Cartoon Gravity 44
This is going to be brief, because it would be really nice to salvage something of the holiday weekend.
This week has seen me mostly cosplaying as a Customer Service Assistant. Crowley and Mythos were both released this week, and that necessitates dealing with a lot of people who have issues with streaming links, downloads, orders etc. Aside from the inevitable "No the e-mail definitely isn't in my junk folder... Oh wait, there it is" issues, most of the queries were legitimate and to be expected. I think a lot of people imagine there is somehow a team working on all this stuff and they don't realise it's just me. A team makes the shows, but the crowdfunding, distribution, and inevitable customer service, is just down to me. I opened up a store on Backerkit this weekend, to allow people who missed the Kickstarter campaign to purchase access to the shows and buy T-shirt and CDs etc and it turns out that even that requires me to manually lock each oder as it arrives and then to manually trigger the credit card charge, so that people can get their downloads. At 300+ orders and counting, that has been a lot of time watching a screen.
I'm not complaining, because everyone has been super-nice, and they enable us to make the shows. But it's a lot of admin and I'm quite keen to get back to making-stuff-up soon.
Before that, though, there is the small matter of getting T-shirts, books, CDs, badges, and sundry other bits of merch designed, manufactured and shipped (ask me anything about variable rates of import VAT into different EU countries - I am now, very reluctantly, an expert).
Somehow, amidst all of this, I have managed to deliver a movie re-write, to start a new feature script, and to start planning another crowdfunding campaign for the next proper series of the Lovecraft Investigations. I have also managed to catch up with Paradise on Disney+ (highly recommended - know nothing going in), am re-watching Daredevil: Born Again ready to embark on Season 2, and am making serious headway into Season 1 of The Pitt, which is the best thing I have seen on the small screen in ages.
I have also been gaming a little, because it turns out that some light video-gaming does neurological wonders and may well provide a bulwark against dementia. Who knew?! If you're interested in the science, it's outlined in The Brain at Rest by Dr. Joseph Jebelli. If you're interested in playing GTA Live, hit me up.
If anyone is wondering how it's possible to do all this without going mad, the answer may well be that it isn't. But the interim answer I would give is stringent planning; break everything down into bite-size chunks, schedule as realistically as possible, and build in downtime as ruthlessly as you schedule work. It's surprising how much you can get done that way, without feeling like your life is slipping through your fingers.
Lastly, I want to do a little plug for the Pleasant Green Universe, because the more we can grow our audience, the better we function. I realise that a lot of the people reading this are already fans and/or supporters, but the numbers suggest there are people outside of the Venn diagram overlap.
If you hate audio drama, I am on board with that. In the main, so do I. One of the reasons I created the Lovecraft Investigations was to create a show for people who hate audio drama. The show takes the guise of a true-crime podcast, and the listening experience is, I believe, identical. If you haven't given it a go because you assume you won't like it, then I invite you to dip a toe in the water. You can find the first season at https://feeds.captivate.fm/lovecraft1/. It won't cost you any money.
Another way into the universe exists for people who just like weird/funny things. The Mythos series links into the Lovecraft Investigations in several ways, but it works perfectly as a standalone. These are individual stories that are primarily designed to make you laugh for an hour (and maybe take your mind off the actual horrors of the world). You can find those, again for free, at https://feeds.captivate.fm/mythos/.
Anyway, the sun is shining, the Backerkit orders are up to date, and I should probably go out into the world and look at a tree for a while.
Normal service will resume shortly.
Fuck it. Send.