Waffle

In the comments to last week's Invasion episode on ROCR.net, reader TuuronTour asks:

Is this storyline going to be the final end of ROCR? I get the feeling everything is being wrapped up to get our rogue's a well-earned "and they liveth long and happily".

Tuur is almost right: the ending to Invasion doesn't so much wrap everything up as set things up so that I have the largest number of possibilities open. It'll be a while before the world will see a sequel to Invasion, but when I decide, in a year or so, to pick up where I left, I can treat the next story as essentially a new series, with a new cast of characters: Tamlin, Ragnarok, Atra, Jake, Owen, Hildegard, and... one more, with their offspring. It won't be necesary for new readers to learn the backstory - this new lot will be the gang. Older readers will still enjoy the similarities and differences between, say, original Atra and rejuvenated Atra, or be able to see the Tamlin-Ragnarok dynamic in the light of the dynamic that there used to be.

Or... I might scrap that plan altogether, bring Kel and Jodoque back a few years down the line, fast-forwarding to the year 1010. Either way works for me.

Before then, though, I will work on the three remaining stories set in the "old" ROCR universe: Feral, King Groy and Muscle. I am now writing material for Feral and while the first batch of new writing came out as drivel, there are some salvageable elements in it that should get the story moving again. I expect to be taking a few weeks off before I get around to posting any new comics though, and when I do, they will almost certainly be irregular again.

There's also the possibility of a spin-off comic set in the Wodeskog, based on the faerie village and what else might be living there. That's another thing that may or may not happen though.

Next: one more digital drawing. It's an inked version of the penciled character drawing of Aleas I did some six months ago:

Aleas inked digitally

If you have a Webcomicsnation account, could you do me a favour and review some of the comics on Chronicles of the Witch Queen? Anyone who has an account, even if you only use it for commenting on WCN comics, can post a review which will be posted on the WCN homepage and on the Talk About Comics blog, which has seen a flood of new reviews lately. What with the boost my readership has got from a writeup in a comparatively obscure e-zine, I think getting written up in a few other places that are read at the same level would make a lot of difference for the readership numbers.

Here are the details. Some of the comics on Chronicles of the Witch Queen are also published on Rocr.net, but not all of them are. They are also divided up differently, with each storyline getting its own homepage and URL. Below, you'll find a list of comics available on the site, and where to post reviews:

Reviews don't have to be positive but the intention of the feature is to spread the word about comics you like - so if you like Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan and the related comics, and have a Webcomicsnation account, spread the word! I'll be grateful for any and all reviews, long or short.

Family portrait of Ragnarok, Hildegard, Harold and Jake looking their Sunday best, made a year ago in preparation for the epilogue to Invasion

Episodes for Invasion for the next three weeks have been uploaded. Next week, I may be able to finish the final ones that have been scanned so far - what happens after that depends on whether I've got the scanner working by that time. The episodes will appear on Mondays, December 15, 22 and 29.

The comics will also be placed in the crossover archives for Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan. There's no specific home page for Invasion but last Monday's update was archived on http://www.rocr.net/index.php?p=20081208 - the number for each update represents the date of publication.

Previous family portrait

We'll finally have some new updates again, and they'll be on the Chronicles of the Witch Queen website. Starting Monday, December 8, the Invasion series will update again, once a week on Mondays, hopefully until the storyline is finished, which should take 8 updates in total.

Feral is still in limbo. The day job is still taking up too much of my mental energy to do meaningful work on it. I hope to have some script for it ready after my next vacation, so there won't be any updates until the new year.

There's something else coming up, and it may not be all that significant to long-term Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan readers, but it's still kind of significant to me: Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan Re-runs on Drunk Duck will reach its 500th update on December 12! That's 500 daily installments without missing a day - clearly the secret to reliable updating is to have a 17-year buffer. For what it is, the re-run project is quite succesful too - it gets three-digit pageviews a day, which is good considering I don't actively promote it and the contents have been available on other sites for years. It gets proportionally more response from the readers there than at the main site too, though this is largely because in the culture within the Drunk Duck community, commenting on a comic and awarding it five points out of five is the local way to say hi (it's still appreciated, by the way - thanks all who commented). Perhaps more importantly, the project has kept me involved with the comic through the past 15 months, because even when I wasn't drawing it, I still had to upload "new" installments, check if things updated properly and read the comments. It's been a beacon for me, a daily reminder that I have this comic and it's unfinished. It's a powerful thing.

First off: follow my NaNoWriMo effort on My DeviantArt site. It's a Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan story and actually fills in the big gap in the archives between The Stone of Contention and the stories that feature Jodoque as a character.

Second, here are my latest original scans for Invasion:

It's slow going... it's not so much a question of time as of motivation and priorities. For the weekends, my number one priority now is catching up on sleep. After that follow some time talking to Aggie online, grocery shopping, household and administrative chores, NaNoWrimo (during November only), and then working on ROCR if I still have time and energy. I find writing Feral particularly hard at that point so I work on Invasion first as that's already scripted. The reason Feral is hard to write is because the original outline has been superceded by the shape the story ended up taking in execution. This means that I can't end it on a cheap gag as originally planned and have to rethink in mid-story. This takes effort and concentration which I may not necessarily have in me. I do hope that the discipline of NaNoWriMo will help me improve in this area.

Because I sleep very little during the working week, I give my body as much time as it needs to catch up during the weekends. I turn off all external wake-up cues. So today I slept until half past one, PM! Admittedly, it had been a late night as I'd been up writing until past 2 AM, but that's still a long time to spend in bed.

So for ROCR outside of the NaNoWriMO novel-in-progress, this weekend is once again a bust; I know I've been racking up a lot of busts in the past six months, and I do want readers to know that despite appearances to the contrary, I am still engaged in my work on the series as a whole, just at my own pace and in the media that I can work with the most easily, which right now is the written word.

What does this mean in practice? One way or another, the King Groy story will make it to the ROCR website, resulting in a complete archive by the time I finish off the series. What I think will happen is that the second draft of the novel will go on the blog. The final draft will then be posted to the website proper, with illustrations. Historically, putting prose based stories into a webcomic archive has not been a successful move for those who have tried it, because readers tend to get stuck on their expectations and can't get over the work not being a comic anymore. However, I'm willing to give it another shot, provided I am convinced that the finished product is really, really good. It's going to take a lot of work to get from what is on the DeviantArt site to the quality I'm looking for. So it won't be any time soon.

The two pages from Invasion above (not shown on some feeds) are all I have to show for myself in terms of new comics work over the past few weeks. My motivation to do comics has been down a bit, in favour of individual illustrations and living my life, but at least with these pages that are already scripted all the way to the end, it's easier to snatch some time here and there to execute what's already planned. I don't know if there'll be any more ROCR after Invasion and Feral are both finished.

There were some plans for Aggie and me to work on the next episode of Feral together while I was with her last week, but we didn't get around to working on our art much at all. The week just flew by. It would have been convenient, because the page in question as it floats around in my head involves horses, which I'm kind of wary of drawing. But it'll be a while before we get around to it now. I think I'll just wrap up Invasion first. It'll all be in the right order in the archives anyway.

Invasion has updated again, with Messenger Witch Agni getting back to work immediately, and Elspeth putting her plan into action.

This will be the last Invasion update in a while - I haven't been able to produce any new pages. Heck, I'm struggling just to do one penciled page of Feral each week, and may end up having to skip a few weeks for that too, if I have to draw anything particularly complex.

Invasion has updated again, with a sad end for the bulldog who drew the short straw.

Production of new pages has hit a snag, but there's one more comic in the buffer.

There's a new update for Invasion in which Messenger Witch Agni suddenly finds that today's daily "walkies" are taking her to an unexpected place!

Update: As of today, the comic has a two-week buffer. Hopefully, Calvin, DFG and I will be able to make good use of that.

It's Friday again already, so there's an update for Invasion in which we get the answer to the questions raised last week and see what's become of the messenger witch.