ll probably take me to dinner. And I won’t order the lobster.

Okay, now I’m kinda depressed.

Cheers,

-Jason

RRRR, PEW, and (sometimes) VORP

Greeting and salutations!

Some of you may have noticed that we have a new main website. It’s not quite all there yet, with just the main page and the Capes & Heels sections up, but as we get more content, more will get added (sooner rather than later, hopefully).

In other news, Wizard World Portland starts tomorrow. If you want a sneak peek at Capes & Heels #1, find Jason Raines in Artist Alley. He’s going to have the book out as well as some related goodies. And, if I do say so myself, it is completely awesome :)

In other, other news, I got bored at work today and decided to make up sound effects for everything I did on the computer. Now, I realized that this might irritate my coworkers, so I did them very quietly, which resulted in several people asking me if I was okay, as I spent most of the day hunched over my desk making barely audible noises.

And yes. I am okay. Relatively speaking.

The hardest noise to come up with was the mouse noises, as you have to make those a lot. The left button was ‘pew’ and the right button was ‘bam.’ The middle button was ‘vorp’ if I was rolling it. I don’t think I ever actually pressed the middle button, but it was ‘zorch’ just in case.

I settled on a simple ‘rrrrrrr’ for moving the mouse, as I found that anything more complicated was difficult to sustain for any length of time. So, yes, I spent a number of hours today going ‘rrrrrrrrr pew pew rrrrr rr r rrrrrrr rr rrrrr pew bam rrrr rrrrrrrrr pew pew pew – wait, no that was a ‘bam’ – rrrrrr’ etc. 

So, in all honesty, it wasn’t much different than my normal behavior.

A helpful coworker did point out that there was probably a way to simply program Windows to make those sounds automatically, but that would be the easy way. If you want to make weird noises all day, then go ahead and do it, don’t rely on some technological crutch.

Plus, I really have no idea how to do that.

So, to sum up: New website up. Sneak peak at Wizard World Portland. Weird noises.

I think that about covers it.

Cheers,

-Jason

Your Patience Will Be Rewarded

Hey everyone!

I realize my blogs of late have been rather anemic, but that's because I'm a lazy bast- been very, very busy. I've hinted at 'projects being in the works' and 'secret plans' and 'building a missile out of Captain Crunch' in the past, but now I've decided to let you, my few loyal readers, be the first to know what those plans actually are.

I'm relaunching Single Edge Studios in 2014 with not one, not two, but four projects.

'Four projects!' I can imagine you saying, your monocle popping out. 'How is that possible?'

Well, I had to find some excellent artists and then figure out which relatives they cared about so I could kidnap them and use them as leverage.

So, without further ado, here's what's coming up in 2014:

Art the Wanderer (no logo yet)

Yes, I'm finally going to publish Art the Wanderer. I rewrote some big chunks at the beginning and end and am simply waiting for the cover art to be finished. With a little luck, it will be out in January. I've begun work on a sequel, so please bug me about that (it keeps me motivated).

In a world of super-powered men and women, where titans collide in earth-shattering conflict, meet Dust Bunny, a heroine with all the powers of dust. Seriously. Can Dust Bunny make it as a hero? Can she survive in a city teeming with mad-scientists, secret societies, apathetic heroes, and villains of every stripe? And most importantly, can she pay her rent? Find out in Capes & Heels!

In a Europe that never was, World War I is being fought with guns, planes, and automatons of brass and steel. Steam & Blood is a Steampunk setting where the battles are not only in the trenches, but under the water and in the cities. Meet characters both new and old and discover the world of Steam & Blood.

And of course:

The adventures of Iri and Lily continue with an all new artist and the same old writer. Our heroines fight against the Baron continues, even as new dangers arise in the south.

In addition, there will be a new website, more blogs, Twitter and Facebook feeds, and more con appearances, starting with the Emerald City ComiCon in March.

Now, you may have noticed that I haven't said anything about actual dates. That's because all my artists have day jobs and we're still nailing down a schedule. But rest assured, as new info comes in, I'll pass it along.

So, have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or the Winter Greeting of your choice, and look forward to action, adventure, and, hopefully, more ninja punching.

Cheers and see you in 2014,

-Jason

If A Tree Falls in the Forest and A Nerd Hears It . . .

The sun was out the other day and seeing as how I hadn’t left the apartment in a couple weeks, I decided to go take a walk in the park. This decision was in no way affected by the case of chili I’d purchased at Costco roughly a couple of weeks before or that I’d been eating it non-stop since then in a closed environment.

At any rate, I was shuffling merrily along when I heard a strangely familiar crack. As I looked around, I noticed one of the trees ahead of me was swaying in an odd fashion and then I heard several more cracks. 

 There was one more really loud CRACK and then the top half of the tree promptly fell off, crashing into the undergrowth with a resounding ‘thud.’

Strangely enough, the sound trees make when falling over is exactly the same sound as you hear on TV and in the movies. I had always kind of assumed that the sound guys had enhanced the noise in some way, but no, it sounds exactly the same.

Not earth shattering I know, but it was kind of weird that I knew exactly what was going on before I even saw it. Television, it seemed, had prepared me well.

I immediately ran over to where the tree fell expecting to find a fairy princess or a pair of ruby slippers or even a sword sticking out of the trunk, but there was nothing. I double, and then triple checked. Still nothing.

NOTE: I was, in all honesty, rather relieved there weren’t a pair of ruby slippers. Because honestly, I don’t have the calves for them.

I did find a worm near the scene, but I’m pretty sure it was just a regular worm-worm, as opposed to a magical, wish-granting fairy-worm. I know this because I interrogated it for about ten minutes and it never said or did anything save wriggle around. Some people walking by did turn around and go the other way, but then again, a large, hairy man was shouting ‘Where are my wishes, dammit!’ at a worm.

The large, hairy man was me, btb.

So, basically, all the literature I’ve ever read lied to me. Was an adventure too much to ask? A quest of some sort? Maybe a quick jaunt to a parallel world populated entirely by hot women who had been waiting for the arrival of a large, hairy man who was prophesied to judge their naked hopscotch competitions?

Seriously. Even an elf who needed a quick ride to the 7-11 would have been something. A dwarf with a fiddle. A talking plant. A mouse in a fedora.  Even a pair of comically oversized glasses.

But no, just a tree trunk and a big piece of fallen tree.

And to top it off, as I was dragging the fallen tree back to my truck (for my ‘pieces of wood I’ve found’ collection), a weird bum in an oddly pointed hat kept following me shouting something about fulfilling my ‘just a tree.’

Or it could have been ‘dust the bee.’ Or ‘desk on knee.’ Or even ‘destiny.’

But I doubt it.

Cheers,

-Jason