Giando Sigurani's Online Empire

Hello fine folks! For the last few weeks, I have been putting my big hairy mitts in front of a webcam and doing boring things with them like soldering electronics and carving wood.

(Apparently there was a bad echo and my chat wanted me to know it)

That's because I've been doing a live stream where I build another of my Write-O-Trons to sell to the masses. 

Well, I'm almost done with the stream! I usually stream on Thursdays at 6PM Pacific Time, but I missed two weeks due to engagements with school. I will be missing this week as well due to an engagement involving top hats and wine. No I won't! I'm doing a stream today EVEN THOUGH IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!

But there will be only two more! So join me on March 10th at 6PM Pacific Time for the penultimate stream! http://twitch.tv/giandroid

Ah, summer vacation. When all the things you had been putting off come crashing down upon you in the space of a few short weeks, ensuring that whatever percieved break you may have envisioned was only the product of your sick, stress-starved mind.

During my summer vacation, which is over in a week's time, I made a Kickstarter for a new edition of Mister Mercury. The kickstarter will also go up in a week's time. But why did I make a Kickstarter for a book that's already out?

Well, throughout the year, since it came out in print, I have been trying to get it into book stores. The Lulu version might look great, and read very well, but it's incredibly expensive and Lulu doesn't offer a discount to book stores. So when I try to go into local book shops (which, in Portland, are about as common as fleas, because they like local EVERYTHING in Oregon), the answers they give me range from "Thanks, but no thanks," and "No way in Hell, and not in Heaven either, where there is no money and the roads are paved with gold."

So I'm Kickstarting a newer, cheaper version.

It's tough being a genius. You never know when inspiration strikes, which is why I carry a huge notebook with me at all times and wear that ridiculous trench coat in which I keep it no matter the weather, circumstance, or social setting.

I'm finished with my revision of Mister Mercury, and should hear about its chances in print publishing soon. So now that the thing that I was working on every single day without breaks for three months is done, here's some monsters that I drew for my friend Valerie (who once saved me from my own malfunctioning brain). I know that they were made with the mouse, but boo hoo, I don't have the technology to make it look as pretty as you want it. I'm still working with a netbook here. It's about time you see some of my drawings anyway (besides the one of Supreme Empress Bunny Bitch Ashes). Click on them for full sizes.

One of the disadvantages of being a brilliant creative ultra- prodigy is that brilliant creative ultra- prodigies don't often have time to produce their great works as fast as they can conceive them.  I unfortunately don't live in the year 5067, when there will be machines capable of producing fully realized novels complete with likeable characters and coherent motivations just by feeding its basic premise into the input slot.

No. I have to begrudgingly hammer away on physical keyboards, pushing my work upon my friends as if they were drugs (sorry about that), revising, re-revising, and telling myself that it will totally be done in six months even though it's absolutely and definitely been longer than five years since I first said that.

And so the term the back burner was coined for, or possibly by, creative types such as myself. There might be an infinite amount of ideas in the world, but only a finite amount of time with which to work on them. So we put our works on the "back burner," hoping that it's the sort of dish that will still be good after a long simmer instead of, say, a trip to the mental microwave.