In the distant future, Earth is trapped in ruin from excessive decadence. The only thing that can break it out is discovering a truth long buried and forgotten. What are the Phantoms, and what do they really want? What is the secret to this state of decay?
What you are looking at is the trailer for my current serialized story, Phantom Mission. The music was composed by one Jacob Calta of 365 Infantry fame, who did a killer job. I wanted to get the vibe of the story off in a small minute and a half preview, and this is what came out. The full version of the track is available to backers on the Patreon, so if you want more you get it here. Trust me, the whole thing is a banger.
We are rounding the bend on the conclusion of the first part of what is looking to be three in the overall serialized Phantom War story. If you want to back to read Phantom Mission, which is the opening act, you can join the Patreon right now and have access not only to that, but also exclusive updates and podcast episodes you can't get anywhere else. While I'll still be posting here, backers will get more on top of what is usually released to the public.
If you want to read this ongoing epic before anyone else (because it will be a long time before I can get it out to the public), then be sure to back the Patreon today! It'll really help me in getting more material out faster for everyone involved.
In other news, as recently revealed to backers, I just passed 30 written short stories. That's a crazy number to reach, and I've still got more on the way.
As for any new news on that front, my story "Mirage Carousal" will be in the next issue of Cirsova coming out in September!
Mirage Carousal By JD COWAN When a coven of witches all but ushers in the end of the world, Nick seeks the one dissenter in an illusory wasteland of violence and degeneracy, offering redemption!
If you read my piece in Sidearm & Sorcery Volume 3 then you might recognize the name of the main character here! There is a good reason for that. If you have not read either I would recommend starting with Mirage Carousal first then moving onto What's it Like in There? in S&S3. The reason for that will become clearer once you read them both.
Related to new stories, I've also got a few more completed and submitted to different markets, but have no idea of their current status, so I will keep you posted when I am able to. At the same time, I'm also working my way through other pieces, as well as the sequel to Phantom Mission. There's quite a bit on the way.
And I've got even more on the way.
I guess it was little more than a small update today, but I think it's a solid one worth sharing. The year's not done yet, so keep an eye out! You're bound to see a few more surprises before it's up.
Welcome to the weekend! Hope it's been a good week for you. I've been tinkering with a lot of stuff behind the scenes for various projects, so there isn't much to report on this week.
In case you missed it, Star Wanderers is out for everyone post-campaign! It's 8 stories of adventures between a galactic cop and a mysterious space knight. For those who read it, yes there will be more. In fact, I have some more in the can (one of which was released in Anvil #2, if you missed it!) and some yet to be announced. Aside from that, I do have other stories I'm working on, including a set I'm trying to get done ASAP for later submission periods. In fact, after this post is done I will most likely get back to them (unless something goes sideways, anyway).
On top of all that, Phantom Mission is still ongoing! We just passed an important reveal regarding the underground city and what the not-do-good doctor's plans might be for the future of this fallen place. Is the world really ending, or is there more to it all than we think? Catch up on this serialization by checking out the Patreon today! For those curious, I've also already finished up the first draft of the follow-up to this story (it's looking like it will all come out to be a total of 3 parts), so if you want to be the first to read it, sign up today!
That aside, for this weekend I wanted to cover a nearly forgotten time in internet history--early YouTube. It might be hard to imagine it now, but the first days of the site contained a very different world than the one we live in now. Said site was also tremendously more functional and less prone to backbiting and sabotage.
But I digress.
Before the western world became a series of shanty towns for subcultures spun out of control into cults and separated from the greater whole, the online world was once a window into what late 20th century life was rapidly turning into. Back then we were still mostly united and had very similar every day to day lives and experiences, and it shows when you watch early YouTube today. It might feel foreign to a kid today, but that's part of the point. That stuff succeeded back then because everyone could relate--not a hyper-specific minority of loud people.
It's hard to imagine now, but one of the earliest successes on the platform back then was the Angry Video Game Nerd (Originally "the Angry Nintendo Nerd") who mastered the early format of YouTube by keeping his videos short, concise, and relatable to the Gen Y teenagers and young adults hooking themselves up to the platform for the first time. He was THE star of early YouTube. His comedy videos focused on what it was like to grow up in the late 80s and early 90s, a world that was very rapidly disappearing, and filtered it through shared experiences in his work. His videos were very popular and more or less defined the early history of the site, even when doing battle with the diabolical copyright strike system of early YouTube who clearly had no idea what they were doing. When people say the early internet was the Wild West, this is the sort of thing they mean. It wasn't always as tightly controlled (though that is rapidly falling away) and formulaic as it is today.
This creator of the AVGN , James Rolfe, would eventually come to define what YouTube would eventually be used for, both good and bad, in the decade that followed. In essence, he was a pioneer of this new landscape and was the first to show others how it could be done.
Naturally, of course, this meant he would have many imitators and followers that would both ape what he did or go in their own direction using his example as a base. The most obvious example is Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic, who would instead focus on movies and TV shows from the past and rib them in a way similar to James.
However, there is a bit of difference to how it began Vs what it turned into. If you paid attention to a lot of early videos back them from either James or Doug, or their imitators, they would frequently discuss what it was like for "us" growing up and how "we" felt at the time these things were made. In a sense, they were speaking to their generation and communicating both tongue in cheek observations and stray thoughts their cohort had growing up at the time. It was never meant to be taken seriously, but to the generation who were ironically raised on their videos, it was deadly serious. They just didn't understand at the time how it would come to define them.
Before nostalgia became a weapon to either fire up subversives or traditionalists, it was entertainment itself. The above video focuses on just how many people at the time there were on the early days of YouTube trying to connect and express this discovery. At the same time, others were simply trying to get a piece of the pie for themselves. What "pie" that is, however, is not clear, since there was no monetization on early YouTube. There wasn't anything to gain except video views and attention. I personally believe a lot of this early fanfare was just an excitement that you could actually connect with others across the world on your shared interests--something you could not do before YouTube came into existence or the internet became more ubiquitous in everyday life. YouTube, much like the then-burgeoning social media, would change how the internet worked in the years to come. It would do this to the point that the world before it has almost entirely been erased.
I can't say whether that part of it was intentional, but there is a bit of bitterness in these spaces today that wasn't really there at the time. Getting drunk video responses arguing about how the original NES TMNT game was actually flawless from college kids showed just what sort of environment was. When that disappeared, much of the intent was lost. Instead of communication device, it became its own ecosystem.
It's a big goof now for the Millennials raised on the internet to lampoon or goof on the early days of what we have now, but it was taken surprisingly seriously at the time by the Gen Y teens and young adults who were trying to take advantage of this early landscape to communicate with their cohort. And despite how it would later turn out, it wasn't to share their love of the pop cult or let everyone know who world changing or terrible entertainment was--it was a desire to find your fellow wanderers through life and connect with them as the world was so rapidly changing post-9/11. It's hard to describe, or really get across today, but the site was very different before money and worldwide fame became a real factor.
That doesn't mean there weren't still coattail riders, though! Check out the above video and you'll see what I mean. Amidst the genuine angry reviewer wave of people like Armake21 (RIP) there were just as many who simply wanted to be James Rolfe with no idea of what made his material work. There is a reason few of them lasted beyond the early days of YouTube, though the fate of some is surely an interesting story in itself.
What is funny is that you can track the change and how fast it morphed by the time of the Blip.TV days with sites like That Guy With The Glasses to being an attempt at an industry that thrives off not only milking nostalgia, but tearing down the past. By the time the 2010s hit, that early vibe and optimism was lost to the growing cynicism and greed that would come to define many of the "Content Creators" to come. Different world, different priorities.
Related to that, the same user as the above video also made one that features an in depth look at how the Nostalgia Critic came to be, showing the change from the mood of early YouTube into what it would become in the process. He also gives some perspective as a younger viewer at the time and how he processed a lot of this Gen Y attitude that comes across as strange to many young people today who take it for granted.
I recommend this one as well, though it is much longer:
You can see a lot of DNA here in what would soon become the madness of 2010s YouTube from political wankery to the ever-prevalent "Us Vs Them" narratives that more or less run the site now. Do whatever you can for those extra dollars, just like what wiped out journalists in the mainstream media. Eventually even the "Content Creators" will suffer the same fate. It didn't start that way, though, and it's fairly obvious when watching early footage from when it began that it was never meant to be anything other than a lark.
And yet, here we are today.
Regardless, that old world is gone now. Though James and Doug still exist and are still successful on the platform, as we barrel towards their 20th anniversary as video creators (yes, we're that close), it seems clear that where we are now is not where we imagined we'd be back then. What exactly we imagined is still anyone's guess, but with how unstable formerly stable things have gotten, how the internet went from being a sure thing to being ready to fall apart at a moment's notice practically over night, it's strange watching a lot of this early material and remembering just how different it was back then--especially when you consider what happened to a lot of these people over the years and where we ourselves have gone.
When was the last time we could use the term "we" and feel like it could actually apply to a cohort? It feels like it's been ages.
Of course, none of that is ever coming back, but this current present also isn't forever either. No one really knows what's coming next, though I don't think we've ever been quite so uncertain about it before. This makes looking at a lot of this past work so fascinating from the perspective of the unstable '20s. We never saw any of this coming. Would things have changed if we had? Maybe. There is no way to ever know.
We were born before the internet was even a factor in anything. What will it be like when we return to that state? What will we have have learned and applied from this experiment that just didn't work out? I don't rightly know, but it is interesting to think about. Today isn't eternity.
That's all for this week. I hope you're keeping cool as we head into the final stretch of August. Summer is almost done, but we're not. There's still plenty to look forward to.
As you might have been able to see by last week's post, Star Wanderers is out mass market and available for all! At the same time as that, if you missed out on the soundtrack by the very talented Jacob Calta (who currently has a crowdfund of his own going on!) then you can find that right here. Personally, I think he did a fantastic job nailing the strange feel of the stories and making tunes that will stick in your head long after they've ended.
One last thing, I put out a new podcast episode, but this one is available for free. The reason for it is that the subject is very general to the point I think it would benefit anyone. The subject is about becoming a writer and just getting started. The idea was to create a free alternative to the plentiful How-to book industry that tends to throw out confusing and contradictory advice which waylays a lot of aspiring and beginning writers from starting proper. Be sure to give that a listen here. Again, this one is free, even though it's on the Patreon.
We also just past Chapter 10 in Phantom Mission and have passed the two third mark. It's just only starting to get wild, though, so be sure to join the Patreon and catch up! This is one the oddest stories I've ever written.
On topic, today's subject is a fun one. This is a video detailing the rise of the ninja archetype in film, starting from its beginnings in early Japanese cinema to its utter explosion and dominance of action films in the 1980s. It's a long video that goes over 150+(!) movies, so get your notepad handy. You're going to want to jot some of this down.
I can't really say what is it specifically about the ninja that attracts so much attention. Is it their mysterious nature? Is it how invincible they seem? Is it how they can be anywhere and seemingly do anything? Who knows. But they did make smorgasbord of movies about them over the decades and it doesn't seem like they're ready to stop anytime soon. Even the fall of action movies hasn't stop ninja flicks from coming out. They are truly immortal.
Anyway, it's a long video, so I recommend grabbing a snack, sitting back and lounging, and putting aside some spare time. You might be blown away by what you see.
August is only halfway over, and there's still a month of summer yet to go, but we've got some fun surprises coming up even still. I know I've got more than a few irons still in the fire (and yet others I need to get to after this post is out) so I will leave you here for today. As always, thanks for coming by! I really do appreciate it.
Have yourself a good week and I will see you next time!
In case you missed the Kickstarter campaign, Star Wanderers is now available wide! You can find it on Amazon right now. You can find it here!
This is a collection of eight stories featuring two protagonists wandering the far future where the cracks in reality are far more pronounced. What actually lies out there in the dark? Find out in Star Wanderers today!
The description:
Detective Ronan Renfield is a Galactic Enforcer sworn to protect the innocent and bring evil-doers to justice to maintain order throughout the stars.
The Agent is a nameless knight errant tasked with hunting the most brazenly wicked and blasphemous who threaten order and nature across the cosmos.
Alone, they face strange and diabolical horrors on backwater worlds and the corrupt and dangerous criminals who threaten civilization.
Together, they are the Star Wanderers!
This collection features eight thrilling tales of raygun adventure, swashbuckling sword fights, and cyberpunk mystery, including four never-before published adventures!
The Star Wanderers soundtrack by Jacob Calta is also available if you missed it! Find that here! Check it out. He did a fantastic job.
In other writing news, I've already writing some new Ronan Renfield stories since Star Wanderers was published, so you can expect a sequel in the future. I've also got a few others in the can which officially means I've passed 30 total short stories completed. I know, I'm a bit stunned myself.
In regards to the next book, Phantom Mission is currently serializing on the Patreon and we're about 2/3 of the way there. Join and get yourself first in line to read new chapters! Chapter 10 released yesterday and the next one will be out next week.
As an aside, I've also recorded a new podcast episode, and this one will also be for free members as well. It's a good chance to see if the podcast is for you, because we talk about subjects like this quite often.
Anyway, that's a short update on what's been going on.
In related news, Cirsova, who helped put out Star Wanderers is in the final stretch of their Wild Stars Kickstarter to both put out the next installment in the series as well as help fund for next year's stories. So jump in on that if you have yet to. There's not really much time left and they're about $300 away from the last stretch goal. You can find that here!
That's all for today! I'll see you this weekend for the usual. Until then, thank you for all your support and have a good rest of your week!
It's been quite a week. Here's hoping the weather stabilizes soon because it's been pretty rough in my neck of the woods. I hope it's been better where you are. If only I could pick one temperature and weather pattern and be able to keep it for a week straight that would be great. It's been a real pain to adjust to.
Before we start, I wanted to remind readers that both the next chapter of Phantom Mission is up for patrons and the next podcast episode is also out. Phantom Mission is on Chapter 9 and we're heading towards the climax at breakneck speed. In the podcast episode I talk about The Pulp Mindset for over an hour. It's close to the fourth anniversary of the book (Wow, it's already been that long) so I wanted to go into it a bit. You can find it all at the Patreon here.
For those who are curious about the podcast specifically, there will be another free episode of it in the near future to give you a better idea of what it's about for those who are still debating on joining. Regardless, if you enjoy talking and hearing about the world of art and entertainment it's a fun project to engage in.
That's all for that. Now, let us get into today's topic!
Part 1
We talk a lot about the art and entertainment of the late 80s and early 90s as sort of a transformative period, an era of uncertainty but hopefulness and experimentation before it melted into generic muck by the time the latter decade ended. For those of us who were born before the end, we experienced firsthand as we were growing this period that was almost instantly erased and paved over once the new millennium hit. However, it only stands to reason that as Gen Y, the last group that connected to that era, got older, we would also begin to forget as we aged ourselves.
And that's why blogs like this exist. We need to keep context, we need to remember what it was like, and we need to not be steamrolled by those who wish to throw out all that came before for the next trend. The only way to make good new art is to build on those who came before, and we can't do that if no one properly remembers what actually did come before.
So let us go all the way back to a period simultaneously the most cherished and most hated, the 1980s, as we begin this story. It's about that maverick generation, the one that faded away from the mainstream without a peep as the 2000s came along. Perhaps you remember them; perhaps you are one of them yourself. Today's subject is the lost Gen X.
You probably generally know who they are, but what you might not know, or remember, is their true legacy as artists. That image has been almost lost to time. Much of that disappearance has been a victim of intentional revisionism and self-mythicization from the cohort, but there is more to it all than you might expect.
The truth is that as Gen X kids were coming of age in the 1980s they were entering the art world and putting their stamp on it. They were going to outdo their Baby Boomer parents and take on the world, leaving their mark on it as they did so. However, that aforementioned stamp is not quite what the mainstream narrative sells it as these days. It wouldn't be as profitable to be honest about what Gen X was or what happened to them.
The video series we are discussing covers today's topic in its own story. The series is called "Gen X Hate Revisited" by a YouTube channel called Cartoon Aesthetics. This series is a three part exploration of that transitional time where Gen X kids, the last fully analog generation, came of age, put their stamp on the world of art, and then slowly faded away into the crowd almost overnight. Specifically, this series covers one artist as he rose to fame with his own creation during this very period and shows just how it all sort of fell away as time passed and the market shifted. In fact, his story contains the perfect encapsulation of that generation's story.
As someone born and labeled as a member of Gen Y (someone who falls in the crack between the fully analog Gen X and the fully digital Millennials), and was the first cohort who grew up on this of sort of material back in the day before witnessing it fading as the 1990s wore on to be replaced by bland corpo slop, I've always been fascinated with what exactly that group of young adults were trying to do. It wasn't as if you could ask them--Gen X were mysterious and cool, and prone to be embellish or talk around their own motives. If anything they truly are the unreliable narrator generation. Though unlike the Boomers, it's definitely a voluntary attitude they grew up with and put out of their own accord. They were the older brother generation.
Gen X weren't their parents, but, despite what the memes might say, they didn't full reject them, either. They weren't staunch traditionalists, but they also did not hate the idea of new approaches to old mediums. What they were doing back in the day had a lot of nuance that has been lost over time. What has been traditionally labeled as "cynical" in regards to this generation of so-called "slackers" might not have been anything like that at all.
At least, it didn't start there.
In the first part of this series linked above you can see the shift in comics, music, and, eventually, animation, as a younger generation filled with vigor and spirit to travel new trails took charge of industries that weren't yet subverted and locked up by washed up cliques. Truly, if you engage in Gen X art up until the early '90s you notice a distinct identity, an originality, that sticks out and puts its own unique stamp on the art world.
Then the growing swamp of pop culture noticed their existence.
The video series does a very good job tracing the changes of that transitional period as well as the attitudes of a lot of the people around at the time before self-awareness and ego took the wheel and sent everything down a path that would culminate in the dead-end known as Cultural Ground Zero. Of course, the series being discussed doesn't go into that mess, it's out of the scope of the subject, but it is fascinating to see some of the mentalities that would eventually lead their industries into the ditch before the 21st century hit.
A comic that perfectly encapsulate the uncertain Gen X era in question is the comic called Hate starring underground favorite character Buddy Bradley. This is a series about the young Gen-Xer in question as he moves away from home to Seattle in the early 1990s in the same period it all exploded to mass appeal. You might imagine how that goes. Though the writer was part of the cohort known as "Gen Jones" (a label rarely used today), it made his observations come from a slightly different perspective than you might think as he wrote his younger character living through the time period they all were living through at the time. It's a time capsule of an era few seem to discuss much anymore. Though perhaps there is a reason for that.
The second part of the series covers Hate itself more in-depth here:
Part 2
I recommend watching the videos for yourself, as it is a great look at a time period long gone and currently being sold as something it's not in order to both sell to Zoomers who have no context for it or for crusty Gen-Xers (and Ys) who have bought into the revisionism so they can consume more product and feel more important doing so.
The truth is actually not in the plentiful "Gen X is tough and younger generations are all weak" memes floating around like old Boomer jokes on Facebook, but in how they dealt with how rapidly the world was both changing through technology and, even though no one really noticed at the time, how it was breaking down socially. Things were "weird" and insane because the old ways were being forgotten and tradition and ambition was starting to fall through the cracks. It turns out it wasn't really a new era being born, but the beginning of the end of the old one. This is partially why it's been a subject of scorn and deliberate burial over the years since the '90s ended.
This is the trickiest part a lot of formerly Authentic (capital "A" like they would have wanted) Gen X era artists have when creating art today. They built themselves back in the day on Authenticity as the highest good and key to being Real, but so many have since bought their own hype and locked themselves into preset personality patterns that they forgot who they once were, where they started from, or why they did any of this in the first place, all to keep up with the Joneses of modern trends and attitudes. Their distinct identity is long gone and lost with the passage of time. I could name countless examples but I'm sure you can think of them yourself. There is no shortage of Gen X artists that have lost their edge for Safetyism and modern mainstream acceptability.
What the "Gen X Hate Revisited" video series does is present a good case with Peter Bagge's Hate just what that Authenticity would grow to be without the influence by artificial pop culture hype and untethered to nostalgic expectations of those who want this cohort to be a certain way in Current Year. Bagge remained authentic to his original vision and, as a result, managed to create a piece that works both well as both a time capsule and a series removed from it to stand on its own feet. You get to see that generation in a way you never really get to anymore and he does it by never forgetting where he came from in the first place.
This is mostly because, for all intents and purposes, as I hinted at before, that Gen X cohort doesn't actually exist anymore. Those people are all gone, the party's over, everyone got in line and marched in file out of town, into corpo world as the 1990s drew to a close. They deliberately made themselves irrelevant the very moment they could, almost like a final jest on their old image. Where they went, nobody knows, but the people left who still use that label are hardly who they used to be, and what they tend to be is unrecognizable to what the cohort once was.
So much Gen X art as a whole has simply vanished over the years and has since been absorbed into the safe muck of the ever-creaking corporate mainstream (See: Tim Burton. There, I gave an example) that it's hard to wonder if that Authenticity ever really existed in the first place or maybe it just needed a few bucks to be guided in the Right Direction. The question still remains: where did everyone go since the millennium pulled them all into a vortex of bland? Whatever happened to that distinctive identity? What did it become? Where are they now, and where are they going?
You might get some examples in the third part meant to wrap the Gen X Hate Revisited series up. You can watch it below:
Part 3
I'm not going to comment on the third part and will instead recommend watching it for yourself and coming to your own conclusions. There is little point making judgement on a generation that is still around and still young enough to really do anything or go anywhere. The point is more to see where they are now and where they might go while they still have the chance to do it. Baby Boomers might be locked in to their current path due to their age and inability to change. For Gen X, however, the road is still very much open.
I will say one thing before we wrap it up here, and that it is strange that the Authenticity displayed here, one that was so common with Gen X back at their peak, today feels even more like a relic of a generation that once refused to stay dead. They definitely aren't dead, but sometimes it feels like they were always meant to be, and clinging to the mainstream was the one way to avoid that fate. Does that make sense? I'm rambling at this point, just trying to figure it out. Regardless, they aren't dead, and they aren't done yet. No one really is. There's always a chance to change.
I don't want any of this to sound like I'm throwing stones here. Gen Y has done just about everything I talked about. Our "authenticity" was "objectivity" and leading the charge for materialism acceptance through long-dead trash like New Atheism. In pursuit of relevance and acceptable corporate trends to base our identities around we allowed ourselves to turn to bland inoffensive goo--our legacy is melting down in the 2000s to allow the current state of product worship to be the baseline in appreciating art and entertainment. We basically helped create the current monster of corpo slop worship. Anything negative I can say about Gen X can be applied just as harshly to me and mine. We have not been the preservationists we once saw ourselves as.
The generation that were the excited younger brothers of Gen X back in the '90s turned into wannabe Millennials, hipsters, and consoomers, over the last quarter century, clinging to dead childhood brands that are the last thing around to remember our existence from when we mattered. And all we want is to be left alone to die in the corner with as much cheap plastic crap as we can. What a glorious legacy that will be!
If anything, my generation is worse at all this. Gen X might have faded away, but we threw ourselves off the train before we even got to the stop we were being dropped off at. They still have much to offer, even today, that we could have passed on ourselves if we weren't too busy hoarding corporate products and useless baubles instead.
All that aside, it was an interesting look into generational trends of modernity. Nothing has really changed, it's just gone faster and faster beyond the speed of stability since the back half of the 20th century. Sooner or later (certainly sooner) the wheels will come off and the whole thing is going to derail and fly off a cliff. It's not sustainable, and everyone knows it.
Generations of people can't live separated from each other only to be disposed of when the next trend in line comes around to be cashed in on, rinse and repeat. There is more to us than what we can offer for some corporate monolith that doesn't care either way what happens to us. Whatever the future holds, it won't be in that. It can't be--the 20th century is over and that train is long out of steam. It won't always be this way, whether we want it to be or not.
But that doesn't mean there isn't plenty to learn from the past to help us carry forth to tomorrow. Even if the world ends, we can't stop. Art doesn't stop. We don't, either. We have to keep the torch alive and burning and continue passing it on. That is every generation's duty to the next. It will never change, no matter how different we see ourselves as.
Perhaps that's the question to ask in all of this. Can we keep that torch alive and burning, or are we destined to finally be the ones to fumble it into the ground and leave the future generations in the dark? Is there still time to adjust and recalibrate our aim?
Welcome to the weekend, let's get into some new books!
It's been a bit since I did one of these, but since we're neck deep in summer and a wave of crushing heat, now is the time to highlight some upcoming greatness you might not be aware of. We've got a bit of a list going for you all today, so check it out.
I'm just going to jump straight into them to give you a great list of upcoming adventure you might have missed out on!
First up is the campaign ending in less than a week for Silence & Starsong Volume 2! For those unaware, this is a magazine of stories that aims towards the more Christian tradition of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis of adventure tales with a bit of meaning packed in. I have read a bit of their work and it is definitely worth checking out.
They currently have three issues out you can check on Amazon to see if it's your thing, but they are also taking orders for issue four on their campaign page so you could check them out that way. Regardless, there are plenty of options to peruse their output.
Here is the campaign description:
"Remember a time when heroes were good and villains were evil, when characters wrestled with God and found meaning? Remember when a story had a good ending? It’s time to write and read those stories again. Now in the tradition of the great authors comes an anthology honoring the past and seeking the future. Silence and Starsong is proud to announce Volume 2 Issue 1 of our groundbreaking anthology.
"For today’s and future generations of adventurers, explorers, and pioneers, Silence and Starsong promises unique stories that meld the strength of faith with uncompromising imagination, spinning tales of meaning and excitement by the pens of some of the finest in fantasy, horror, action/adventure, science fiction and more."
You can find Silence & Starsong campaign here! Remember, it ends in a few days!
Comic maverick Nick Gibson is the owner of Phoenix Press, but now he is moving into traditional style prose books. With this campaign he is hoping for editing and physical production to get his brand new book up and running. This is Lost Kingdom! But what is said book about?
According to the campaign it is a mashup of space adventure and distant mythic storytelling. The sort of thing that could not be published in OldPub today. But, as always, if you want the full picture you'll have to see the campaign page yourself!
The description:
Imagine a man who has forsaken all he once stood for.
Imagine a boy that is the literal hope for the Sol System.
These are the stakes as the former Captain General of The Kings Guard, Justen Lamont, is forced to come face to face with the thing he dreads most: his past.
But for the young boy, all of these are meaningless. It's only the present that matters, and right now, the present isn't looking too hot.
Set in our solar system far into the future. This is a story of Kings.
Of Honor and Regret
Of Love and Betrayal
And most importantly
Of being the person you wish to be.
Designed to be a mixture of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. You can expect to see medieval villages in a far-flung, drifter colony
A palace atop the lush green of Mars
Battles with giant Kappa atop a hill on Venus. The acid rain bearing down
Journeys through the wasteland that is Old Earth. Its surface long since abandoned.
But like all good tales, this is the story of people and the choices they make.
Cirsova's Wild Stars campaigns continue for Michael Tierney's 40 year old epic space opera series! We pass the halfway point here with Book VII, already funded, but still hoping to grab a little more both for the creators involved as well as for funding next year's Cirsova lineup! If you any of the above, this is the title for you!
I'm not sure how much I can really go into this beyond that this is the sort of thing mainstream publishing fumbled the ball with since it began, and it took until Cirsova coming around to finally give it the focus and attention it needed. This is the sort of thing NewPub exists for!
The description:
Welcome to the 40th Anniversary of the world of Wild Stars!
Thousands of years ago, Mankind was led on an exodus to the stars by an immortal warlord from beyond our galaxy to save them from an alien-caused cataclysm. Those who remained and survived the attack became the ancestors of modern humans; those who went into space became the Wild Stars.
Following their return to our galaxy, Earth's Wild Stars cousins observed and assisted in myriad crises, though largely from the shadows. As humanity took to the stars again on their own, it became time for mankind--the people of Earth, the space trekking terraformers, and the Wild Stars--to reunite as one race.
The peace talks, however, were the target of a terrorist attack that led to the death of Erlik, one of the foremost princes of the Wild Stars!
Author Jon Del Arroz is a controversial figure in the NewPub world, but that does not mean his work should be avoided. This campaign is for his Ayla Rin space opera series, which is simultaneously a comic book and a novel, though they are each original stories.
That's right, his campaign seeks to fund the production of a sequel to both his first Ayla Rin comic and novel, continuing both strands at once. It's an ambitious project and one that has gathered a lot of support for good reason. If you miss excitement of space adventure and traveling the unknown, you should be sure to check this campaign out! You can even catch up with what you missed if you're coming in late.
The description:
The Terran Imperium Chronicles is the universe in which Ayla Rin operates. She has adventures in both comic and prose novel form which makes this a unique multimedia experience in science fiction. The current reading order is:
OVERMIND (comic)
The Immortal Edge (novel)
The Hidden Emperor (comic)
Into The Black (novel)
While each book is completely standalone and has its own full beginning, middle, and end, the series paints a broader picture of what's going on in the galaxy. Read the complete series to get an incredible experience!
I would also be remiss to mention a campaign that has not started yet but is scheduled for next week. This is 365 Infantry: The Ride for 2025 by NewPub journeyman Jacob Calta. It's bound to be a wild ride, indeed.
For those unaware, for a couple of years now, Calta has been putting out constant stories in his 365 Infantry series on Substack and even releasing them in bound paperback editions. It is a tale of anthropomorphic wolves in the distant future where a mad AI has taken over and our heroes and rogues must work together to beat it--though that's only part of the story. There is much more to it, as it's an entire world.
There's no official description yet since the page isn't yet live, but it is meant to describe the more detailed plan in funding this ambitious project for 2025. You can save the project for now and get in on the ground floor when it launches in a mere few days!
And that's all for now. I'm sure there are more campaigns coming up or out that I've missed--there are just so many of them these days, and they're all funding in record time. The NewPub space really is on fire these days.
That said, be sure to check the above projects out when you have the spare moment. Helping creators with their art is the first step to ensure they can make more and help overhaul the current scene that exists in its dilapidated state today.
That's all for this week, have yourself a wonderful start of August, and remember to stay cool! The heat isn't over just yet!
