rynling | 2024 Writing Log, Part 40

- I edited Chapters 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 of An Unfound Door. I also posted illustrated mini-essays about Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 on my public-facing blog (here) and (here).

- Speaking of illustrations, I commissioned the Elden Ring artist Silverpeel to create an atmospheric illustration of Fhiad from An Unfound Door, and they posted it on Twitter (here). I don’t mean to brag, but this art is gorgeous. This artist does amazing and affordable commission work, by the way, and they’re super friendly and easy to work with. Highly recommended if you're interested.

- I edited the second half of my Tears of the Kingdom future timeline story, Lay the Gods to Rest. I keep trying to tell myself that no one is reading this story at a sentence-by-sentence level, but that’s not entirely true. I’m reading the story at a sentence-by-sentence level, and I’m the target audience.

- I edited and polished my Majora’s Mask story “The Brave Tale of the Heroic Swamp Princess” for the second check-in for The Whispers of Hyrule, a forest-themed Zelda fanzine. This is a sweet story about a slightly spooky adventure in the Southern Swamp, and it pleases me greatly even if no one else will ever read it.

- I edited my Castle in the Sky story “The Record of the Last Heavenly Warrior” for the final check-in for the Studio Ghibli zine. I was worried that this maybe isn’t a good story; but, on reading it again from start to finish, I made myself cry.

- I finished writing and editing an original story called “Chamomile Tea” for Caffeine Rush, a free digital zine that will be coming out at the end of the month. I also drew a cute spot illustration for my story.

- An article I contributed to, “45 Best Horror Comics,” is live on the website How to Love Comics (here). It was a pleasure writing for this site, by the way. I always love when an editor has good sense and good taste.

- I wrote a mini-review of the novel Under the Whispering Door for the cozy autumn reads roundup on Women Write About Comics. I’ll post a link to this when it’s live, but basically, this is a m/m love story about ghosts with a happy ending and a surprising amount of worldbuilding.

- This week’s post on my book review blog (here) is about Natsuko Imamura’s surreal short story collection Asa: The Girl Who Turned into a Pair of Chopsticks. I’m not sure how I feel about this book, as its unblended combination of goofy and gritty isn’t entirely to my taste, but I’m happy it exists.

- I’m working on the ninth panel in my “Trees in Video Games” comic. This one is about Hollow Knight, and I’m having a lot of fun drawing it. I posted the line art on Bluesky (here). I also started playing Hollow Knight again, and it’s been making me very happy.

I was going to apologize for not having a finished, full-color illustration to post this week, with my excuse being that I have trouble completing two illustrations in one week. Then I stopped myself, because that’s nothing to apologize for. It’s not my job to feed content to social media.

Twitter collapsed this week. Again. A lot of people made the jump to Bluesky, and that’s great. It’s a wonderful site filled with good people. Still, it’s difficult to do numbers on Bluesky, so I have a feeling that everyone is going to watch in dismay as their posts get one or two notes and then go back to Twitter. But what can you do. Everyone likes to say “create for yourself,” but artists need positive feedback to thrive.