Check out that creepy digital font! Yeah!
Happy Book Birthday to my short horror story Chrystine’s Sleep Solution. It’s still one of my favorites, inspired by insomnia, ASMR, and sleep apps.
Need a creepy read for spooky season? You should take a look at Chrystine! It’s short, surreal, dreadful…in other words, it’s a perfect warmup for the fall horror season!
Read CHRYSTINE’S SLEEP SOLUTION today!
Illustration by Danielle Williams.
Today marks the 6th birthday of my cute Christian Christmas novel A Gingersnap Cat Christmas.
If you love cats (or have a little cat lover in your family), and want to see a positive portrayal of the Christian faith melded with a feel-good Christmas special, this is definitely one you’ll want to check out before the holidays roll in.
This is a landmark book in Pixelvania history: it was the first paperback I ever (by myself) produced, inside and out. I knew little about making book interiors, working with Scribus (my book interior layout program), and sizing for print, but I put in the work and it turned out pretty nice!
Lately I’ve considered updating it, inside and out, but I still really like the cover illustration. I feel like these days the trend is to use photographs, so I might consider that? We’ll see!
Get your copy of A GINGERSNAP CAT CHRISTMAS
“5 Favorites” is a recurring feature here at Pixelvania Publishing. On the last Friday of every month, I’ll be posting 5 FAVORITE THINGS I’ve recently (or not-so-recently) enjoyed, in case you’re looking for something neat to experience.
The other day, my car keys fell between the Abyss between the seat and the console. AND I COULD NOT GET THEM OUT. I have skinny hands and normally can fish them out okay, but not this time! I had to go round to the back seat, contort in non-Euclidean ways, and only then I just barely got them free!
I bought my husband a Drop Stop for Christmas and was impressed with it…but I put off getting my own until now! Don’t be prideful like me, get this and don’t lose stuff in the Abyss ever again!
Longtime readers know my husband turned me from Scooby skeptic to Scooby specialist. So I can tell you they’re having A LOT of fun with this movie (the credits are an animation fan’s dream), playing the characters against type (but for good reason!), using the freakier color palette seen in the Mystery, Inc. series, and using funny speed cuts in the editing. I’m looking forward to the spooky season, so this was a real treat!
Back when I was a new cat employee (under Pixel J., natch) I was looking for ideas to better understand and connect with him. I think Pamela Merrit, of WayofCats.com is the gold standard (yes, even over Jackson Galaxy). Most of her site is membership only, but you might like her free posts. She’s also written an ebook on understanding cats, and has done a number of podcasts on the topic, too. First rate kitty psychology aids.
First: this series is 5 seasons long and COMPLETE.
Third: it has my favorite fantasy witch character, Hexela, who is a modern witch who runs a day spa.
Second: it’s clean, it’s funny, a little cheesy, but great fun. Think Avatar: the Last Airbender with maybe a quarter of the seriousness but full of sincere characters. Watching Baldwic the Magician and warrior Princess Greta be insane around meek Dwight is *chef’s kiss*.
I saw this brand reviewed by chefs. Tried it out–it’s good! As good if not better than Annie’s white shells.
The Pixelvania Publishing Proclamation o’ Progress is a semiannual post detailing what’s going on around here, and what might show up in the future.
Cute kitty photo at the end.
Earlier this year, I ran a successful early-release Kickstarter for The Guests of Crooked Neck, the reasonably-sized sequel to science-fantasy epic Steel City, Veiled Kingdom (SCVK). What was REALLY exciting this go-round is that I was able to offer paperbacks to backers, which seemed pretty popular!
Here’s some quick facts:
If you missed the Kickstarter, good news! The Guests of Crooked Neck will be released to everybody in early November. Jump on my newsletter to get notified!
Earlier this year, I began posting my latest entertainment/household/food/whatever recommendations on the final Friday of each month. They’ve been pretty fun to do, so I think I’ll keep that up! Here’s what I’ve recommended so far.
I finished writing and typing up the manuscript for family-friendly fantasy comedy Fashion Frenchies 2: Salute a Pooch! a few weeks ago. Also, SURPRISE! I renamed it. Now, instead of Salute a Pooch! it’s called The Pooch Salute!, which sounds punchier to my ear.
I’m currently hunting for a dog-loving Friendly Reader to check for typos so it can continue to the next stage of production.
(If you want to know when it’ll be released, sign up for my newsletter.)
In the meantime, I’m also working on revamping the cover for the ENTIRE Fashion Frenchies series. While I’m at it, I’ll also be turning the first book, one of the first I ever published, into a paperback. Anyway, here are some initial drawings:
Vivian Feng
Marty the French Bulldog
I have three books in mind for this series, and I really hope a fourth will present itself because it feels like this series should be a quartet. Possibly a Christmas story?
Speaking of Christmas…how do you feel about some sci-fi Christmas?
I’m in the middle of writing (what I hope will be) a short story set in the Worlds of Everlush universe, taking place soon after The Guests of Crooked Neck. In my head it’s a Christmas story, but, being set on a sci-fi world, it’s obviously NOT Christmas, but it’s a gift-giving holiday so niener. I’ve had the idea in my head for some time, and it’s turning out to be funnier than I expected, which I like!
Once the FASHION FRENCHIES work is off my plate, I think I’ll start another project or two concurrently with GIFTS. Here are the top contenders:
That ends my news, plotting, and scheming!
Here is your reward of a CAT PHOTO
Intern Barnaby Jones lurking above his boss, Pixel J. Cat, lounging in a cardboard bowl-bed-box. They are surrounded by kitty treasures and toys.
Much photo editing went into this cover! One of my earliest cover designs.
Today in 2018, I published my medical horror short story Side Effects May Vary. It’s one I wrote back in college(!), but there’s a lot of striking imagery in it that I still enjoy. You probably will, too–it’s a quick snack of a read.
I’d like to redo the cover sometime.
That is all!
Cover for THE WITCHING LICENSE; vector illustration by Danielle Williams
Today we’re celebrating The Witching License‘s FIFTH book birthday! Wow, that went by fast!
This was my first vector book cover illustration. This was extra difficult for me to make (I was, and still am, still not very adept with vector illustration), but my hard work paid off and it turned out nice. (About a year later, I took the moon, shrunk it, and used it on the back cover of The Capramancer Next Door)
This was also one of the first titles I made available in LARGE PRINT format. I’d like to do more of these in the future, especially now that Atticus would make that process a little easier.
If you’re in the mood for a bittersweet comedy about regrets, you’ll probably like this!
The smoky cover to OUT WHERE THE SUN ALWAYS SHINES. Illustration by Danielle Williams.
First, let me share today’s actual book birthday with you: Out Where the Sun Always Shines.
This noir spy love story was my first-ever published story, put up on Amazon long before Pixelvania Publishing existed! Without any magic spells, horror scenes, or sci-fi scenery, it’s become the odd man out of my body of work. I mean, maybe if you stretch, you could say it’s alternate history. But it’s really in the background.
It’s definitely refreshingly different, especially if you’re looking for something short, hardboiled, and dramatic. And, being set in Europe, reading it is kind of like going on holiday. (I also had a lot of fun illustrating its second cover.)
Get your copy of OUT WHERE THE SUN ALWAYS SHINES
The bat-focused cover to GROWING SHADOWS IN THE DESERT. Photo illustration by Danielle Williams.
Next, we have Growing Shadows in the Desert. Its book birthday was actually last Tuesday, the 6th, but my day was really busy and I didn’t get around to posting about it.
But I wanted to talk about this short story because it’s becoming another oddball in my library, starring a vampire who, in my world, has, like, over 100,000 words of a three-part origin epic completed. And it’s not just words, right? I mean, in those words, I discovered he’s got a dragon mom and sister, a bunch of magical people he must learn to lead, a crush on this pretty doctor faerie, and a really dangerous world to live in.
But to readers, he’s only been seen in a handful of scenes in Steel City, Veiled Kingdom. If you backed SCVK’s sequel The Guests of Crooked Neck, you’ve maybe seen his name once during that adventure (CN will be releasing wide in November). So that’s a big, like, perceptual gap, between what readers know about him and what I know about him. Just one of those things about being an author, I guess.
It probably needs a new cover, but that’s way down on the priority list.
Anyway, if you’re in the mood for a short, weird west one-off with a fashion-forward vampire, you might like this piece!
“5 Favorites” is a recurring feature here at Pixelvania Publishing. On the last Friday of every month, I’ll be posting 5 FAVORITE THINGS I’ve recently (or not-so-recently) enjoyed, in case you’re looking for something neat to experience.
Do you need to disappear to a magical world that sounds like nature still has fairies hiding in the shadows of the green leaves? Then try out this soundtrack to a game I bounced really hard off of 🙃. Very elegant, New Age-y sound. If you like the soundtrack to any of the MYST games or if you enjoy listening to the Mediaeval Baebes, you’re gonna ADORE this.
In preparation for creating new covers for the FASHION FRENCHIES series, I’m studying the artwork of Ed Benedict, who designed the titles to BEWITCHED and like, every classic Hanna-Barbera character outside of SCOOBY DOO!. While researching, I stumbled upon this article by the creator of JOHNNY BRAVO, Van Partible, reflecting on his time with the artist.
If you already own SLAY THE SPIRE (and maybe like me have almost 500 hours logged 🫠), you owe it to yourself to try this expansion. I recently beat the Heart with all the official characters, and have been slowly working my way through Ascensions as the Silent…but this expansion has made me fall in love with this game all over again, with new fresh characters and mechanics.
Bonus link: you might also like the PACKMASTER mod, which integrates nicely with DOWNFALL.
I can’t stop watching this, so now you must know about it.
I giggle every time.
“5 Favorites” is a new feature here at Pixelvania Publishing. On the last Friday of every month, I’ll be posting 5 FAVORITE THINGS I’ve recently (or not-so-recently) enjoyed, in case you’re looking for something neat to experience.
If you want an upgrade to your usual stick pen, consider this smoothie!
A few months back, I tried out a new pen–not for writing novels, but a cheap one for writing my Morning Pages.
I liked this new stick pen: I felt the ink wrote smoother than the Bics I previously used. BUT! the triangular barrel was an uncomfortable match with my hand’s grip–a dealbreaker for me (if a triangular grip won’t bother you, I strongly recommend this pen).
I browsed around and discovered they were using the same ballpoint ink in this multi-colored pen. I loved its chonky round barrel but I drained the black ink in, like, a WEEK. (I’m trying it out now for color coding things in my checkbook.)
Finally, I discovered this pen, the 700RT. Its white barrel is round (though not as chonky as the multi-colored pen, which I would have liked) and the ink is smooth and dark, same as those stick pens, but with a much comfier barrel. Bonus! No lid to lose!
I bought this and the “Pro-Model” Cat Dancer, which comes with a handle.
At 17 years of age (that’s like, 80-something in cat years), I thought Pixel J. Cat was totally OVER all toys…Then I brought the Cat Dancer into our house. He attacks it like he’s a kitten again, not just batting at it for close paw play, but bounding around me to attack! (Of course, I knew our soon-to-be-three-year-old cat Barnaby Jones would love it.)
The extra length on this model keeps the toy within the cats’ reach even when I’m standing upright. Or I can get down on the floor and play with them. Very versatile! It’s an extra-terrific toy for those with joint or mobility issues, because very little movement is needed to generate erratic, mesmerizing motions for the kitties.
My husband had an old screwdriver handle lying around and used epoxy to attach it to one end, which is what I’d recommend, because right now it doesn’t have much of a handle for the human. (I also bought the model with the handle, the “Pro” version, but the shorter length means it’s not half as versatile as the Original.) Highly recommended if you have a kitty!
Somehow I missed that Rusty Lake put out a new game?? I really enjoyed UNDERGROUND BLOSSOM, it’s a gently spooky (and sometimes surreal-bizarro-funny) point-and-click puzzle game, one in a series I’ve enjoyed for years. Do I grok the lore? No. Do I have a great time when I click the right code and a fish drops out the end of a busker’s trumpet? YES.
I imagine it’s probably best played on your tablet but since my app store kept acting up, I got it on Steam and had just as much fun playing it on PC.
Rad music with ’90s-PBS-trippy visuals. Easy for me to picture it playing after WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO?
Can’t bring yourself to get a chore done? Assuming it’s not a cerebral chore (like balancing your bank account or writing thank you notes), throw on this tune and put FOOT. TO. TASK!! (Powered by the game Anger Foot.)
I’ve got two book birthdays for you today!
For the fantasy fan, we have The Capramancer Next Door, which has become a reader favorite. It turns 4 this year! This is one of my favorite books to give to newcomers because it’s got adventure, comedy, and talking goats, and if you’re down with that, you’re probably game for my other work.
Get your copy of THE CAPRAMANCER NEXT DOOR
Not into sweet and furry? Like Kafka more? You should check out my story The Bureaucrat: An Uncanny Satire. Especially if you’ve recently been trapped in a phone tree that made you want to punch a wall. This story can help you feel better (well, maybe not your fist, but your soul, sure).
Learn the fate of THE BUREAUCRAT
