J.B. Norman's Blog, page 348

WIP: Pirate Title Page

It should come as no surprise by now that I’m working on Pirates — for example: here, here and here.

The end goal is to have something that’s basically Realmgard’s equivalent of the General History of the Pyrates, which is real life’s best source for most of the major figures of the Golden Age of Piracy, though it is almost certainly not entirely reliable in its history.

This is a WIP version of what’s going to be posted as the title page, based on the title page of the actual General History and attempting to emulate both the verbosity and the archaic spelling of early modern writing.

It’s not done yet, but all the important stuff is there: “History” (well, technically, “Historie”), “Pirates”, “Realmgard”.

I tried to make the writing look like a typeset page done with a printing press, but it worked out less well than I’d hoped, and only took a couple hours to do…

For Reference

Now, this isn’t really apropos of anything, but happened to see that this was just uploaded onto Youtube.

I’ve mentioned this a couple times in my blogging when I’ve had cause to mention Pro Wrestling. This is, of course, Hulk Hogan vs. André the Giant at WrestleMania III, the most famous and likely the most important Pro Wrestling match in history.

Again, mentioning this now isn’t really directly related to anything I’ve been talking about recently, beyond the fact that I happened upon this video today.

But, if you’re curious about something you may have seen me mention before, now you can watch it for yourself.

Also, André had a fascinating life, so if you’re interested in learning more about him specifically, I’d recommend checking out the documentary about him from HBO.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Wishing all my fan(s) a very happy St. Patrick’s Day!

And, yeah, that’s not really immediately relevant to Realmgard. But, on the other hand, thanks to my family doing DNA tests, I have learned that my Mom’s family does hail from Connacht (go, Galway United!)

Enjoy the holiday and please do observe all your local health guidelines.

Ides of March

The Death of Julius Caesar: Vincenzo Camuccini.
Public Domain. Via Wikipedia.

A very happy March 15 to everybody, from Greatest Living Author and (One of the Better Living Classicists), J.B. Norman.

Except, perhaps, Julius Caesar…

Just, you know, maybe take care and give any Senate Houses in your area a width berth.

As you were.

One More WIP(irate)

Continuing with the, uh, continuation of the aforementioned pirates, here’s another work-in-progress picture. Not a lot to say about it other than it’s here to how off some more of my progress.

Again, it’ll be ready when it’s ready — which I think I can say will be sooner than later — and stay tuned for when that happens.

Yet More WIP(irates)

In case you’ve forgotten, pirates are forthcoming and work has begun on said forthcoming pirates.

Admittedly, I haven’t been getting as much done work on this as I’ve wanted, thanks to real life, work, and feeling like I’ve been run over by a bus thanks to Daylight freakin’ Saving Time.

All things — like, for example Daylight freakin’ Saving Time being the worst — considered, however, I’ve gotten into a pretty good place in the last couple days. I’ve finally been able to sit down and start the real work on my pirates.

As evidenced by Figure 1:

Figure 1: Yet More WIP(irates)

Now, temper your expectations. There’s still a lot of work to be done on these pirates, but they’re closer to ready than they were before, I guess.

As a side note, you may remember that some of my previous posts about my artwork have involved me whinging about not being able to afford/find good image editing software.

It got bad enough that I finally decided to spring for a program in the Mac App Store called Affinity Photo. Now, I’m not skilled enough or doing anything important enough to tell if Affinity is good software. But it’s good at doing what I need it to do and, in hindsight, probably worth paying for.

“Global” “Phenomenon”

International selling (Greatest Living) author J.B. Norman, also available in Japan.

It’s, uh, it’s less impressive than it sounds.

Thanks to publishing on Amazon, I’m basically available on every Amazon.

But, like, if somebody wants to put in a good word with the Emperor, that’d be pretty cool.

Amara Standing in Front of a Watermelon

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Nothing really blog-worthy right now, largely because I’ve actually been getting stuff done today since getting a handle on some of the things slowing me down (yay!).

Photo by Donald Tong on Pexels.com

But, in case you missed it, here’s a picture of Amara I posted to my Instagram. Now, I’m sharing this because 1) Amara is my favourite Realmgard character and 2) something about the phrase “Amara Standing in Front of a Watermelon” (which is, incidentally, the actual filename of that picture) is really, really funny to me.

Back in the Saddle(ish)

Not actually this literal, though.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Good news: I’ve managed to get a handle on some of the real-life things I’ve been having to attend to lately — as mentioned in my last post.

I’ve gotten back to work on the pirate stuff I’ve promised is coming. Optimistically, I’ll be able to deliver some of that next week.

Admittedly, I haven’t been doing as much work on my next story as I’d like. But I have gotten back to that, too, in the last few days. However, it is still way to early to be able to even start guess as when it will be ready for publication.

There are a couple other things I want to get ready and out there soon, but those have had to go for the back burner for now. Hopefully, I’ll have more information about those things soon.

Ugh.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I already mentioned before that my writing and blogging are going to be delayed slightly by real-life stuff.

I’ve got a new manuscript to edit for work, Monday was my little brother’s birthday, today’s my parents’ anniversary, and, incidentally, the anniversary of the end of the First Punic War. And I’ve had to spent the last couple days working out some information for my taxes. I’ve been real busy lately.

So, basically, today’s not gonna be a day where a lot of Realmgard-related stuff is going to happen.

Don’t worry too much though, this isn’t a “I’m stressed out an in a bad place emotionally” thing, I promise. It’s really much more of a “I lot less Realmgard stuff than I would have liked” thing.

So, yeah, delays continue, but should be causing less, uh, delays in the near future.

As always, stayed tuned.