Video Blogs That I Spend Too Much Time Watching

Every night after my wife goes to bed, I should be at the computer writing. If I had the level of discipline I truly needed, it would be a no brainer. I’d become tied to the keyboard for somewhere between 1-2 hours every night. I’d have so much written after a few weeks, it would be staggering. But sadly, there are days when I can’t get my brain into the correct headspace to do any of that. And it isn’t a writer’s block type of thing. It is more of the: life is kicking my ass/I’m tired/can I just veg out for a little while.

I’ll be good and write tomorrow night.

I promise.

In the meantime, these are the Video Blogs/Series (whatever you want to call them) that end up taking too much of my attention these days:

Pitch Meeting

If there was a Mount Rushmoor of Youtube videos, this series would have to be the very first on the mountain for me. The basic premise is of a writer “pitching” his next movie to a producer. Through the magic of green screens, Ryan George plays both parts as he goes through the various plot points and characters of a movie and makes you question (truly) if any movie actually thought about exactly what kind of story they were telling. Too many times I find myself going “Oh, yeah, I guess that didn’t make ANY sense.” After a few episodes you might even start saying things like:

“Super easy, barely an inconvience.”

“Tight”

“Wow wow wow wow.”

One of the classics is the one he did for Back to the Future, check it out here me.

 

Julie Nolke

I discovered her during the Pandemic through her video “Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self” where a future version of Julie goes back in time to talk to her slightly younger self about what’s about to happen to her (and the whole world). And then because that one was a hit, she has done a bunch more. However, her channel is also various comedy skits including her getting advice from a drunk fairy godmother, dealing with a roomate who is randomly upset about various things, and so on. Think if you were watching Saturday Night Live except all the skits were by one woman (and the vast majority are very, very good).

Viva La Dirt League

When a group of New Zealanders (is that the word?) get together and make a bunch of various series that point out the oddities within online roleplaying games, first person shooters, and even horror games. I came upon it through their Epic NPC Man, which focused on one of the NPCs from a video game and the various PCs who play the game. They tackle a ton of things that have become cliches over the years such as why do the women in games always have skimpy armor that only seem to cover their naughty bits and nothing else? I typically laugh mutliple times through their videos.

(I feel like this is the worst summary of something I’ve ever written. I really think it is excellent.)

 

Ashley Sleeth

Every night my wife and I try to watch at least one poker video. It’s our way of “studying” in an attempt to get incrimentally better at the crazy game we supposedly play for “fun” (though sometimes the line between fun and frustrating is very blurry). Ashley has only been doing her video blog for a little over a year so it feels good to join her on her journey to become a better player. This is one of those that if you aren’t a poker player, I’m not sure you would get as much out of it, but Ashely clearly puts a ton of time and effort into her videos and game which makes it a great blog to watch.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Nine Years In

 

As we turn the page on 2022, I like to take a minute and highlight some of the posts that I’m either especially proud of, posts I think deserve a second look, or just ones that struck me as worth highlighting.

Physical and Digital Copies Still Available! https://john-mcguire.square.site/

Behind the Comic: In Our Dreams Awake

Last year Egg Embry and I launched a Kickstarter for out comic book In Our Dreams Awake. While it was a bit more of a struggle to get across the $$ finish line we’d set, we managed to get it done and out. As we are preparing to at least do a Kickstarter launch for issue 2 this year, this was a comic project over 15 years in the making, with lots of twists and turns. It became that project I was sure would never see the light of day, and now we’re nearly 1/2 through the story. The post linked above takes you down that road with us.

 

Getting Scolded

One of the things I can struggle with as a writer (and a person) is not taking the time to appreciate my victories. Most of the time it is simply easier to focus on our failures instead. Focus on all the little things we haven’t done. Lament the list of things we should be doing. So I wrote this as a reminder to myself to celebrate how far I’ve come (even if I have a lot more to go).

 

Gen Con 2022 Recap – Part Two

There is a Part One which I also think is worth reading, but Part Two has some details on both the best game of the convention and the worst game at the convention… all within hours of each other.

 

The Reason Why – The Echo Effect

One of the things this blog is supposed to do is highlight my works (prose and comics) to those who might stumble upon it. However, I’m the first to admit I’m not the best at marketing myself. This year I decided to lean into an idea of telling those potential readers the reason why I wrote the stories. Sometimes it was where the idea came from or perhaps just an incident which ended up in a tale. But I liked taking a few minutes over the course of two months laying out my “Why”.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Eight Years and Counting

 

Where last week I took a second to look at my writing releases and set goals for this upcoming year, I also like to take a minute to take a look back that this thing I do on a weekly basis and highlight those blogs that I’m particularly proud of, or maybe had a big impact on me, or just ones that I like that I think should get a second look (or a first look in many cases).

Love’s Labour’s Liabilities – Postscript

I always like learning about how other people’s Kickstarters have gone. Normally you can glean one or two things that they did that either you can “steal” for your next campaign or avoid. Sometimes you can get a better idea of why they made the decisions they made.

That’s what this blog post was all about, looking at our second RPG Zine’s Kickstarter and talking about why we made the decisions we made, and whether they may or may not be the best decisions (and what we might do in the future).

A Love Renewed?

I love Spider-Man. I grew up on the character. I have hundreds (if not thousands) of comics where he is featured. I’ve read through the good (great) stories and some of the worst and continued with my guy.

And then one day, I had to stop.

And then, many, many years later, I read Spider-Man again (only it wasn’t Peter Parker… and it wasn’t Miles Morales).

Karnivool, My Pandemic Band

With the world gone mad, I turned to music to help get me through the rough times. That same music will keep me company late into the nights where I’m writing. Sometimes you can find a band that just speaks to you in a way that you hadn’t felt in a long time. Their songs become a part of you so quickly that before you realize it, you’ve listened to their albums multiple times over the course of a day… every day of the week.

Westley

All my life I’ve found connections with my pets, each of them special in their own way. But this last November, my little cat passed over the Rainbow Bridge, and I had to write down everything I could about him so that in the years to come, if I’ve let some little piece of our history slip into the recesses of my mind, this post will pull it all back.

As I say at the beginning of the piece, “I want to remember it all. I need to remember it all.”

 

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Bookmarks for the Fantasy Artist Part I

I’m a tab collector. As of this minute I have twenty-seven tabs open in Google Chrome (including this one). They range from Kickstarter campaigns to Art Show info for various conventions. Some of these tabs have been open for more than week because they need somewhat immediate attention and I don’t want them to get lost in my bookmarks. Others I will bookmark for later. I have a lot of bookmarks, more like a museum worth. I imagine I’m not the only creative person with a bookmarks folder like this one–folders within folders.

My Library of Bookmarks

 

Yeah. I might have a problem. At least it’s organized (for the most part). I thought I’d share some of my most valuable bookmarks in an on going (no where near regular) blog series. For this first post I’m going to share one of my smaller folders.

Informative BlogsInformative Blogs

I don’t follow a lot of Art or Fantasy/SciFi Illustration blogs. If I followed all of them I’d spend all my time reading blogs instead of painting. Some of these I’m subscribed to and others I rely on either myself to check them or Facebook to let me know there’s new content. Two of the sites I have bookmarked are open in my browser tabs right now.

The ArtOrder – Jon Schindehette’s fab website. “ArtOrder is a community of artists dedicated to the education and mentoring of the art community.”

His blog posts cover creativity, portfolio tips, business guides for artists, illustration goodies and more. He also conducts challenges/contests. That’s how my little phoenix painting ended up at Spectrum Fantastic Art Live this year.

One Fantastic Week – A weekly web show hosted by Sam Flegal and Pete Morhbacher.

Most weeks they have a guest artist that joins them in talking about fantasy illustration, conventions, marketing, and of course, their week. I’ve been catching up on the previous episodes and learning a ton! I’ve also started blocking out one hour on Tuesday mornings to watch the show live.

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The other websites in that folder are just as information, but I’m going to leave that up to you to discover.

Muddy Colors – There’s an incredible Game of Thrones painting in today’s post.

Kelley McMorris – Kelley’s blog has supplied me with many excellent convention tips.

Gurney Journey – Doesn’t this need an explanation? It’s James Gurney’s blog. The creator of Dinotopia!

PACT – Professional Artist Client Tookit. This is a subscription site, but they do have free articles you can read.

CtrlPaint.com – I’ve mentioned this site in the past because of the amazing video library, but the blog is a great too!

Kiri Østergaard Leonard – If I was a better blogger my own blog would look more like Kiri’s. I’ve gleamed some valuable information from her posts.

As I mentioned, I can’t read all the blogs. But I do sometimes wonder, am I missing out? Is there a blog I should add to this folder? If you know of one, share it in the comments!

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