We’re just about at the midpoint of 2025, so I thought today would be a good day to do a Jaguar check-in! What a weird year it’s been. Very busy, family-wise, with lots of both good and challenging changes; I am using up a lot of time on that, but how is that news? You know how it goes.

                My current major project is finishing up the second Jokka collection and mailing all the Kickstarter prizes. That should be wrapped up next month sometime, when we start the Red Honey serialization. I tell you, it’s a wild to be scanning old sketchbooks, only to find sketches of the Red Honey characters from the 2000s! This story has been on the backburner a long time! I also unearthed a lot of sketches from the development of the jokka.org website, which I used the wayback machine to archive (as much as possible). I’m thinking of restoring some amount of it to my current website, which is my other major project right now: my website. I feel like every other day I’m doing something for it or coming up with something for it to do. The quizzes are my big push right now; I’m done with the coding for the peltedverse quiz, I just need to finish the art. Then I can move on to the Kherishdar quiz, which is going to be fun.

                I feel like every time I figure out a quiz, I try to do something bigger/fancier for the following one. The Peltedverse one is up to almost a month of development time at this point!

                My hope, of course, is that these quizzes will get passed around and help existing fans recruit friends, and convert curious people into fans. But if they’re only ever present as evidence of me learning to do cool stuff, I’m good with that too. I don’t mind my website representing a skill-stack portfolio.

                Anyway, eventually I’d like the quiz node to have other toys, like name generators and color books I can use to create character generators (see the screenshot). If you have ideas for quizzes or toys, let me know! I might put it on my list.

                I’m also, somehow, sticking with my scanning project this time, and wow, is that a way to unearth all sorts of complicated emotions. Seeing stories that were discarded; seeing stories that are still with me after decades; remembering what it was like to be that person; paging through drawings done for and of people who’ve passed out of my life, and through drawings done for and of people who are still in it (hi EngineerSam, Tufty, Stryker!). There are meta-conversations in some of these old books that are me wrestling with my inability to penetrate trad-publishing that make me feel great pity for Younger Me… and meta-conversations that make me marvel at her resilience, and wonder if I am still capable of that level of determination. I probably am.

                My next writing project, as I mentioned is Kherishdar 5, which is probably about 2/3rds done. (I hope. It’s already bigger than I planned.) I’m trying to be philosophical about having lost nearly four months of writing time to my shoulder injury, which I’m still wrestling because it wasn’t so much an injury as an indicator of a pre-existing, long-term injury state: it turns out if you spend decades accumulating repetitive stress, when that part of your body fails you can’t fix it by treating the latest in a long history of similar micro-injuries. You have to treat the disease state. Decades of sitting in front of a computer have seriously compromised my shoulders, so I’m trying to address that, slowly and holistically, mostly by gentle daily exercise in water. The root of the problem is that weak chest and shoulder muscles can’t resist injury well, but when you try to strengthen already irritated muscles with exercise, you re-hurt yourself. Water’s a great way to get around some of that. If I can heal my upper body, that should, slowly, resolve the neuralgia that’s affecting my fingers. Such a mess!

                I think a lot about the fact that you probably either think you are your body, or think you’re in your body, and both these approaches lead to their own particular problems. But those problems inevitably come home to roost, and then it’s time to handle them.

                Sales are bad lately, but I feel cheerful about everything anyway. The long (injury-enforced) break from writing has reminded me how much I love my work. I love seeing the evidence that stories I was developing 25+ years ago are now on the shelves and delighting readers. I love watching my drawing skills progress over the decades. I am grateful for my superfan community, and my casual readers and all the people who talk about Mindtouch on tumblr and the handful of people who (!) buy my books from a mall boutique. I love being able to code my own website again! I don’t control everything (and what a burden it would be if I could), but I have a little multi-world empire to which I can escape, and leave a trail for others to follow if they care to, and they do! How cool is that, seriously. 💛

                Anyway, that’s where I’m at! I hope you’re looking forward to more Jokka and more Kherishdar and more quizzes/toys!