I can't stand it anymore! ㊙︎ Letting the carrot out of the bag, so to speak. (Patreon)

Okay, I promised myself I wouldn't spill the proverbial beans on this until it was much closer to completion, but since it's you all and you are family and I'm *so* freaking excited about it, I'm going for it! 

(Add that I just saw what Richard is working on as far as the backend *magical* part of putting it all together and making it MOVE and now I have confidence it just might work)

So that Top Secret project Richard and I are working on is a ✨visual novel✨. 🥳

Ironically enough, I didn't know what a visual novel ("novel game", in Japanese) WAS until I was doing research for the book. It was a lovely patron who clued me and explained it to me like I was five and a couple other lovely patrons who directed me to the good ones to study.  ありがとう！

Keep in mind, too, that I've had a decades long dream of wanting to write a graphic novel or manga niggling in the deep creepy recesses of my brain. But the thought of making art or finding someone to create art has always been incredibly daunting. 

Then it all came to a head when I was talking to Julyan and his girlfriend (K-chan) and they announced they were making a game. I said, "You can't make a game. Only companies with thousands of people on staff working years and years with a billion dollar budget can make a game." Cue: Mind blowing realization that, jeez, people DO ACTUALLY MAKE GAMES! I don't play games (unfortunately), but I do write stories and I do LOVE, LOVE, LOVE working on the twists and turns of stories and how different choices might play out and woo boy isn't that just what a visual novel is?! Well, I don't know exactly. But I've been searching around and reading/playing some and the one big takeaway I have is it's an incredibly creative and open field for storytelling. You can do SO MUCH here. 

Another long held dream is to do some project that brings together what I can do and what Richard can do and what Julyan can do (and K-chan, too, she's an incredible artist, but very busy, atm) and collaborate. 

Aright, I saw to myself. Let's try this. To my surprise, Richard was like, Yeah, sure. I'm up for that. First, we need to do something easy just to see if we CAN do it. We can put it out there for free to gauge the reaction and also to see how much fun it is to make, how much trouble, and if it would be worth our time.  

If it works, being able to combine story, art, sound, and music feels like my creative holy grail. Richard's audio and SFX chops along with Julyan's mad music skills and I'm like *chef's kiss*. I just need to work my butt off on the art 💦. But I notice a lot of the VN out there don't really have *that* great of art (sorry). It's just when I think graphic novel/manga artwork, I think of competing with Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman". With visual novels it feels like story, mood, character and emotion really drive them. 

I have a lot of stories that have been sold and published and now have the rights reverted back to me. These can absolutely be rewritten and (I think) would thrive having different directions to take the story in. Not to mention the hundreds of ideas and half finished stories pinned everywhere and jotted in notebooks and in Scrivener/pages/word files. 

What's more (!), I have a ton of ideas of how to make educational VN, horror, surreal/weird, etc. etc. I feel like a kid in a candy store. Like I have a couple horror story ideas that I think would fit perfectly in this format.These days, I find I love to write all day, but my brain just slams to a halt around mid to late afternoon. I recently discovered, though, fiddling around with digital art just wakes the ol' noggin back up again in that later time of day. It also kind of soothes me, too. 

Again. This could flop. But I wanna give it a try💪 That's kind of my prime directive in life. No harm in trying! And if I play my cards right, next year, I could work on these at the same time as writing a novel (and short stories) and delightfully keeping Uncanny Japan and this patreon page going (but with more to give!).  

So that's the Big Shiny I'm infatuated with now.

The proof of concept short visual novel will be "The Hell Carrot" which we worked on together with our lovely writer/director/animator friend John.  I LOVE his animation for it. But mine's a little different. Not sure it will be as good. But I do want to try  😁

Storyboarding!

P.S. The top image isn't finished. Several things need to be fixed and/or changed. The text I just slapped on there. So it, too, is just a placeholder of sorts. Still. It makes me giggle, soo~...