Arctic Light

At this point everyone has probably either forgotten it existed or never knew about it in the first place. It lives again, anyway.

My main creative focus for October - all other factors willing - is finishing the current book, so I'm going to be trying to update every day. To keep up the pace, it's now updating in black and white, although the pages will be colored for the eventual print version (and replaced in the archive).

New pages will be posted daily-ish on Tumblr and on Patreon. Both of these are differently awful for catching up on the archive if you haven't read it before or want to catch up, so here are the website archives:

Book 1 - Kismet: Hunter's Moon (2002-2006) - 340 pages:
http://www.kismetcity.com/huntersmoon/hmchapterindex.shtml

Book 2 - Kismet: Sun-Cutter (2009-present) - 280+ pages:
http://www.kismetcity.com/suncutter/scchapterindex.shtml

The website is currently up to date with the latest pages. I'll be adding pages in weekly batches until, I hope, it's done!

Please let me know if you notice any missing pages, broken links, or unreadably outdated site design. I last recoded the website in about 2007, so I suspect it doesn't work well with phones. One of my "someday" projects is completely overhauling the website with some sort of new responsive codebase, but you know ... time.

If you haven't read Kismet before, it's a space opera webcomic set in 2752 that I've been putting online, off and on, since 2002 (and working on since 1992; this year is either the 20th or the 30th anniversary of the comic depending on how you look at it). It is meant for mature audiences. There's nothing actually shown that's stronger than PG-13 violence, but the plot involves a civil war and terrorism, and the characters' backstories include a certain amount of awfulness, although it's generally referenced rather than dealt with in a lot of detail. (Examples: suicide of minor characters, rape of minor background characters but not, as far as I can recall, protagonists.) There's also some dated stuff in the early archives that I would probably do differently now. I have an awful time coming up with detailed content notes because I'm honestly not sure if I can accurately remember everything that might be in there, but let me know if you want to know about any specific kind of content and I'll do my best.

Kismet is a full-color space opera webcomic I've been putting online since 2002.

Book 1: Hunter's Moon (342 pages) is online and complete.

Book 2: Sun-Cutter is currently updating on Mondays.

Sun-Cutter website archive | Sun-Cutter Tumblr.

There's a perma-archive on my website where I add pages in batches every so often (I just updated it, so it's up to date except for the latest page or two), and a Tumblr where the weekly pages are posted, which also has the full archive but it's kinda tough to navigate on mobile.

I should mention that you can watch me develop as an artist over the course of the comic, which means that some of the early art in Hunter's Moon is pretty rough, and my style changes a lot. There are also a few writing decisions I made in the beginning that I wouldn't make now, but we learn and grow, right?

You don't necessarily have to read Hunter's Moon before reading Sun-Cutter -- they have largely separate casts, although they take place in the same setting at roughly the same time -- but SC does spoil some things from HM by checking back in on several characters' storylines, and a few things will probably be confusing without having read HM first.

There is also a Patreon for the comic, which I'm trying to get back into updating more often. The weekly pages are also posted there. You can follow the Patreon without pledging; at this point, nearly everything is posted unlocked anyway. (I'm in perfectly fine shape financially right now and while I appreciate backers on the Patreon, please do not in any way feel that you ought to. I am perfectly fine with people lurking/following/commenting on the Patreon without being backers of it. Right now I'm mainly using it as a blog/forum for the comic anyway.)

Any questions, just ask me!

SSR Confidential works (the Agent Carter gift exchange I run) are all revealed and non-anonymous. We had 42 fics, art, and vids, way up from last year!

I just finished redoing my Patreon pledge levels (again), in preparation for starting the comic updating again in July. My new reward levels are geared towards trying not to have any necessary or semi-necessary Kismet content locked at a high level (I want all patrons to be able to see all the Kismet backstage stuff and whatnot), but also offering some nice stuff at higher pledge levels, including rewards for people who might not be into Kismet, as such - while hopefully not causing myself a huge amount of extra work. New reward levels are:

• $1 - gets all the behind-the-scenes stuff (some of which is locked, some not)
• $2 - gets a free ebook any month I have a book out (e.g. Metal Wolf this month)
• $5 - gets snail mail, postcards and whatnot, once or twice a year
• $10 - gets mailed hardcopies of Kismet books when I have a new one out (this one hasn't changed, but I also haven't had a new Kismet book out in longer than I really want to admit to)

This is not meant to guilt anyone into backing my Patreon or anything, just pointing and saying, "Yo, Patreon over there."

And Kismet starts again in July, YAY. I really didn't meant to take six months off, especially since I've left the most recent page only half colored for this entire time. THAT leaves a good impression, all right. >___>

Hi, new people following me from the DW friending meme! And people who have followed/friended me in the last couple of years in general. For one reason and another, it's taken me this long to write an intro post, and I don't think I ever did one the last time I did a friending meme at all.

So - hi! I'm sholio/sholio, or Layla. I live in Alaska, and I'm a graphic designer, artist, and writer. I used to mainly do freelance graphic design, but over the last couple of years I've transitioned to writing for a living, and I do that full-time now. I write het paranormal romance as Lauren Esker (also on Facebook and on Amazon). I've written a few M/M books in the past as Layla M. Wier (that pen name is basically retired at this point, though), and I'm planning on launching a new pen name this summer for fantasy and sci-fi that's not really romance as such, but tends to feature LGBTQ+ characters and pairings. I haven't settled on that name yet. I also write ultra-commercial erotica-laced het romance as part of a group pen name, which I'm not naming because we're trying to preserve the polite fiction that we are a single person (a la the way kids' series like Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden are written by a number of writers working under the same name) but I'm happy to tell people what it is if you ask in a PM or on a non-public post. I just don't want to give it out in public.

Feel free to PM me or email me at laureneskerwriter at gmail if you would like to try any of my books. I'm happy to hand them out to flist people for free. :D Lauren's website also has a couple of free stories, with more to come.

I used to be active in the small press comics scene, and I've been doing a weekly sci-fi webcomic called Kismet since 2002 (give or take a few years' hiatus in the middle there). It's all online for free. The first book, Hunter's Moon, is archived at my website and the current book, Sun-Cutter, updates every Monday and is about 160 pages so far. (It's on Tumblr, so you can follow it there, but the nav buttons don't work on mobile. There is a partial archive at my website, along with some short side comics. These are only partly archived because my other archive site went down and I haven't gotten around to finishing getting them up at my site yet. I really should do that ....) Anyway, the Kismet comic also has a Patreon where I post sketchbook pages, development art, glimpses of upcoming stuff and so forth, and a Tumblr sideblog for similar content and page announcements, kismetcity, which I really need to do more with.

(Kismet is what the icon on this post is from.)

So that's the pro stuff! But you're probably here for the fan stuff! My fanfic is all on AO3, except for most of the Stargate stuff from 2006-2008, which can be found on my old website and will be on AO3 ... uh ... eventually? On Tumblr, I'm laylainalaska/sholiofic - the first is for reblogs and gifs and general chatting with people; the second is for fic and fic announcements, where I also periodically solicit prompts for whatever fandoms I'm in at the moment. I tend to be a fannish serial monogamist - although right now, unusually for me, I seem to have two main ones, Agent Carter and The Flash (and the DC universe shows in general), and I'm still kinda dipping in and out of White Collar and a few other side fandoms. I mod collarcorner (White Collar gen prompt community) and also run SSR Confidential, an Agent Carter fanworks exchange that will have its signups in March.

So basically what you're going to get around here is a lot of fan squee about whatever I'm into at the moment (Flash and Legends of Tomorrow come back on Tuesday, eeeeee!!), fic, and intermittent chatter about writing/comics/my life/etc. Due to current events, there may also be more politics around here than there used to be, but I'll put it behind a cut.

And that's me! It's really great seeing so much renewed activity around here, and I'm going to try to be more active on DW/LJ in 2017. (HOW IS IT 2017 ALREADY, WHAT.) I'm looking forward to chatting with you all, whether you're just stopping in or have been here for years. :D

And Kismet updates are now uploaded and scheduled through the end of the month. Sun-Cutter has been giving me a chance to do more interesting backgrounds and exteriors than the first book, since let's face it, Kismet is an interesting place (for me anyway), but it's also an underground city on a world that is basically Mars with no atmosphere, which doesn't give me a lot of opportunity to do scenery. (Though I do hope to get out and explore Kismet's planet a bit more in future books. This book has a more galactic scope, though, and is a lot less focused on Kismet itself.)

I can't believe I've been doing this webcomic since 2002. Not continually, I admit, but I've done around 600 pages counting the side comics, and it's coming up on its 15th anniversary next year! (Which is also its 25th anniversary if you count from the time I started writing it in 1992.)

But right now I think I will write more Agent Carter promptfics. The ones I wrote last night have a masterlist here. I'm not currently taking more prompts 'til I finish writing the ones I have, but I really appreciate all the inspiring prompts; they're great! ♥

Reminder that my webcomic has a new home on Tumblr:

http://suncutter.tumblr.com

This is the new place to follow it. The comic will still update on Mondays as usual.

Also, one thing I'm doing on the new archive (that I've meant to do for ages) is adding text transcripts under the comic, for people using screenreaders or who otherwise can't easily read the text in the comic. It will take me awhile to go back and transcribe the whole archive, but I'm hoping to have it done in the next month or two.

Never having done this before, I want to be sure and make it as easy to read as possible. Do any of you following me use screenreaders, or are you familiar with their requirements? If so, and if you don't mind, could you please go to a recent page of the comic - say, this one:

http://suncutter.tumblr.com/post/122924920796/text-linton-and-morphine-approach-a-store-with

And let me know if this is going to work okay. I'm doing it script-style with descriptions of the actions, as necessary, in brackets.

I would hate to do the whole archive and then have to reformat it if it turns out it doesn't work! I've seen people do it this way for accessibility before, so I think it'll probably be all right, but I wanted to ask, if anyone knows.

Patreon people, if you haven't already, stop by my activity feed - there is a question for you there! I'm working on that outdoor-market crowd scene, the one I was brainstorming background-character ideas for a little while back, and allanh had the AMAZING idea of sneakily working Patreon backers' names into the business names. And so I shall. :D So you need to tell me if you have a preference - if you'd rather have your name on a flower shop or a gun store, for example! (Or if you'd rather be included as, say, a busker in the background, or a guy riding a unicycle - I can do that too.)

If you read Kismet and the idea of being immortalized in the comic sounds like fun, but you aren't a Patreon backer ... well, there is an easy fix for that! It's $1/month minimum, and you can cancel at any time. I'm doing this for all the backers, not the ones at certain levels, though you do get extra stuff at the higher levels.

... Speaking of which, the May rewards package for the $5+ backers has been uploaded. This month is all from the sketchbook: character designs and so forth. I've also gone back and made the first couple of rewards packages for last year free to everybody, so you can see what kind of stuff I put in these - here are October and November of last year. I'm not going to be doing this every time, but I figured free samples are nice, so you can see what you're getting, right?

Obligatory mention that the comic is free, will always be free, and I don't care at all if people read it without paying - please do! :) The Patreon is just if you want extra stuff and feel like kicking some dollars to me.

You can also look upon the Patreon as supporting me in all my creative endeavors, not just the comic. Officially, it's the comic. Unofficially, if you want to kick in a buck a month because you like my fanfic and wanna buy me a mocha, who's gonna know? :D

I went to bed at a reasonable hour, like a responsible adult, and then woke up -sproing- at 2 a.m., as usually happens when I try to be responsible that way.

On the other hand, the aurora was having a gorgeous display, so I went out in the yard and watched that for awhile, enjoying the novel sensation of watching the aurora without freezing to death while doing it. We rarely get really striking auroras this late in the year -- it's already not quite getting dark at night, so the aurora glimmering above a bright horizon was really interesting and novel. Plus, at one point I saw an owl fly across it, which in all my years of aurora-watching is totally a new one for me.

And now I'm wide awake, since my body thinks I had a nice refreshing nap. So I decided screw being an adult, I'm awake anyway and I don't have to be up early in the morning, may as well have a beer.

I went ahead and updated Sun-Cutter since I'm awake anyway. This particular update is a meet-cute between two characters whose first meeting I've had in mind for close to 15 years, but I never did it as a side story because I never really had a plot for the rest of it. Eventually I realized it would work fine as a flashback, since most of the rest of their story is in flashbacks anyway. And I got to play with a limited color palette for this, which is fun. (Next week, things go off the rails, as usual.)

I think I should probably spend the upcoming week doing mostly Kismet. My comfortable page buffer has been nibbled away to a little over a month, and summers are always very busy for me, so I'd like to get all the pages done through early fall in the next few weeks.

I also want to start doing more Kismet stuff on Tumblr, but I'm completely drawing a blank on, like ... what to do? Because most of Kismet these days is either working on pages, or it's mental plot noodling that exists entirely in my head. There used to be a time when I wrote a ton of Kismet snippets outside the main continuity, and sketched a bunch (well, I still do that, but it's mostly working out costume designs for upcoming characters and other spoilery stuff), and made gifs and cartoons and so forth. I feel like I should start playing with it more again. I'm having trouble even figuring out where to start with that, though.

Maybe if I set a goal of starting on May 1 (that's a nice day for starting a new venture - Beltane!) and posting one new Kismet thing per day on Tumblr. That might work. And it'll give me some time to work on stuff. I kinda just want to get the word out about the comic a little bit more, because it has a loyal audience, but a very small audience, and I think there are probably more people out there who'd like it if they knew about it! But there is just so much of it, about 500 pages so far. And that's a significant chunk of comic if you are just checking out something new. I think maybe it's easier to entice a new audience for a webcomic if it's brand new and there isn't much of a time commitment. (On the other hand ... Exhibit A: Homestuck.)

In genuinely unrelated news, I really, really wish the AO3 had a blacklist function. It would make certain fandoms 1000% more fun.

You guys, my Patreon is closing on its first stretch goal! \o/ Granted, it's a very low stretch goal ($50/month), but I'm still completely thrilled; this is so much farther than I thought I'd get so soon. Thank you so much to the people who are supporting me. You make me feel like I can make this comic-making thing financially viable. ♥ (And even if I don't get to the first stretch goal -- where the bonus is unlocking a side comic -- I'm going to try to do some side stories anyway. I have a ton of scripts just laying around; I need to start working on them ...)

I am also going to start doing more with my Tumblr(s). Last night I did a top-to-bottom reorganization of my Kismet folder (which hasn't really been cleaned out, well, ever; there's so much old stuff in there) -- this was what prompted this tweet, though as far as I can tell, I didn't make any terrible mistakes. *g* But it reminded me how much creative play I used to engage in; there's so much Kismet-related poetry, cartoons, worldbuilding side stuff, playful crossovers with TV shows and manga ... basically I just want to start doing more with it that's not strictly related to the pages I'm working on, and putting a lot more of it out there.

I'm frustrated by how inefficient I've been lately. I just don't seem to be managing to do a whole lot. I waffle around between different projects, do a little here, a little there, but don't end up with a whole lot to show for it. I can't figure out where the time goes, or why I'm doing so little with it. Ten years ago, I was doing a lot more than this ON TOP of working a lot more! nnnaaaargh.

On the other hand, things which I have learned today: in Tolkien's early drafts, Aragorn was originally a hobbit, nicknamed Trotter because of his wooden shoes and the clopping sound they made. I may never stop giggling at this. (Also, Frodo was originally named Bingo Bolger-Baggins, which I think I did know already. Thank god for rewrites ...)

Today I have an interview at my realname journal with Melissa Jensen, aka kriadydragon, on her middle-grade fantasy novel The Toymaker, in which a young girl in search of her parents and an eccentric inventor on a quest for his family's legacy embark on a journey across their world. Melissa's clever, inventive worldbuilding is one of the things I like most about her fanfic, and it carries over into her original fiction too. Click on the link to find out more! Thank you for letting me interview you, kriadydragon. :)

Meanwhile, it's Monday so that means a new Kismet page. I now have RSS feeds for the comic on both LJ (suncutter_feed) and DW (suncutter_feed). They've both been running for a couple of weeks and seem to work great. I'm just putting up the links on the RSS, not the whole page, so it won't spam your reading page terribly.

This photo I posted on Twitter this morning indicates my feelings on current weather trends. (Funny story there. The dragonfly thermometer in the photo has actually been sitting in the garage for ages; I didn't really want to put it outside in the winter because it only goes down to -40 and I was afraid it would break if it got colder than that. But it's been a very warm winter, so I put it outside about a week ago and LOOK WHAT HAPPENED.)