I quit writing to become a turkey chef
Three Things Friday returns
We are back with another edition of the award-winning1 Three Things Friday, where I share at least three interesting things I’ve come across in the last week.
For those of you who celebrate American Thanksgiving, I hope you had an enjoyable holiday weekend! For those of you who celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving, please let us know in the comments how it differs tradition-wise from American Thanksgiving so I don’t have to go look it up on Wikipedia.
And for those of you who do not live in either country, I hope you enjoyed your added two days of productivity while the rest of us were gorging ourselves on food.
Anyway, enough preamble, onto the Things!
Making a fake movie to understand Hollywood accounting
I always find stories about the lengths Hollywood studios will go to “lose” money on a film and screw over profit participants fascinating. This is one of the most succinct breakdowns I’ve seen and is much quicker than reading through court filings. Although spoiler alert: they didn’t actually make the fake movie!
The story of sriracha
is basically what would happen if I tried to make this column my full-time job. Every Saturday morning he writes about something really interesting (why LinkedIn is/was so cringy, How Marvel lost Spider-Man) plus breaks down the happenings of the week that was. Although his most recent column about Microstrategy’s crazy BitCoin bet is definitely worth a read, I found his post from two weeks ago about the founder of Huy Fong Sriracha sauce particularly interesting:
And if you don’t want to read something so long, you can read this click-baity article about a Pete Davidson TikTok post in which he shares how much SNL cast members get paid for each episode.2
How to Kickstart a long-running comic series
I’ve listened to the ComixLaunch podcast for the better part of 4 years.
has been in the comics Kickstarter community for a long time, and his podcast is an amazing resource for those of you looking to publish your own indie comic.His recent interview with Kevin Joseph and Mike Shea on their Kickstarter team-up campaign is a great behind-the-scenes look at publishing a long-running series on Kickstarter. Each creator has a series that is in the double digits in terms of issues, and they launched a trading card crossover campaign telling a new story bridging both of their comic universes. (You can still back the campaign via late pledges on Kickstarter).
Adventures in cooking
As discussed above, we are coming off of Thanksgiving, the ultimate cooking holiday. I’ve cooked a turkey the past several years, and I have come to the conclusion that the strategy is “less is more.” No stuffing the turkey with stuffing, no injecting the bird with butter, oil, or other fat. Just rub the outside with oil, cover it with seasoning, let it sit overnight in the fridge, and then cook it the next morning.
And then once it’s done, don’t even waste your time watching two dozen YouTube videos on how to carve the perfect turkey. Just take some food shears and cut every piece of meat off the bones you can find.
I also cooked two briskets in my slow cooker, which turned out quite nicely, although I am not ready to also quit my job as turkey chef to become a brisket pit master. Here is a picture of part of our spread:
Tales from the Creative Mines
Earlier this year I launched a new story (and perhaps a new story universe?):
I published 8 chapters of Demon Sword over the course of a week on Royal Road. It was fun rolling out the entirety of the tale all in a row, but in the back of my mind, I knew there was more of the story to tell (this should be clear if you’ve read all the way to the end).
Anyway, after a lot of musing, one night I just started typing something on my phone, and a few days later I had finished the first part of what I envision as a novel-length adventure.
Read a sneak peek of the next volume of I’m In Love With My Possessed Demon Sword here. If you enjoy it, please leave a rating on Royal Road so that other readers will find it! I’m hoping to release additional chapters as 2025 progresses, but my main goal for next year (which I’ll talk about in a few weeks) is to finish the NYC Questing Guild trilogy.
That’s a wrap! If you enjoyed this format, let me know in the comments.
And are you interested in more behind-the-scenes content chronicling the development of Blood of Atlantis #2 behind the paywall here and/or over at Ko-Fi? Sound off!
Finally, if you want to help support ARC Worlds and my work, pick up a copy of my books and Blood of Atlantis #1!
Thank you for believing in my writing enough to click down here to see what award this 1-issue column won. Your support is award enough (see what I did there?).
It’s three grand an episode. There, saved you a click!