Sean Gibson > Recent Status Updates

Fun fact; Prince Albert was so serious and studious that he once responded to "Why did the chicken cross the road?" with a 4,000 word lecture that accounted for weather conditions, the individual motivations of the particular chicken, and seasonal migratory habits of domestic fowl. His conclusion was that the chicken in question did so because it ultimately felt compelled to reach something on the other side.

Fun fact: Victoria commissioned 200 blind nuns to embroider the lace on her wedding gown. In order to make sure the pattern could never be replicated and would remain uniquely hers, she had the nuns' arms removed as soon as the garment was finished. Queen Vic didn't mess around when it came to lace, wedding fashion, or the amputation of holy limbs.

I finally remembered to post some pics of the library...eventually, I'll get old enough to spend some time in it. Everyone's welcome to come on over and read; you don't even need to bring your own books!

https://twitter.com/Gibknight/status/...

Fun fact: despite being a polymath of the first order, Prince Albert never learned how to tie his shoes. He wore Velcro until the day he died. Victoria was secretly ashamed of Albert’s failing, and confessed in her diary that she thought him “less of a man than a flaccid codswallop.”

It’s classic and fun and I love it, but the Wein-to-Claremont transition was a bumpy one...like two horny teenagers with braces who enthusiastically wanted to get to the same place, but had no idea how to get there together and without causing considerable pain for unfortunate onlookers.

Fun fact: upon meeting the renowned author (one of her favorites), Queen Victoria quipped that she was “relieved to finally know her Dickens from her Balzac.” Dickens stared at her blankly for a moment before telling the Queen that she quite likely actually had a vagina, and that the royal physician ought to be better educating her on these matters.

Pros: fun, olde-style prose, two completely different heroes, descriptive flair. Cons: rampantly misogynistic barbarian culture, slut-shaming, not enough vowels in at least one character’s name. Let’s see where we go from here...

Fun fact: Queen Victoria claimed her favorite game was whist, but it was, in fact, Super Mario Bros. 3. She confessed the truth of the matter during a late-night toke with Prime Minister Robert Peel, who elected not to inhale, but did freely avail himself of the royal supply of Doritos.

Fun fact: Lord Melbourne’s dreamy tousled locks served as the inspiration for the scientists who grew Patrick Dempsey’s hair in a laboratory (you didn’t think that kind of perfection occurred naturally, did you?).

Fun fact: A bird tried to sing "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" in the middle of Victoria's coronation, but was promptly (and somewhat harshly) silenced and admonished by the Lord Chamberlain, who told the disappointed blue bird that the song, "Simply isn't British enough for the occasion."

That Guy Gardner's a real douche bag. Isn't there like a non-douche provision in the Green Lantern code? Okay, well, Sinestro, so maybe not...

For the millions of you who have been clamoring to taste more of my goodies, I've posted the first few chapters of The Camelot Shadow so that you can sample my treats: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

I will now return to not saying weirdly suggestive things.

I'm long overdue to dive into this seminal work of canonical fantasy.

(Heh heh...I said "seminal.")

Fun fact: Victoria's first official act as queen was to order a pizza (extra cheese, because stress, and extra onions, because no one cared if queens have bad breath). She'd hoped for something more memorable and historical, but she found out about her ascension late in the day, and, well, she was really hungry.

I don’t normally go in for interspecies shenanigans, mind you, but that John Blacksad is one handsome feline.

Also, this art is fantastic.

Fun fact: at age 16, Victoria, buzzed on too many cups of Earl Gray, wrapped her mother's carriage around a telegraph pole. After staggering away from the wreckage, the concussed future queen blamed a hapless bystanding bootblack for the accident. After he was summarily executed, Victoria showed some remorse, writing in her diary, "Felt bad about the shoe polish guy, but he was kind of an asshole anyway."

This book features more violent acts than what you'd see if you threw 1,000 Pokemon cards into the middle of an elementary school gym and told the kids to go Lord of the Flies on each other to find the legendary ones.

Fun fact: When she was 11 years old, Victoria loved to play with dolls, and she named her favorite one "Onomatopoeia." Originally, she called it "Gurglegurglewaaaaamama!", but ultimately decided that the moniker wasn't sufficiently dignified

Fun fact: when she was 5 years old, Victoria beat then-Prime Minister Robert Jenkinson in an arm wrestling contest. Due to a wager they had agreed to prior to the match, Jenkinson was forced to say "I'm a happy little girl" every time someone poured him a cup of tea for the subsequent month.

Fun fact: as a baby, Victoria once ate an entire cheesecake while sitting astride the carcass of an alligator she killed with a harmonica.

I just feel like if I was a giant tiger god, I wouldn't have gone down that easy, magic or no magic. But, maybe I'm being unfair to giant tiger gods.

Everyone can relax--I'll be happy to update you on the status of Queen Victoria when I finish this in about 117 years. It's dense.

(Spoiler alert, though: turns out she's dead.)

I can’t decide what’s tougher—keeping straight a large cast of characters with common names or a large cast of characters with crazy fantasy names.

This Magik series underscores just how dark Illyana's backstory is--I mean, a 7-year-old girl basically gets sent to hell and spends 7 years being tortured by demons. That's an insane origin story for a child character in a mainstream superhero comic at one of the Big Two. It would be like if Wolverine's origin story was having his genitals gnawed on by actual wolverines for a few years. Well, sort of.

This is just damn good storytelling.

(Or “dirty killing” as autocorrect just tried to make that. What the hell, demon iPhone?)

Need something to read? Want to watch me make awkward metaphorical references to plantar digits penetrating the liquidy slime of my storytelling soup? Well, I've got you covered--check out a free preview of The Strange Task Before Me here: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Dip those toes gently though, people.

I would say that it's shocking that a major historical event that transpired in the 20th century can be so poorly understood and hazily documented (referring, of course, to exactly what happened at the Altaussee mine), but I can't even remember what I had for lunch yesterday, and I blanked on my zip code when I had to input it to buy gas last week. So, who am I to judge?

Every wanted to sample my goodies without having to fully immerse yourself in my storytelling swamp? Check out a sample of The Strange Task Before Me, along with other disgusting metaphors, here: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Bloodier start than one might expect from a book about a library...