So just for fun, I decided the most obvious piece of merch for Peregrine Lake -- the generic tourist t-shirt. If you ever go to a gas station in a random small town, you'll definitely see something like this. So why get a generic T-shirt with a real town's name on it when you can get one with a fake town's name on it?
Obviously this is available on a T-shirt, but there are a whole bunch of other products too -- like totebags, coasters, and mugs.
I honestly just did this because I thought it was fun. No real plan beyond "Oh that would be nice to have for myself." It's neat!
- Traegorn
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Hey everyone, I know I announced it a couple of months ago, but I'm excited to tell you that Bloody Damn Rite, the sequel to my novel The Witch and the Rose, is now on sale on Amazon! You can pick it up in both paperback and Kindle ebook formats (and it's also available on Kindle Unlimited).
If you liked the first book, I think you'll enjoy where the series is going. It picks up a year after the events of The Witch and the Rose, and there are vampires in it. I tried to come up with a clever way to work that into this post, but I'm writing this quickly before work this morning so I'm just flat out saying it.
There are vampires in this book.
This installment has a bit more action than the first book, but the tone is the same (and Mia and Riley are still Mia and Riley). And maybe a piece of that past Mia tried to leave behind her in Boston is about to show up in her new life in Parrish Mills.
Go read the book and find out.
(Note: There is a non-Amazon version available with the ISBN 979-8-3302-2037-3, which is identical in every way -- just off of a different printer. You can directly order that version too.)
- Traegorn
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Book update time! Back in January I published my first (non-graphic) novel, The Witch and the Rose ( which you can buy here). I made it pretty clear that it was the first book in a series, and that more books would be coming.
And yeah, it's time to reveal that next book.
I'm excited to announce Bloody Damn Rite, the sequel to The Witch and the Rose and second book in the Mia Graves series, will come out June 11th on Kindle and paperback. Additionally, you can pre-order the Kindle eBook version of the book right now and it will be available on your devices immediately on June 11th.
So yeah! If you want some queer contemporary fantasy set in, of all places, an Indiana college town... I got two books for you.
There will be more.
(Also, just a reminder that Peregrine Lake is now live too! Go read our awesome webcomic!)
- Traegorn
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If you follow me on social media you likely already know this, but I figured I should toss it on the blog for good measure too.
For those unaware, the webcomic Peregrine Lake (written by me and drawn by the talented Ethan Flanagan) will officially launch on April 16th and update every Tuesday at peregrine-lake.com
I promised the follow up to UnCONventional was "coming soon" four years ago. Well, "soon" finally got here.
I know I actually talked about it back in January as arriving this spring, but it's actually "this spring" now. Frankly, I'm incredibly excited to show you guys what we've been working on for the last year, and bringing you the story that I've had in my head for so much longer.
As I've said, this is a follow up to UnCONventional, but it isn't required reading. Peregrine Lake takes place ten years after that comic's end, and only Lynn and Megan carry over from that cast. This is also a very different comic tonally. Peregrine Lake is a "Northwoods Gothic" tale that follows a young woman named Bev as she inherits her late uncle's house outside of the small town of Peregrine Lake, WI. That's the short version.
I hope you guys end up liking it as much as I do.
- Traegorn
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The final comic of UnCONventional may have gone up in 2019, but the final two chapters still weren't out in print form... until now! That's right, I've finally put out the collected chapters nine and ten in paperback form!
So yes, you can click on over to Amazon right now to pick it up. Has it been four years since this was supposed to come out? Yes. But it's here now, and that's what counts. Re-live the pre-Covid con scene! Finally see typo free versions of some of these comics! Read random commentary about what inspired certain storylines and strips!
It's fun! And remember, Peregrine Lake is coming soon too!
  
- Traegorn
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So now that The Witch and the Rose is out and available for purchase, I thought I'd get around to making a nice little post here telling you where you can buy it!
For those who (somehow) missed it, my debut (non-graphic) novel The Witch and the Rose is now available for purchase. It's a contemporary fantasy novel. It's got a witch, it's got queer people, it's occasionally a little spicy, it has the occasional bleed through of my witchcraft opinions... it's fun! It's the first book in a series, and I think folks will enjoy it.
So let's talk about how folks can buy it!
For one, it's on Kindle (also, if you pay for Kindle Unlimited, you can read it right now for free), but there's also a dead tree version too. While eBooks are exclusively through Amazon right now, the dead tree version comes in two (identical) forms. First off, there's the version listed on Amazon. This is the fastest way to get it, and probably the version with the cheapest shipping (since it qualifies for Prime).
I know some folks don't like Amazon though, which is why there's a separate Paperback edition done through a different printer. You can either order that directly, or booksellers can order via ISBN 9798869132666.
Those are all the ways you can pick up the novel. So, to quote the eminent critic Jay Sherman, "Buy my book!"
- Traegorn
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So I talked about it before, but I've been on a bit of a creative push lately. Because of that... stuff is actually coming out. And if I don't tell you about it, how will you know to look for it?
First off, my first (non-graphic) novel, The Witch and the Rose will be out soon. And when I say soon... I mean soon. As in before the end of the month of January. It will be available in both paperback and Kindle, and it's a bit different than the stuff I've written before. This falls squarely into the contemporary fantasy genre. We've got magic, we've got ghosts, we've got... some sex? Yeah, this one is a bit more 'mature' in content than anything else I've ever written.
So, uh, keep that in mind.
But it's fun, and I liked writing it. And (as people who follow me likely already know) I'm deep into writing sequels.
The other announcement is that Peregrine Lake is finally happening. I announced this comic in 2019... and then it just didn't materialize. The big change here is that I'm no longer drawing it. I'm still writing it, but I've handed art duties over to the incredibly talented Ethan Flanagan. Their art pairs with this story a thousand times better than what I would have been able to draw, and I'm super excited. Right now we're targeting a spring release (though that may shift).
But I genuinely love everything we've been working on for it, and I think you will too.
So yeah, that's what's happening.
Update: The Witch and the Rose is now available for sale in both paperback and Kindle editions.
- Traegorn
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(A Rant Where Trae Has Written Too Many Books This Month)
So since most of you started following me because of Witchcraft or podcast stuff, I realize a lot of you don't know how much fiction writing I do.
(I originally wrote this on my tumblr, but I'm realizing that if you're reading this here you do know this in all likelihood -- but I don't feel like rewriting the whole post so just pretend, okay?)
Primarily what I've published are comics. The big one is UnCONventional (which ran from December of 2009 to December of 2019), but I also did a steampunk comic called The Chronicles of Crosarth (which I put on hiatus in like 2018 intending to come back to... but I haven't, and I make no guarantee that I will even though over 650 of the 800 planned pages are done). Crosarth is... fine? The art isn't great in either of these, but UnCONventional carries itself with the humor.
But that's all old stuff. You may be like "Trae, what have you been producing for the last four years," and the answer is "not a lot." I got major creative block with the pandemic. Peregrine Lake, the "Northwoods Gothic" comic I was supposed to launch in 2020 (which has some characters from UnCONventional in it) didn't materialize when I said it would. What storytelling energy I had went into Stormwood & Associates and The Meatgrinder (my two actual play podcasts), but that was it.
And then 2023 happened, and the juices started flowing again.
Peregrine Lake is moving forward -- but with me just doing the writing. My urge to draw has not returned, but my urge to write has. A friend of mine, Ethan Flanagan, is drawing it, and I've written the first year of comics. It likely won't launch any time soon (the artist I'm working with is busy as hell so we want to get a shit-ton of the comic done before we launch it -- we have like the first month and a half of the comic ready?). But yeah -- it's happening. I hoping for Spring, but we'll see.
The other thing though is that I've started writing, like, novels. I've always had like twenty ideas in my head, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I decided to start with the idea I cared the least about (in case I fucked it up): A queer urban fantasy story.
In the last month and a half I've written complete drafts of two different novels in this setting, and am halfway through another one... and have another one outlined.
I, uh, had some ideas.
If you're asking yourself "Hey Trae -- what the fuck? That's a lot" you need to know a few things that aren't obvious. At one point in college, in 72 hours, I produced over 40 pages of text between three research papers. All were for 300 level courses, and I may have disassociated while writing them because I frankly don't remember most of it. But, like, they were decent papers.
One of those papers is in Google Scholar.
Anyway, yeah. I haven't been sleeping great because I've been obsessively writing, but you might ask "Why didn't you just write one and get it ready to publish?" That's a great question. Because I wrote a book, and when I was 3/4 of the way through it I realized something very important: This book would make a great sequel to a book I haven't written. I've been writing book two in a series where I haven't written book one yet.
Well fuck.
So I finished that draft, and I went and wrote book one. Now that book? That book I'm getting ready to publish. I expect to have it out in January. Part of my editing process involves setting what I think is a completed, good, revised draft down for a couple of weeks and then returning to it with fresh eyes. We're in that waiting period right now.
But I still had a bunch of energy.
So the first thing I did was a revising draft on book two (the one I wrote first), but I finished that. And had more energy. And more stories in this setting kept popping up.
So I started a third book. And I'm halfway through the first draft of that book. But then I realized yesterday... shit, this isn't book three.
This is book four.
I need stuff to happen before we get to this story.
So now I've outlined the actual book three, and am working on literally both of these books at once (I'll take a break for Christmas and then go do a final edit on Book One).
And... I'm just like... why am I like this?
I need to stop myself for a few days and get more sleep.
- Traegorn
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So I continue to neglect this blog, though I probably shouldn't. One of the biggest issues I have with the modern internet is that everything is centralized into a handful of sites when it comes to community and talking with friends.
In the old 1.0 days of the internet, we used to build our own spaces. This was the space that I chose to build for myself, and it served me well for quite some time. The forum was small but active. I updated this blog multiple times a week, and followed friends through RSS feeds. It was a space that was ours.
But now it sits here more a memory than anything else. I maybe make one post a year, and spend all my time on Tumblr, Discord, and occasionally Facebook. And the thing is... I have a community on those services. Nerd & Tie has a Discord that runs at a steady hum. But our data lives on services we don't control. As Twitter has shown us, the spaces we thought we had can disappear at the whims of billionaires who only see us as engagement on a spreadsheet.
And it's exhausting.
So I decided to do something about it.
In the year 2023, we're launching an official set of Nerd & Tie Forums -- we're calling it NerdAndTie[dot]Social and it's a community that's all our own. Right now we're in a soft launch (I expect very few people will actually read this post so it's not really a public announcement), with the hopes of getting everything locked down and settled in the next week.
Then we'll tell more folks about it.
And maybe it'll fail. Maybe no one will use them. But we're going to give it a shot. Complaining about things only gets you so far -- sometimes you need to offer solutions.
So I'm doing that.
(Also, Forum software is way better in 2023 than it was in 2000... holy crap.)
- Traegorn
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