Grieving

It's the evening before services for my dad. Tomorrow we have the funeral. I am not feeling sorry for the loss; he lived a good, long life...had six kids, raised seven, always provided for the family, took especially good care of me.

Some game nights he'd bring me books I'd forgotten, never questioned it. Never said no.

I find myself at a loss for words though. And feeling anxiety about...gaming. Like I'm drawn to games as a way of coping maybe, of dealing with the loss perhaps, of escaping briefly.

But listening to gaming podcasts, reading game books, watching actual plays...all of these things are giving me anxiety. Just thinking about games is making me anxious. Like I'm no longer capable of playing, or running a game.

It's a weird feeling, and I can't explain or fathom the correlation to losing my father.

Grief is strange in that way.

Comic Book in Process

So I don't think I've mentioned this before, but +David Lewis Johnson and +Ariana Ramos are working on a comic book for Ari and my new business, In Search of Games.

I've been purposefully pretty hush-hush about the comic for a LOT of reasons, even though it's all (well mostly) paid for and currently in production.

I've been trying to keep myself focsued on the game design aspect of the business.

But the truth is, the comic aspect is more interesting to me, at least for right now. I have several deals in the works for other comics as well, including an awesome "old school dungeon crawl" comic by +Thomas Novosel and a cute "Stan the Aboleth Employee" comic by +Khairul Hisham, all planned to be featured on our business website, insearchofgames.com.

So in that vein, here's a preview of the comic illustrated by D.L. Johnson and written by Ari:

Space Whale burger. Yum.

I'll get back to talking about games soon.

New Projects

I've launched two new projects that might interest you if you read this blog:

1) ideadumpbox.com

This is a hub for all of the ideas for projects I have or have had or will have. Check back frequently as I'm slowly updating each of the concepts.

2) I'm on Patreon!

  

That's right, together with my friend (and future business partner) Ariana Ramos, I'm launching a Patreon, hopefully so we can raise a little bit of a cashflow before we dive head on into releasing our first fully realized project, Across the Stars.

3) We're killing Santa!

Okay, maybe not directly...but there's a whole group of artists and writers working like frantic little elves to whip up a holiday themed adventure and get it out to you by Christmas! The adventure, written by Evey Lockhart with artwork by Claudia Cangini, Juan Ochoa, Eric Quigley, and others, will be available for free (although donations are being accepted for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, my favorite charity).

More news to follow!