Day Zero

Imagine you are 10 years old and obsessed with a cartoon.

In what seems like a million years ago I was someone who thought about writing.

I will be in downtown Lawrenceville, Georgia in the Arts Center for Free Comic Book Day from 10 AM to 6 PM on Saturday. I was fortunate enough to have a table there last year and had a great time. And Downtown Lawrenceville really goes all out for this event, even calling it DTL CON-Quest! From their website: "Wear your favorite costume or cosplay and embark on the #DTLcomicquest for FREE comic books scattered throughout The DTL.

Last year I was listening to the Reading D&D Aloud podcast with Rob Heinsoo, co-designer on the 13th Age RPG, as that week’s guest. They’d just finished up a Kickstarter for the 2nd edition of the game, and he was discussing some of the mechanics they used. This one was about something called an Escalation Die. One of the big complaints in almost any roleplaying system is combat and how long it normally lasts.

Last weekend I journeyed to Athens, Georgia for a return to FLUKE. It is a smaller convention focused more on "Zines, Small Press, Comix", and you have to enter a lottery to actually get a table since space is so limited. It had been a couple of years since I'd managed to get one of those precious tables (in fact, the only reason I attended the first year is my friend couldn't make it and offered it up to me).

As the title says, I will be in Athens this weekend behind a table at FLUKE from 10am to 5pm (so basically all day). For those of you unfamilar with FLUKE (from wikipedia): "FLUKE Mini-Comics & Zine Festival is an annual comic festival in Athens, Georgia, United States, focusing on alternative comics, minicomics, zines, underground comics, and graphic arts."

This past weekend I had the pleasure of tabling at the Atlanta Science Fiction and Fantasy Expo. This convention is something very special within the Atlanta comic/gaming/nerd stuff scene. For me it has really signifiied the beginning of the convention season allowing me to shake off the cobwebs, show off the new comics I've been working on, and actually interact with real-life human beings!

* Writer of The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, The Echo Effect, and more * Comic credits with The Gilded Age, Tiger Style, The Crossing, and more Keeping it Geekly - Hello John, welcome to Keepin...

Eagles Falls Amusement Park promised fun and excitement for the whole family. They didn't say anything about portals to other worlds.

This week’s crowdfunding sampler looks at campaigns that close between March 26 to April 8. I’ve included options that involve kaiju, action figures, alternate history, physical art experiences, great...

Eagles Falls Amusement Park promised fun and excitement for the whole family. They didn't say anything about portals to other worlds.

*** Last weekend was the Dice + Diversions Convention held in northwest Atlanta. Last year we gave it a shot and had a great time. Considering all the conventions I end up going to for Roleplaying purposes are these huge places with crazy attendance numbers, having a smaller 3-day con in your backyard is a great change of pace. In addition, this year the group won't be attending Gen Con do to a bigger trip for my wife and I at the end of the year (gotta conserve those PTO days), this was a perfect opportunity to go play some games in a more intimate setting.

Eagles Falls Amusement Park promised fun and excitement for the whole family. They didn't say anything about portals to other worlds.

The Kickstarter Prelaunch Page can be found here! When your family inherits an amusement park from a long-missing Uncle, it turns a potentially boring summer vacation into what could be the greatest summer of all time! However, when a game of Hide and Seek finds their youngest cousin lost in a huge run down estate, it is suddenly up to the rest of the kids to find him before their parents get home.

Image by Anemone123 from Pixabay This week I approach another one of those birthday milestones: 50 Years Old. It's not middle age... no, I'm now considered a Senior in some camps. I'm not sure how I feel about that. However... Ten years ago, I wrote a blog post entitled 40 Things You Might Not Know About Me on the Tessera website.

Image by AcatXIo from Pixabay Looking Back at 2025 With the beginning of a new year, I like to not only take a look back at the previous year from a writing POV, but I also like to try and lay out what my upcoming year might look like. I set goals, hit some of them, miss others, and maybe get an incomplete on a few more.

After a long month of endless promoting and shouting out into what felt like the void during most of that time, In Our Dreams Awake #3's Kickstarter finally came to a close. While we funded (yea!), and I definitely wanted to take a moment to soak all of that in (only 1 issue left to go!). However, in light of that, I wanted to do a post that was a Lessons Learned.

Jason Byron lives in a world of magic and a cyberpunk world. Which one is a dream? Which one is a nightmare? Issues 1 to 3 available.

This is the dream.This is a nightmare.This is reality. Every indy comic book project inhabits the intersection where all three of those states meet and shake hands. Telling the story is the dream. Fin...

This is a reminder that we are in the last week of the Kickstarter Campaign for Issue #3 of In Our Dreams Awake. At 11:59 PM on Friday night, we'll reach the end of the road for this one. We've hit our initial goal of $500 and are moving toward $1000! If you haven't done so already, go to the Kickstarter Page and check out the project:

I'm currently in the mode of the same sentence running through my brain in two very different ways:

YouTube video by Finish Line Comics

In Our Dreams Awake #3 is currently Live on Kickstarter! *** As a comic book writer, we are doing the best we can to take the thoughts and images in our head and describe it in a way where the artist can have some idea of what we originally meant to show up on the page. The amazing thing about artists, though, is they take that mess of words and somehow (through magic is the only way I can figure) create an image (or series of images) which end up being a way better version of whatever I had in my head to start.

We're still in the midst of the Kickstarter for Issue #3 of In Our Dreams Awake. If you haven't had the chance to venture over to the page, be sure to do so. With this being the penultimate issue, thi...

We're still in the midst of the Kickstarter for Issue #3 of In Our Dreams Awake. If you haven't had the chance to venture over to the page, be sure to do so. With this being the penultimate issue, things are beginning to spiral out of control for our Jason Byron. In the process of trying to promote the Kickstarter, I've been talking to people about the book, telling tales about how we came up with the story, and it occurred to me that I had a very interesting story where one of our Backers directly influenced our comic.

First Comics News: How did you and Egg Embry get together to create “In Our Dreams Awake?” John McGuire: Egg and I normally email each other about ideas we have. Whether it is for novels…

Be sure to check out the current Kickstarter for In Our Dreams Awake #3, LIVE on Kickstarter! Taken as a whole, a comic book represents the input of multiple people, multiple perspectives, and multiple skill sets before the final product is created. I’ve said many times in the past that one of the reasons I love the format is exactly for that reason.