2024 for the Warthog Report

Plus A Marriage of Body and Soul friendart

We’re drawing close to the end of the year, so now is a good time to look back on what was published this year and pick out the highlights.

For fiction this may be recency bias, but I feel A Marriage of Body and Soul was the highlight of the year overall. What I thought was going to be a quick cleaning up of an old shelved story took on a new life. It was also an experiment in building hype for my writing, which turned out successfully since I got to see a lot of other people excited by and for it.

A Marriage of Body and Soul

Also a friend of mine, LostParnassus, made some art after reading the story, which I want to share here. You should check out his mythology art and video games on his tumblr and itch.io.

For non-fiction the standout piece of the year was undeniably My Uncle’s Garden, in part due to how different it is from my other nonfiction. I prefer to keep some amount of distance online, so it’s rare for me to get so personal in a public post. Which is why I’m a little hesitant to bring it up once more. I feel I can’t really call it my own favorite because I enjoyed nothing about its writing or circumstances around it, but it’s certainly my strongest piece of non-fiction.

My Uncle's Garden

Plans for the future.

Non-fiction will likely continue as usual. Though looking back on the archives shows that it’s been a while since I posted about mythology, not counting the one about art for a mythology based game. So I want to write about mythology more consistently next year.

With just five stories left for Battles Beneath the Stars we’re nearing the endgame. So I’ve been thinking about what happens when it finally concludes, which I don’t expect to happen neat year unless I speed up publication, but it’s good to think ahead. I want to do a collected and refined version at some point, clean up the inconsistencies that happened across years of serialization and make each narrative stronger. But I don’t yet know when you can expect it relative to the end of serialization.

After that, I want to continue with serialization by starting a new serial. There are multiple competitors for the role of next serial, but if I can’t squeeze them in between chapters of Battles Beneath the Stars, finally publishing the unpublished short story the Lunans in Battles Beneath the Stars come from will take priority.

Of the competitors for future serials, the dominant one right now is the Saga of Hyperion, which is another unpublished work with characters who appear in Battles Beneath the Stars. It is written in a style that mimics the Nordic Sagas, which I feel is a style that also works well for serials. Between the momentum from Battles Beneath the Stars and the fact that I already have a full draft to build on it feels like a natural next move. But there’s still room for things to shift around.

One idea I already have to play around with for The Saga of Hyperion is a TV like pacing of seasons, since what I have in the draft before I thought of writing serials already lends itself to such a format. I’m seeing that for longer haul projects having built in breaks is good.

Also on the subject of future serials, I’m considering starting separate mailing lists for them when they happen. I feel there’s enough sections in this newsletter as is and that a second long form serial will make things too cluttered, even when its a story in the same world as Battles Beneath the Stars.

Regardless I want to continue writing and have more stories to tell. That’s all for now. Have a lovely Christmas Eve.