So as I move further into getting nofi.mari.somnol filled out, I realize that I've been putting off a story section. Stories used to be a huge part of the mari.somnol stew, but it's been so long since I've written anything now that bringing stuff that old back feels a bit unflattering. I was still growing as a person and also just plain gaining confidence in my work. When you're scared of failing, you don't do things to the greatest extent you could have. You don't sing loud, you don't draw dynamic poses, you don't write eccentric, animated characters. I've had to learn that—and now I have! But I'm happy to leave the old stuff on archives. Like the mtlx EP for my music, I really oughta get some properly new writing that shows off what I'm capable of.
That leads me to a little thing you might remember if you're a longtime journal reader—Kevin and Theo's Multiverse Misadventure. For as long as Pennyverse has been around, it's funny that the first thing that got truly published from it was a post-main plot story after Kevin's left the trio. True to that post, I did rewrite the story and it did come out a hell of a lot better, and Caby is a machine as always, so she came up with about two dozen illustrations in four different art styles, across digital and traditional. Despite some bumps in the road with the printed hardcover copy (which is in a weird mix of American and British spellings due to oversight) and the promotional poster (which got printed at the wrong size and fucked with by one of Caby's tutors, the period was not optional, thank you), it all came out killer. We were super proud of it.
And then it just kinda sat next to us, unfortunately. I always had plans to make a Web version, but Caby never sent over the images. We wanted to refine the printing and do an on-demand thing for family, friends, and Internet folks who'd like to own some physical Caby art, but those plans never materialized.
So, this year, I'm making it official. I grabbed everything from her art files when I was over there in February and I've now got it up as the first story you see on nofi.mari.somnol. For those who remember reading stories on my old sites with the color-coded dialogue, that's all back. The images will be small on modern displays, but it's super comfortable at 800x600. This is basically as good as reading one of my stories on a website gets:
So, since none of you got to read it a year ago, if you want some new Cammy writing and a ton of unreleased Caby art, go check it out! I'm absolutely gonna be working with Caby, now that we're both fresh from having read all this again and being proud of it, to get an on-demand printing going of it in case you'd like to throw her some extra money for all the hard work. And, of course, lofi and hifi mari.somnol will have higher-quality art assets, custom fonts (I will bring Los Altos back as my dialogue font, don't you worry), and maybe even a printer-specific stylesheet because those sound fun. Lots of options!
Oh, and uh, new stories. I have a couple ideas for 'em, I just have to get to writing. And then illustrating, because it's hard to convince Internet people to stare at plain text.
