March Announcement Newsletter: The Fallen Cycle taking center stage for a while.

Maybe you’ve been having prophetic dreams that won’t stop, or hear the spirits of the trees demanding a blood sacrifice whenever they leave their apartment door. But those are just dreams… right?

Enter the mythpunk world of the Fallen Cycle. You may never leave…

Every artist gotta have their yearly “BIG ANNOUNCEMENT” post, right? Here’s mine…

I’ve decided to commit a lot of energy for at least the next year into getting the Fallen Cycle ready to launch a subsequent Kickstarter for the RPG, and have an ongoing vehicle for releasing adaptations of some stories and characters that originated in the “game.”

It’s been a tough few years for many people. I’m hoping we can find some connection in these stories that, in various ways, are deeply rooted in apocalypse as “revelation,” a world-ending event, though not necessarily in the sense of atom bombs. Though these days… never say never, I guess.

Given all that is happening in the world, it seems like madness to even consider this amount of work to put into a creative project like this one right now. Maybe it is. But when I look at the Venn diagram of what I want to do and what I can do with the tools at my disposal — especially with the options that carefully employed generative methods can afford a shoestring budget indie artist — this is what keeps coming up.

As an artist, at the end of the day all I know how to do is put everything I have into the process, and hope on the other end it can live its own life out there in the world.

Here’s what that plan currently looks like:

The Fallen Cycle Mythos Podcast

After a long hiatus on the Witchdoctor, I’m diving back into fiction podcasting, bringing past experiments mixing audio fiction and soundscapes, to breathe life into these stories. The idea? We’re launching the Fallen Cycle Mythos podcast that’ll serialize the Fallen Cycle novels, and perhaps house subsequent stories. (Maybe even a return to the Witchdoctor? We’ll see…)

These stories might not be for everyone, but if you’re drawn to the whispers of prophetic dreams and the eerie demands of tree spirits, you might just find yourself at home.

Clearly, this implies that we will produce and release these works at no cost, so that all can access the podcast. Should they resonate with you and you find value in them, various options will be available to show your support. These include contributing through the soon-to-be-revamped Patreon, purchasing a book or artwork, or assisting in our broader initiative to create a ‘modern mythology,’ as we attempt to bring the Fallen Cycle RPG to a larger audience one day.

Support through word of mouth is particularly valuable, as it has become increasingly challenging for independent artists to continue what I’ve been doing all these years.

As my available energy is often less than it used to be, it’s a big commitment, but I’m hoping that seeing through decades of world-building will eventually yield some forward momentum. If not, well, fuck it, then I can at least say I had a real go at it.

I haven’t set a date yet for launch because I have so many ducks to get in a row, but I’m hoping to be able to start rolling them out before the summer is concluded.

Tales From When I Had A Face, audio edition speech phase

A modern fairy-tale about death, loss, and finding redemption in the strangest places.

I’m already well into the process of translating the text to speech using Elevenlabs for this stage of the process. At this point, I’m confident enough to say that we can produce this story at a level I’ll be satisfied with. I’ve dedicated most of my creative energy to this over the past 2 weeks, and think the text-to-speech phase will be complete by next month. It’s down to regenerating passages and individually tweaking settings to improve ‘performances.’

I am very much looking forward to sharing it with you, although it might be a little while until I have all the parts assembled to announce a start date to launch the FCM podcast. I will be releasing a chapter a week once it starts.

Tales From When I Had A Face, soundtrack and mixing

I’ve started talking to some fellow musical artists about collaborating or contributing to the soundtrack. The challenge here is to capture some of the moods and textures (we’re not doing audio theater) without getting as involved as one might with a film score. Tales isn’t an especially long novel, but it still has the runtime of the Lord of the Rings director’s cut trilogy beat.

I’d like to do some original work for it as well, but aside from a few stems I’ve already got in mind, my intention is to stay out of my own archives more on this project than we did on the Witchdoctor podcast. I may do some original soundsmithing as well myself, but I also don’t want to get myself into the sort of cul-de-sac I frequently do, where I wind up spinning off a whole studio side project that winds up sucking a lot of my time and attention, and then the podcast doesn’t get out for another 5 years.

Musicians: Drop me a line if you’d like to be involved.

Obviously, contributors will be credited and linked in relevant episodes, but as I’m organizing all of this to release for free, there isn’t much in way of a production budget. If you still want to collaborate, reach out. There is no requirement for material to be unreleased, only that you have the rights. Often, previously produced work, or stems from them, can work perfectly in just the right spot. (Or remixed with another element).

Party At The World’s End, Translation to Speech

This is the story of those Fallen who walk amongst us in the age of Anonymity and alternate identities, and hints of the dark world that is to come.

After running Tales on the podcast, I intend to turn to Party at the World’s End. Though I may truncate it in places or make other small changes to meet the adaptation halfway, I don’t intend to retool anything structurally.

Chronologically, PATWE follows not long after the finish of Tales, and continues the character voices and tone and style shifts that begin in the Spring Tree (the final section of Tales). It’s technicolor over-the-top and psychedelic comic book in tone, where Tales is surreal, introspective and weird, so I think it’ll be a fun shift when the time comes.

As it is set in an alternate universe 2010–12, the parts of it that feel dated should, by dint of that, actually show their satirical edge a little more clearly now. Or that was my intent in how I wrote it at the time, and in so firmly “dating” it.

It’ll be interesting to return to this… as much as Tales was a product of my 30s and early 40s, PATWE was very much an artifact of my 20s. Honestly, I haven’t looked at it closely since the final release in 2014.

Tales From When I Had A Face Print Edition

I’m still considering options for a POD release of the book that’ll be available to order online. Among those considerations is whether to strip down the extensive hand-drawn art to release it first as a more affordable black and white edition, or whether to consider the more expensive options (even without using the higher quality paper stock option, at 300 pages that could easily be $40+ per book).

Ideally, I should have this done and set up by the time the podcast gets rolling, although that’s no small task in itself. While I’d like to release both versions, in the short run that means two layouts. A black and white edition would only include the art that reproduces well in that format, which would require retooling the comic and quite a lot else. So it’s a difficult call.

PATWE Soundtrack and Mixing

Once we’re done and scheduled with the Tales episodes, it’ll be time to source and build the PATWE soundtrack. For this, I’m likely to dig a bit more into the archives than I intend to with Tales, but I’m also hoping to work with a few other artists on this one as well, as the very subject matter of the book (a band of “demigods” try to turn revolutionary as a PR stunt that goes too well) opens a lot of fun musical possibilities.

The FCM podcast won’t end with PATWE as I see it. From there, we have so many options for the next stories to tell, although I imagine it’ll be around this time that I really start to take stock of whether the effort is working or not. If it’s dead in the water still after 40-some episodes, it may be time to re-evaluate the project as a whole.

“Meet the 12 Fallen” Illustration Cards

Since 2022, I have been working on style and character concepts for the 12 Fallen, employing a hybrid approach that combines hand-drawn and generative methods.

These will replace the early compositions and sketches currently featured on the Fallen Lore page. My plan involves developing these into 12 oversized cards that’ll include more of the attribution information that’s currently on the page in a table, with an eye toward the future RPG.

I aim to produce them at a resolution suitable for a 5”x7” oversized card format or a 10”x14” print. At this stage, I’m still deliberating whether these will be offered as perks for the forthcoming Kickstarter, sold on the website, or perhaps both.

Of course, first I have to complete them to a standard that meets my personal satisfaction for a ‘real’ draft. I intend to limit myself to three days of final stylus work on each. This can be challenging with any form of painting, particularly digital ones. (FinalfinalFINAL_2.jpg the struggle is real).

BLACKOUT Comic

Locked away in the cell of their digital shadow, nameless nomads awaken in the stillborn days following Lilith’s disappearance, following white rabbits that lead nowhere — a past that cannot be revised, a future that never quite arrives.

Once the Tales podcast is all scheduled, I think it’s going to be time to dig into the first “real” BLACKOUT issue… between 24 or 36 pages, produced to be released in print. I’m talking to Chris DiSalvatore about collaborating more closely on this one. I worked closely with him on the Tales illustrations and am excited to see what we come up with for this, with freer license to go off style sheet with it.

This will take some of the format we developed in the experimental episodes, though my intention is to have it lead somewhere more concrete than they did, a short story rather than a vignette, and similarly up the game on the visual processes we were trying out in 2017–18.

It seems fitting, since the quasi-fictional setting for the initial 5 vignettes were all based in 2024, which at that point was still the future…

The Witch-hunters

I am at this moment preparing to start what will be our 4th RPG campaign set in the Fallen Cycle mythos — the Witch-hunters. Our Session 0 is tonight.

This’ll take place near the end of the age of monsters, and during the time of Chernaya’s most infamous king. You can see some of the setting material I sent to players here.

This will be my first return to Alterran in almost 20 years as an overt RPG setting. On a development level, this particular story will be more about lore, but I may test out a system or two.

The Fallen Cycle RPG

At the end of all this — the podcast, and so on — the goal is to launch a Kickstarter for the RPG, or rather to have a listening audience for that kind of campaign to make any kind of sense.

Patreon Relaunch

Which leads to the final piece of this is going to be retooling my Patreon entirely around this project — or cutting it and starting another, depending on what the options are.

I hope you listen along to the Podcast when it launches, and support the Patreon when it’s all set in place. My goal is to put my all into it for a year or so, and read the tea leaves from there. The past few years have made short work of many of my plans though, so we’ll see how things actually play out…

Concerning Cons and Long Covid

Theoretically, these are all steps along the way to returning to large indoor Cons; however, after finding just how hard even a “mild” case of long Covid can be, it’s becoming hard to imagine when I can return to those with any sense of personal safety. Even in the best of times, coming home from a Con sick was an all too frequent occurrence, but at least then it was usually soon over.

Every time I think I’m over the hump with long Covid, it comes back to bite me. So, risking further disablement to be able to vend is a poor choice to have to make in either event, but at least so far, my choice has been relatively clear. But… hopefully, someday?