If you are reading this close to the original date of posting, you may well have noticed the jaunty little fellow perched on the logo on the top of the site (who is probably roosting there for just a short time). And, if you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen my tweet about the Teabox Bestiary.
Since I have been experiencing quite a lot of writer’s block at the moment, I have decided to broaden my horizons just a little and add a few art-related things to the website. I may not be a good artist by any stretch of the imagination, but my artwork is something I find myself being a lot looser and freer with, so more of it makes it out into the world instead of languishing on my hard drive.
As hard as I try to preach earnestness and openness and willingness to learn from mistakes, I’m in a very overly negative place with my writing right now, and a lot of recent Teabox Tales have simply died on the vine before ever being finished and released. And as for my attempt at writing a novel… Well, it’s safe to say I now know I’m in thoroughly over my head. While it is probably for the best that I have a good internal sense of quality control, it’s not good if I’m not posting regularly.
Since my art gives me a space to be goofy and open (and goofy and open is about all I can manage with the rut I’m stuck in right now), it will be a pretty good outlet for me for the time being. And I guess all of you are along for the ride. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to what I’ve been working on.
The Teabox Bestiary is where I am posting simple drawings of the various creatures that I have written about in my Teabox Tales, along with links to their original stories, and a couple of fun facts. It is hosted on the website itself and can be found on the comics page. I spelled the word bestiary wrong for a while (seriously, why isn’t it spelled “beastiary?”), but that is now fixed in everywhere but the page URLs (whoops, it looks like I can’t change them).
Quoth The Raven is my very first attempt at a webcomic, and it is posted off-site on Tapas, with a link to it on the comics page. My brother is an aspiring comic book artist who has been gradually opening my eyes to comics as a medium, but my lack of artistic skill is a bit of a limiting factor here, so I have created a vaguely newspaper style three-panel funny about a poorly drawn raven who gets into various scrapes. Since Tapas allows for staggered uploads, expect a strip about every week or so, but also expect uploads to get a bit inconsistent when my third year of uni really kicks into gear. If this is content you care about (which I highly doubt), I would recommend subscribing to the comic on Tapas so you can receive updates as they occur.
Normal content will resume soon, and I do have a few little Teabox Tales seeds that I’m slowly germinating. I’ve been on break from uni for quite a few months now, and the writing process gets a bit slow and muddy if I’ve fallen out of everyday practice for a while. Hopefully the upcoming term will be just the kick up the rear I need to get the words flowing again.