I just posted the last page of Masquerade Ch 1 and I’m still having trouble believing that I actually did this. It’s been such a bloody long time since I had this idea and started writing it down, and things have gotten so weird, and half of the text makes my brain want to rip it into little pieces and rearrange them. I’m looking at it as something akin to Death of the Author, which is creepy but also a thing people with real careers have to reckon with. So I’ve been restricting myself to correcting for historical fact-changing, modifying details for better illustration, and clarifying anything that makes ME go “Huh?”

And there is some of that. Not as many as Darica’s-age me managed to shake out of her pencil during free time in Drivers’ Ed, but some. For instance, in the first draft, Darica actually scratched herself on broken glass and cactus spines, and told the group that she’d got the injuries while looting. I didn’t know what season it was in-world, or what the sky looked like when saturated with smoke. I started with five names, like I did with every other supposed-to-be-short story in the sequence, and the next several I made up were wasted on casualties. Of which there were more than advisable (if you want to have plans anyway), because I had the idea that the Riots were indeed riots, instigated by a few and perpetuated by the rage of the masses. Against what, I didn’t know at the time. I sure do now, and I’m not looking forward to some of the illustrations I’m setting myself up for.

Illustration. Not since the age of seven have I undertaken a project of both writing and drawing. I’d like to think I’ve got better at both in the meantime, but as I haven’t looked through Second Grade is Stupid (Not Really) since being overjoyed that it hadn’t been thrown out, I really don’t know. What I do know is that all this work is MINE, not some computer’s fever dream, and that matters to me as much as getting this out into the world in general. So if I stop posting for any length of time without explaining it somewhere, you should assume the world got me. I’ll make it out if I can, and keep up the work.

Chapter listing with links and select trivia, below:

1.1: The numbers on the radio dial are utter bullshit. I did make up a set of standardized symbols afterward, as much to make things easier for later as because I couldn’t live with deliberately being inconsistent.
1.2: The first time I tried to write nonsense on the folded note, it came out as a word but I don’t remember what. The design of the nightstand, lampshade, and plug are intended to be just a little bit off from my corner of the real world. And sometimes I wonder how hard I’d laugh if someone did a Ready Player One on what words and letters I changed the colors of. It’s literally just readability.
1.3: Where I discovered I am not good at drawing trash, so I didn’t put in as much as I said there was. This is the image I am least happy with in this chapter.
1.4: I didn’t start out to colorize my images, but using the Krita airbrush on this was fun enough that I kept doing it for most of the rest. The “numbers” on the lock dial are, again, bullshit, but the spatula is based on one my family actually had.
1.5: This was a filler drawing, which is why there’s some discrepancy between what’s pictured and what’s described. Still better than 3.
1.6: So so so happy with this pic. Even though my model for the flower was a piece of skewer with a styrofoam ball on it, speared by a giant needle. I posted on BlueSky that the coin in this picture is as close as I could both draw and remember to the one I dreamed during the establishment of this world, circa 1993. And the writing (which says “Meya”) is based on an alphabet I came up with in high school, for a different project. The designs on the silver locket, if you can see them, are linked circles, which are the in-world equivalent of hearts with arrows through them. The eight-pointed star design on the gold one is intended as a nod to Vera Nazarian’s Dreams of the Compass Rose, which I have yet to read but whose existence gave me strength to keep writing a series of related stories rather than a standard novel. You may also notice the presence of an unedited, unenhanced book corner at the top left: another artifact of pagination, and of me not paying proper attention to how I myself! described the book Darica finds.
1.7: Another filler image. Which, now that I think about it, dethrones 3 for worst of this lot.
1.8: All these designs are pieces of jewelry I own. They’ve been modified a bit, but for the most part it’s just a straight copy job. Also, the beaded amber one is my own work.
1.9: Before I had to draw this, I was toying with the idea of never drawing a person. Then with the idea of never drawing anyone’s face, and then with the idea of never drawing Darica. That all went out the window right here. Please note that brown is this world’s girly color (its manly counterpart is green), and the pink underlayer she’s got going is, to her, pretty neutral. At some point, I’m going to have to have a guy in pink or purple to prove my concept, because unfortunately it’s too cold for any of them to be wearing skirts.
1.10: And this is where the boatload of potential conceits from above was doused in gasoline and set on fire. I wanted, at first, to put the picture in the safe, but decided it should be in a place I hadn’t drawn yet. My first try at drawing Darica came out looking like my sister, which was NOT my intent. I fixed it, but I didn’t mean for her dad’s mouth to disappear during processing, honest. (Her parents’ names are Laina and Evand.)
1.11: Looks simple. Was not. I knew I was going to use this sort of image about here in the chapter, and I thought I’d be able to use some kind of brush or line technique in Krita. What I ended up doing was lightly sketching three circles of impact from some weapon, and deciding where to shatter the glass around them. And then erasing black haze from all the glass, which I don’t want to do again, thanks.
1.12: In over 20 years, I had never settled on what the “elaborate knot” of Irina’s choker looked like. To figure it out, I tied two real ribbons around a joystick and wove till it held. They’re still tied to the joystick as I write this. I used the stripe gauge of the first black-and-white shirt I bought for myself, giddy with my own self-absorbed daring, back in the early aughts. I didn’t realize until after I’d finalized the page that the collar design of the coat is potentially impossible to button; I may retcon a loose loop in back or something. As for the text, I toyed with whether I wanted to play with paragraph alignment the way I did, or to do something more stupidly grandiose like giving everyone their own font. I don’t think I’ll do it this way every time there’s dialogue, but I’m absolutely certain that I am NOT giving everyone their own font. Because I’m no Robert Jordan, but you are definitely going to see Characters Show Up. (Which is its own story.)