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The devil continues

Many of my memories growing up center on the street in North East Philadelphia where my parents had their video store and my grandparents had their restaurant next door. The restaurant, was at the end then it was the video store, Boston Pizza and then, the Baumann’s Bakery. We would play in the restaurant, play and watch movies in the store and then run down to the bakery to get butter cake and cookies.

I remember the smell of fresh baked cookies and cakes. The taste of their chocolate chips and their ice cream sandwiches. It was warm and comfortable. Even after my family finally sold our old house and the businesses, we would stop by the bakery when we visited my grandmother. If we were coming up, my grandmother would go in to get us a butter cake before they sold out.

There were many happy memories on that block playing with my cousins. Going back now I can vaguely remember some of the other little sights and smells that used to be off our street. The long walk to Grandma’s. The memories of playing in the back rooms of the store and the restaurant.

Looking back it’s easy to smile.

It does make me a little bit sad though to learn that the Baumann family doesn’t sell the wide variety of things they used to since their children took over but, I’m glad that the business is still in the family. If you are in North East Philadelphia you should go check out the Mayfair Bakery.

The bakery on this page is inspired by my fond memories of melted butter and cooking sugar.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Page 4 of Salient Caligation: The Devil is live. I was thinking of doing a short run chapter book promotion of this chapter once I have all the pages of this section complete before those pages go live on the site. This means that if you area Patron or buy a copy, you will know what will happen for a month or so ahead of time until the webcomic catches up.

What do you think?

Ch 3 Pg 3 Notes

Every manga needs a monologue. This is the only one for Salient Caligation so far. This is a different pace from the other chapters but this will start moving along quickly soon enough!

Time is going to pass fairly quickly but it’ll be in this year until the end of this section.

It is important to me to show that Jie and Bolin’s family life is solid and supportive. Lisa knows what her mom does. Bolin knows and supports Jie. I don’t think this is something that gets shown too often in comics.

Mom is a magical girl and it isn’t a secret.

15 Oct 19

Just a reminder, Patrons are getting Salient updates every week between sketch page updates and full comic page updates a week before they go live on the website!

I really enjoyed putting this page together and seeing Nicoy bring it to life. The shrine in the background is a Tawainese Buddhist Temple, more specifically, we used Lungshan Temple as our reference.

I didn’t include year stamps on this page since we are quickly showing the growth of Bolin and Jie’s relationship and family. The next time skip is the last one for this segment of the issue.

As a result of this issue spanning years, it might be more like 35-40 pages vice my usual goal of 25-30. There is a lot of ground to cover so this will be as long as it needs to be to fully tell this story.

Salient Caligation: The Eight of Swords Complete

Final Ch 2 Cover

Salient Caligation: The Eight of Swords is available in paperback on Aug. 23, 2019 from your favorite online Retailer! If you want to see your local comic shop carry Salient or Song of Asteria, they can order it wholesale through Ingram’s catalog!

Included are 25 pages of higher resolution versions of Ch 2 with updated/corrected dialogue; bonus artbook and world information! Chapter 2 will be released to web on Sept 11.

Chapter 3 will start Oct 2, 2019!

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

The digital ebook is on sale Aug 26, 2019 but $3 donators on my Patreon will be able to get a copy immediately.

DriveThru Comics

Kindle

Apple Books

Google Books

Rakuten Kobo

!ndiego

Updates

I’ve been having a bit of a difficult few months. I am trying to stay focused and keep working through it all.

I recently joined the Horror Writers Association as a supporting member but hope to be able to upgrade to a full writer membership in the future!

I have been getting both Song of Asteria Issue 1 and Salient Caligation Ch 2 ready for print and that’s helped. I do intend to go back and have Nicoy redo Ch 1 at some point before making that issue available in paperback.

If you;d like to see that happen, please consider donating to my Patreon!

Progress

This chapter is nearing the end and I am happy to report that I am working on the script for Chapter 3! Nicoy has done a great job! If you would like to help out with the updates to get them sooner, please consider donating! Once this chapter concludes, I will be uploading the high resolution ebook to Amazon and DriveThru comics. I will give Createspace a shot with POD for this issue. Would you be interested in supporting a redraw of Chapter 1? I am leery of redoing that Chapter again since it feels like it is cursed.