Storycomic Weekly Newsletter: August 22nd
ALWAYS POSTED A WEEK EARLIER ON PATREON
🚨 Storycomic Patreon Update for Creators 🚨
If you're an author, indie comic creator, game designer, or storyteller looking for more visibility, the Storycomic Patreon is one of the easiest ways to get your work in front of a growing audience.
For just $5 a month (about the price of a cup of coffee), you get some real promotional benefits:
🎙 Front-of-the-Line Recording Access
I’m often booking podcast interviews three months in advance, but Patreon members jump to the front of the line. This is especially helpful if you have a time-sensitive launch, Kickstarter, or new release coming up.
🔗 Permanent Show Notes Promotion
Your website or project link will be included in the show notes of all interviews as long as you’re a member.
📣 Social Media Promotion
We’ll regularly help promote your projects across Storycomic’s social media channels.
And remember, the Storycomic podcast has over 30,000 downloads, so it’s a great way to get your work discovered by readers and fellow creators.
For the cost of a coffee each month, you get promotion, visibility, and priority booking.
If you’re a creative looking to grow your audience, it’s a pretty great deal.
👉 Join us on Patreon and let’s share your story with the world.
Founders Club patrons include amazing creators like:
Higgins802, Von Allan, Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos, Marek Bennett, Donna Carr Roberts, Andrew Gronosky, Simki Kuznick, Simki Kuznick, John Holland, Maureen Devline, Benjamin Hunting, Samantha Kolber, Frank Walk, Mark Bell, Alexis E. Fajardo, and Matt & Therese.
Explore their work:
KidLitGN returns with Johnell DeWitt, Michelle Lin, and Patrick Williams
In my newest interview, I’m joined by Johnell DeWitt, Michelle Lin, and Patrick Williams to talk about the next chapter for KidLitGN, a pitch platform created specifically for children’s and YA graphic novel creators.
KidLitGN gives writers, illustrators, and author-illustrators a place to pitch graphic novel projects directly to agents, editors, and publishers. The event includes categories such as comics-style picture books, early/chapter graphic novels, middle grade, and young adult.
Johnell brings the organizer’s view of KidLitGN’s mission and growth. Her background includes public relations, international work, and writing picture books, middle grade, and graphic novels. Michelle brings a wide storytelling background as a bilingual screenwriter and script consultant, and her debut middle-grade graphic novel, The Riceball Fairy, is scheduled for fall 2026. Patrick joins as Director of the Martin & Cynthia Howard Design & Media Conservatory at Orange County School of the Arts, where students are now partnering with KidLitGN to support media, communications, and event operations.
In our conversation, we talk about graphic novel pitching, student perspectives, publishing access, arts education, and why KidLitGN is becoming more than a yearly event.
Jasmine Smith deals the Death Card in her dark YA fantasy debut
In my newest interview, I’m joined by debut YA author Jasmine Smith to talk about Death Card, a dark contemporary fantasy from G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, on sale August 11, 2026.
The novel follows Mikaela Broussard, an eighteen-year-old witch in New Orleans and the next Witch Queen of her coven. While doing a tarot reading at her family’s occult shop, Mikaela pulls the Death card and sees a terrifying vision: a beautiful stranger named Joelle stabbing her in the heart.
Instead of running, Mikaela keeps Joelle close so she can figure out why this girl would want her dead. But the closer Mikaela gets, the more complicated everything becomes — especially when attraction enters the picture.
Meanwhile, witches are having their magic stolen, and Mikaela must uncover who is behind it before her coven and future are destroyed. The book is described as a dark, romantic fantasy about one witch finding the strength to fight for herself, her future, and her community.
In our conversation, Jasmine talks about tarot, fate, New Orleans, witchcraft, sapphic romance, and writing Black girls discovering their place in the world.
Project Update: Getting Back Into the Game
This week, I started getting back into Appliance by relearning the Fate Core system.
To help shake off the rust, I put together a small role-playing game session with the kiddos set in a little fantasy world I created called The Kingdom at the End of the Map. We’re going to keep playing it over the next few weeks, which should give me a good hands-on refresher on the nuts and bolts of the Fate Core system.
Sometimes the best way to remember how a game works is simply to sit down and play it.
I’m hoping that getting comfortable with the system again will help as I return to editing Appliance. After spending so much time focused on the writing itself, it feels good to reconnect with the actual game mechanics and remind myself how everything is supposed to work at the table.
Book Review: Jumping the Shark and Other True Stories (Except One) by Bruce Paul Richards
Some books become more interesting because you know the person behind them. Jumping the Shark and Other True Stories (Except One) certainly falls into that category for me.
Bruce Paul Richards was my high school English teacher, so I originally knew him from the other side of a classroom. Years later, Bruce came on my show to help promote this book. I remember enjoying that conversation and thinking I really needed to get myself a copy.
Well, it took me a few years, but I finally did.
What I found was a wonderfully entertaining collection of memories covering a remarkable range of experiences. Bruce takes the reader from the Jersey shore to Hawaii and eventually to the green hills of Vermont, building a portrait of a life that feels both personal and distinctly tied to different eras and places in America.
And some of these memories are anything but ordinary.
There are stories involving a gunshot wound, marijuana-related misadventures, and even a murder in the barnyard. Those moments naturally stand out, but what makes the book work is that Bruce doesn’t rely on shock value. He is just as comfortable finding humor and meaning in quieter, more reflective moments.
The Hawaii sections are especially engaging, offering a glimpse of a life far removed from the Vermont classroom where I knew him. The Jersey shore stories, meanwhile, carry a strong sense of time and place that grounds the collection. Moving between these settings makes the book feel like sitting with someone as they open an old box of photographs and begin telling the stories behind each one.
The included photos reinforce that feeling. They are not decorative extras—they serve as reminders that, as unusual as some of these stories are, they really happened.
Except, of course, for one.
That is the clever hook of the book: all but one of these stories are true. Naturally, I spent much of the reading trying to figure out which one didn’t belong. And by the end, Bruce does reveal the answer. I won’t spoil it, but it adds a satisfying final twist that makes you reconsider everything you’ve just read.
Bruce’s humor is one of the book’s strongest qualities. It is often self-directed, which gives the stories warmth and keeps them from ever feeling boastful. His voice is conversational, intelligent, and easy to settle into.
There is also something personally meaningful about reading it. Teachers tend to stay fixed in our memories in one role, but this book shows Bruce as something more: a young man living a full, complicated, and interesting life long before I ever sat in his classroom.
Years later, I even had the chance to interview him on my show about this very book.
Life has a way of circling back like that.
I’m glad I finally read Jumping the Shark and Other True Stories (Except One). It’s funny, thoughtful, occasionally unbelievable, and ultimately a reminder that real life—when told well—is often more interesting than fiction.
And yes, I now know which story wasn’t true. But discovering it for yourself is half the fun.
Personal Update: Encouraging Signs and Getting Ready for a Celebration
This week brought a few encouraging developments.
We received some positive feedback about expanding the paper into Danville, which was great to hear. Any time you move into a new area, there is always a little uncertainty about how it will be received, so it is nice to know that people are responding well to the expansion.
I also have some potentially good news involving the radio station building. I do not want to jinx anything just yet, but if things work out, it could make life a little easier and help us be more productive moving forward with the business. For now, I am cautiously optimistic and hoping everything falls into place.
Weather-wise, it was essentially a gorgeous week. It was not too hot, not too cold, and just about perfect for getting things done outside.
I spent a good portion of my spare time getting the property cleaned up and prepared for the kids’ birthday party next weekend. There is always more work involved in getting ready than you think, but it feels good to see everything coming together.
Overall, it was one of those weeks where nothing felt overly dramatic, but there were a lot of positive little signs. Between the paper, the radio station, and getting ready for some family fun next weekend, I am feeling pretty good about the direction things are heading.
fudge dice back on the table!
Trying out the new sound card