Month: June 2022

Summer Reading List

Admittedly I’ve been in a sort of funk with my reading–I made the mistake of stocking up too heavily on non-fiction and I don’t have enough good fiction to break it up in between.

But I’m getting back on the wagon and knocking out some cool books this summer, starting with:

Another in a long list of history books about the westward expansion, specifically tied to Kit Carson and his exploits.

This dude was a one-armed Civil War veteran who explored the Mountain West. And I get to read it in his own words.

Haven’t red Heinlein in years and I need to fix that.

Cole and Anspach have been nuking the indie publishing game for almsot a decade now. This is the start of their “not Star Wars” series. I’m due to retry it.

First book in a prequel series that covers the origins of the Dune saga.

Gonna be a great summer, cats.

THE HERO NEXT DOOR Update

Some of you bought print copies of HND from me recently, and I’m just getting them out in the mail this week. Thanks for your patience.

If you still want one, I have three copies left at $10. That’s cheaper than Amazon, and I’ll draw something in the front for you. Send me a message at dreadpennies [at] g mail dot com.

Man…I really wish I was a full-time writer. So many books I want to get to, including the eventual THE HERO UPSTAIRS.

Nick’s gonna have a pretty wild ride in college.

Been a While, Back in Style

Last week got away from me pretty hard. I went out of town and didn’t get to do any post prep on Sunday, then worked a nearly 70-hour week, so that sucked up all of my evening time. I’m amazed I even got a video out.

I’m starting a new series on the channel, covering chapters from a book called “What So Proudly We Hail.” It’s about American civics and culture.

Here’s the first one. I’m back on deck for this week, should be daily posts again.

Buy physical media: ‘Merican DVD edition

It’s only natural that we watch one of the most important American documentaries ever on an annual basis. But there are others, too.

I’m always partial to these classic Schulz cartoons as long as Frank Welker is in there somewhere doing a voice.

Haven’t seen either of these. I’m curious about Saints and Strangers, and I’ve heard good things about Sons of Liberty.

And hey, speaking of the Sons, check out this Disney classic. It’s pro-America so they won’t put it on their streaming service, because NO BALLS.

Check out this song from the movie. It SLAAAAAAAAAPS.

What else do you watch leading up to ID4?

Production Schedule Update

The more books that I cover for www.UpstreamReviews.com, the more I realize I still need to have some skin in the eBook game. Despite that fact that I neither read nor enjoy eBooks.

Plenty of other people do, and I need to cater to them. I need their money. I need to make it my money, so that I don’t have to keep taking truck money.

So I’ve got to make some eBooks of the DreadPennies Adventure Hour titles.

In order to keep my sanity, I’ve got to track which projects I’m working on, and more importantly, which projects I’m delaying until the former category is done.

While I format some of the Adventure Hour stories for eBooks, I’ll draw things for each story and share them on Insta, just to boost the signal for them. But the books themselves won’t be illustrated, not at first.

CURRENT PROJECT: Howling Wilderness, a new tale in the Engines of Liberty universe.

PENDING PROJECTS: Once HW is finished, I will get eBook versions going on the following titles:

—The Guild of Eldritch Adventurers. I’ll add some extra chapters to this one, mainly by breaking up the existing ones, since it’s 40k words but only six chapters. The flow is important. It will get a newer, better cover.

—Fool’s Silver. The chapter flow on this one is fine, the cover art will get better too.

—Sheriff Porter. Better cover art. I really want to illustrate this one, but I’ll save that for a crowdfunded limited edition or something.

—Homeworld. Improved cover art here, but this one also kind of requires illustrations because it’s a “dossier” kind of story. There are visual aids that go with a lot of the stuff inside it. So it’ll be farther down the line.

—Answerable Courage. (Currently unpublished from Adventure Hour.) I’ve really struggled with this story ever since I got deeper into the actual history of the Pilgrims. The truth is better than anything I could make up. That being the case, I’m going to lean hard into the changes I’ve made to the history, and just put in an afterword telling people to read that stuff.

Ridley Scott did it with Gladiator, Scott Westerfeld did it with his Leviathan trilogy, and they both made great stuff. I think the revamped version of this story will probably tie into the Engines universe somehow, because that’s how I roll.

Nine Four Two gets a big Thank You

http://www.youtube.com/c/GrahamBradley

I’m very pleased and grateful that the YT channel keeps inching closer to a thousand subs. This process always seems like a crapshoot (one video will get 50 views, one will get 5, I never know what will hit right) but I’m going to keep at it.

942 subs. Thank you for boosting the signal, subbing, and sharing the channel. This is one arrow in my quiver of getting to become an independent creator.

Until then, I shall continue to truck.

I got my Battle Brick Road package

Dropped a new video last week about this comic that I backed on IndieGogo. It launched in 2020 and the campaign just cleared $100,000 gross.

Cool concept, very cool artwork, all around great effort by the creators. What have I been saying? You’ve got to love your work if you want others to love it too, and these guys clearly loved this project.

Because of how IndieGogo works compared to Kickstarter, you can still buy a copy of this even though the campaign is multiple years old.

Not sponsored or anything, I just want teams like this to keep winning.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/battle-brick-road#/