No Dragons Press Episode 14: “The Fabric of the Universe”

Show Notes for Episode 14

These are the show notes from No Dragons Press: Episode Fourteen: the Fabric of the Universe. (I start reading chapter 14 around 4 minutes in, if you want to skip.)

Hey everyone, thanks for listening!

Hanging with family is awesome, challenging, and mostly awesome.

So I went to a [family] wedding this past weekend and first of all, there is nothing like a good old-fashioned wedding dance party. You know, you get cousins and aunts and uncles and everybody all together drinking old fashioneds and dressed all pretty and you know what can possibly be better than that?

I have just a ton of cousins and it’s always so much fun to connect with them as adults, these people who—we all shared so much of our childhoods with each other and watched each other grow, and there’s people we remember as kids just a few years ago who are growing up into absolute gorgeous and wonderful little adults, and welcoming new boyfriends and girlfriends and seeing how they handle our good-natured but decidedly raucous brand of getting together for a family bash…

My family’s from a really small town and I live in Minneapolis now and I don’t see them a lot. So I’m seeing a lot of these people for the first time in many months, some of them maybe a year or two years, it was just really incredible. I just I love my family. I mean, I know that some people had it pretty rough at home, and I can’t say anything about that, but I think in general a lot of it is how you choose to look at the differences that come out when we get together.

I think it’s easy as adults to kind of separate ourselves from the people we used to be, but I feel like it’s just so important to, you know, check in on where you’re from every now and then. It can be really humbling to be faced with who you used to be and how people remember you and what you used to be like, but it’s also a great way to see you how far you’ve gone and where other people gone and just touch in and remember all the things you have in common or used to have in common, and most importantly remember how special and unique your little clan is in the world.

I think that’s really the best way to get a good humanizing look at whatever we each like to call the other side in this in these turbulent political times. So often we just live in an echo chamber of media and friends and there’s a lot of self-affirming stuff going on but there’s not a lot of honest looks at the other side

I think family in all its different facets is a way to put a human face on that again and really remember that most sides of any issue just is not a good against evil thing as far as general people go, and a lot of the really deep differences the media would like to like us to think we have are sometimes just tools of people who want us all distracted and pissed off at each other.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is always right

You know, there are good people and there’s bad people, and I think we all have a tendency to seek out those things that affirm what we want to think we know rather than honestly trying to learn. I Neil deGrasse Tyson earlier had a tweet that sums this up pretty well, I’ll make sure to find that and put it in the show notes.

Well, last week saw Addie finally getting a handle on herself after the complete weirdness of what she and her friends are dealing with, and this week we see her finally stepping up a little bit, which is cool.

And I’m really excited because they’re just starting to put together a plan for what to do next, which is always fun because nothing ever goes as planned, and I’m really looking forward to getting into the heart of what’s really going on here and what’s at stake.

That’s about all I’ve got in me—I hope you enjoy Episode 14, and thanks!

Thanks for listening, you guys. Hey, and if you haven’t checked out what Emily’s been doing in a while, make sure to check out our WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED FICTION SERIES over at ascraeuspress.com/nodragons. Thanks so much for listening!

No Dragons Press

Episode 13: “Bad News and Good News”

Show Notes for Episode 13

These are the show notes from No Dragons Press: Episode 13, where I read chapter 13: “Bad News and Good News.” (I start reading the chapter about two minutes in, if you want to skip ahead.)

Hey everyone, and thanks for listening! This is No Dragons Press: A High Fantasy Fiction Podcast: Episode 13!

Tis the season to wear pants again

So, it is getting toward the end of September here in Minneapolis, which means one thing: it is fall.

I don’t really care what the calendar says, around here we consider it cold when it’s time to start wearing pants to bed again, and that is definitely happening tonight. The wind is howling like a bastard there, and I think I’ve got my studio pretty well soundproofed, but today is definitely going to be the test.

One for the stoners…

Well, I can’t really follow the last two episodes up with much, but let me just say that I was doing some last-minute edits to this week’s chapter, and this is definitely one for the stoners. I mean, last chapter, Addie completely freaked out, so it makes sense that she’ll want to spend some time relaxing a bit with her secret stash of marijuana.

But weed is definitely the theme of the episode, other than Addie trying to make sense of things and Nate trying to talk her down, and—well, you’ll see, but he’s got some very good news for her that I think you’ll enjoy.

And that’s plenty from me!

I hope you enjoy No dragons Press Chapter 13, “Bad News and Good News.”

And make sure to check out episode 11 and episode 12 if you missed my interview with Ascraeus Press illustrator Emily Ruf of ruftimes.com. She’s hilarious, and we’re even occasionally on point. Occasionally.

You can also check out this week’s chapter on our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series!

Hey, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed chapter 13. IF you’re enjoying the story, please tell a friend, and tune in next week. take care, guys.

No Dragons Press

Episode 12: Lost In Space-Time

Hey, everybody! Thanks for listening. This is episode twelve, which is totally nuts, and today I’ll be finishing up last week’s interview with Emily Ruf. She’s the illustrator for No Dragons Press and we had a lot of fun together, so if you didn’t hear last week’s episode, make sure to check that out too.

Then we’ll pick up the story with chapter twelve, Lost in Space-Time. Last week we learned a little bit more about what Tristan built and where he might have taken them, and this week we keep going from there. We watch Addie try to deal with this new reality and also a few confrontations she wasn’t quite prepared for, and we also start to see her pitch in a little bit.

(If you want to skip ahead to the chapter, it starts around 10:55—but seriously you want to hear the second part of my interview with Emily.)

Alright, that’s it from me. I hope you enjoy the rest of the interview and this week’s chapter, and thanks!

***

So, here’s the story: I don’t have show notes for you. Why? They’re time-consuming to type out, this was a really long episode, and I don’t have time or the hookup somewhere.

(Can I automatically transcript stuff with an iPad app, does anyone know? TELL ME.)

Honesty is everything.

Instead, here’s a recap. We talked about:

• our past together
• Emily’s drawings in our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series over on the Ascraeus Press website
• Kevin Costner (namely our favorite movies,* Waterworld and The Postman)
• Odell beer (the greatest brewery in the world)
• Fantastic Planet (the greatest animated movie ever made) and
• potential future No Dragons Press fanfic opportunities

*Not actually our favorite movies

I hope you enjoy the episode and the chapter, make sure to check out the artwork for chapter twelve, and have a great week!

Thanks for listening, you guys. Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast wherever you’re listening, be sure to check out nodragonspress.com/podcast to learn more about our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series, and tune in next week for another episode of No Dragons Press: A High Fantasy Podcast. Have fun, be good, and I’ll see you next week!

These are the show notes for No Dragons Press: Episode 11. Enjoy!

(You can find the beginning of chapter 11 right around the 6:40 mark.)

Interview with Illustrator Emily Ruf

*beer cracks*

[voices: Woooo!]

This is a really exciting episode because I have No Dragons Press illustrator Emily Ruf on the show! I’m going to ask her to talk about her side of the Weekly Illustrated Fiction series, which we have running over at ascraeuspress.com/nodragons. Then I’m going to ask her to talk about what it’s like to collaborate with someone on a new chapter every week! That’s my favorite part of this process.

* * *

Maggie: Let’s start with you talking a little bit about your background and what you’ve been doing aside from [No Dragon Press].

Emily: Yeah! So, drawing is my background. I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I used to draw cat faces all the time, that was my favorite thing to draw—

M: Surprising no one.

E: Yeah, surprising no one. So, yeah, I’ve been trying to take every art class in school, always doing drawings on the side. I’d say in the last three or four years or so I’ve gotten more serious about it, I’ve been doing bigger pieces, pushing myself to try different styles and things.

I really feel like in the last few years I’ve been coming into my own skin with drawing. It’s been flourishing ever since, and with working with you, too—I feel like I finally found a vision that I can represent fairly well and feel good about.

It’s all about taking these images in my head and trying to get them down on paper how I see them in my head, and with practice I feel like I’ve gotten better at that, at least to the point where I’m satisfied at the end. Most of the time.

M: Awesome. So talk a little bit about how you start creating something when you’re not really sure how it will end up. I get the sense that there’s a lot of growth while you’re actually working.

E: Yeah! It all starts with a visual in my head. From there, I like to use reference images. It gives me a really good base point to go off of. So once I have an image in my head, I try to find something online that looks similar.

If it’s a face, I try to find a similar face or expression, or if I can’t find anything I’ll usually mock something up in Photoshop using snippets of different images, maybe other drawings–just something that I can see it stat to come into fruition.

From there, I like to start with a loose sketch with pencil, a lot of loose lines, and eventually those lines start to form something that makes sense. They get a little darker, I erase the ones that don’t need to be there, and…yeah, that’s how it all begins.

M: That’s been really fun, because you’ll text me works in progress, and then I get to watch you add layers to that.

E: Yeah, it’s fun to have you on the other end because I get to send you these sketches in the beginning that look like almost nothing, and you’re probably terrified. But then as I switch to ink, and I start to make these lines permanent, then the actual drawing starts to come through.

Progress shots of creating the #illustration for Chapter 6 of NO DRAGONS PRESS, written by Maggie Gibbs (@nodragonspress). Each week, a new chapter and illustration will be posted on ascraeuspress.com. We’ve got 6 up and roughly 38 on the way so stay tuned! #illustratedfiction #indiepublishing #highfantasy #fuckdragons

A video posted by Emily Ruf (@ruftimes) on Jul 27, 2016 at 10:31am PDT

Then, depending on how many layers of ink and different colors of markers I might be using, it really starts to change. It gets a lot darker, I use a lot of black backgrounds and dark colors. That’s a highlight of mine, to send you the progress pics and see your reactions.

M: Oh, it’s so much fun. It’s so much fun to see you reach into my brain and come up with something that looks like something.

E: I hope so.

M: So then you’ve taken some of those pictures and edited them together to make a little video so everyone can actually see your progress—are those on Ascraeus Press’s Instagram account, or over on your account?

E: Right now, they’re on my Instagram account, which is @ruftimes, but it might be good to move them over to Ascraeus Press.

M: Yeah. It’s been a fun collection to build.

E: It’s fun to see it morph. Taking 10-12 pictures during the process—it’s like watching a flower grow in time-lapse. It’s kind of cool.

M: I like it!

E: Yeah, so I was driving today and I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car that said “REPUBLICANS FOR VOLDEMORT.” And, uh…

M: So you’ve got your write-in all set.

E: I mean his hair is better.

*laughing*

M: Isn’t Voldemort the one with a face on the other side of his face?

E: Uh, yeah, that’s…I think so…

M: I’m revealing my lack of Harry Potter lore…

E: …sort of? And then he turns into the squished nose man.

M: Yeah! He’s sort of like a mummy.

E: He’s terrifying.

M: Don’t hate me because I don’t know Harry Potter.

E: Yeah, so I just watched it for the first time in my life.

M: Had you ever read them?

E: I mean I’m almost thirty, that’s kind of sad—no, I haven’t read them.

M: What did you think? Did you watch it on VHS?

E: Uh, fantastic. Not gonna read them, though. And no, I don’t have one of those. I left my VHS player in 1986.

E: Beer Break!

M: Cheers.

*clink*

 * * *

* * *

So, we actually did come back after the beer break, but I thought I’d save the rest of the interview for next week’s episode. So make sure to check back next week for the rest of my conversation with No Dragons Press illustrator and all-around bad-ass person Emily Ruf.

There’s actually a whole lot more hilarity in this interview, which eventually just turned into us lambasting Waterworld, but I’ll save you the trouble of fast-forwarding through that here. (There may be a separate podcast in the works…)

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed hearing a little bit more about the process behind the No Dragons Press artwork. Emily’s a fantastic artist and a really good friend, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from her in the future.

And now, here is No Dragons Press: Episode 11: A Chain of Worlds.

Thanks so much for listening, everyone. Check back next week for the rest of my interview with Emily Ruf, and make sure to check out nodragonspress.com/podcast for show notes, links, and all sorts of good stuff. Till then, take care, be kind, and have a great week!

No Dragons Press

Episode 10: “Addie Says Goodbye”

Show Notes from Episode 10

These are the show notes from No Dragons Press: Episode 10: Addie Says Goodbye. (The chapter begins at around 3:45, if you want to skip ahead.)

Hey everyone, thanks so much for listening! I hope you’re all having a great weekend!

Chapter Ten Is a Doozie

I’m really excited about this week’s chapter. You could probably tell with the last episode, but that “big event” I’ve been kind of hinting at is finally here!

So, go ahead and skip forward a bit if you just don’t want to wait, but first I wanted to talk a little bit about what I’ve been up to this week and let you know about some exciting plans for next week’s episode.

Minnesota State Fair on a Stick

I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and one of my absolute favorite things about summer is the Minnesota State Fair. I go every year and eat and drink everything, and this year was no exception. It occurred to me that if you’re not from the Midwest United States, you probably haven’t experienced anything like this before, so there are a few things you should know.

Pretty much every county, big or small, holds a county fair in the summer. It’s this huge celebration of Midwest farm culture. There are horses, pigs, sheep, cattle, ducks, chickens, you name it, and you can watch them winning medals with their farmers or check them out in their pens throughout the fair. The local Lions Club chapter and all kinds of organizations have booths or hand out beer or just walk around and talk to people.

Then there’s food, a lot of it on sticks—it’s just a thing we do—and deep-fried pickles and brats and hamburgers and mini donuts in paper bags. There’s probably someone selling honey or jam, there’s an eighties cover band and/or a country band, although I don’t really care about that part, and you can go on rides and get your face painted and check out crafts and prize-winning stuff and play carnival games and learn about local agriculture and buy farm equipment, all at once.

Then there’s the Minnesota State Fair. You don’t just check out the animals, you watch them giving birth. There isn’t an eighties cover band, there’s Alabama and Don Henley. A lot the beer is local, some of it crazy experimental, the cookies and donuts come in gigantic buckets, and it’s not just pickles and hot dogs on a stick, it’s things like hot dish—another thing we do—and salad and mac and cheese on a stick, and an all-you-can-drink milk bar that Ron Burgundy has ruined for everyone.

Other states have fairs, but I feel like because it’s basically right in Minneapolis and we have such a great mix of cultures here, our fair has this really fantastic vibe. You can find Caribbean food and Middle Eastern food and spam sushi and all kinds of crazy fusion stuff, and it’s this really unique blend.

I walked and ate and drank all day and it was amazing and I kind of want to go again before it’s over. Yeah, it goes for like two weeks or something. I took a few pictures, which you saw if you follow me on Instagram at @nodragonspress, and I’ll put a few in the show notes so you can check it out.

Special Guest on Next Week’s Podcast

OK, big announcement: Next week, I will be having a special guest on the show: the fantastic illustrator over at our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series, Emily, is coming on the show. On top of doing a brand-new illustration for every single chapter of No Dragons Press, she’s designed T-shirts and done stuff with bands and does amazing photography and all sorts of amazing and creative stuff. Check her stuff out at ruftimes.com, for real.

I’m going to be asking her a bunch of questions and I’m really excited to have her on the show. If you have any questions for her, just head to nodragonspress.com/contact to send them in and I’ll make sure to ask her.

Alright, that’s it from me. Without any further ado, here is Chapter Ten: Addie Says Goodbye. I really hope you enjoy it!

Hey, guys. Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts, find show notes and links to our Weekly Illustrated Fiction series at nodragonspress.com/podcast, and keep looking out for each other, okay? See you next week. Take care.