Firing on all Cylinders

It’s hard to write articles such as this, because I’ve nothing new to include to the TAO archive, no real updates for you to sift through and digest, no pieces of media you can sink your teeth into, but I’ve so much in the works right now it would be foolish for me not to report on it, besides I’ve time on my hands to write such articles as you will find out later, hope you stick around. I am excited about the coming weeks, and for the first time I think ever in my thirty-four years on this little blue planet, I wish Christmas was behind me, don’t get me wrong I am still looking forward to some peace and quiet for I’ve the whole house to myself this time around, I am looking forward to cooking a Christmas dinner and enjoying a day of quiet relaxation, I’ve a bottle of whiskey I intend to open, some niche movies I’d like to watch in front of an open fireplace, it is going to be nice, but what I enjoy more than putting my feet up is the completion of small projects and milestones, in this case my storyboards, storyboards to push a movie script I’ve constructed which hopefully will turn into a short film, to be shot next year in the latter half of 2022. I look forward to the reveal of a long overdue sketch of my lead protagonist from Episode One-The Utopian Dream, the Star Caller Isabelle Verano. She was going to be the first sketch I wanted to see, the first I pitched to the artist, Will Towns but seeing as The Utopian Dream was still being read at the time, I figured a release of Isabelle’s image may spoil some people’s enjoyment, after all the beauty of reading books is to engage the readers imagination, their interpretation of these characters, the world, the magic, the creatures and all the content therein is part of the majesty and wonder and this aspect above everything else is one of the reasons I do what I do, to hear your sides of the story, what you took away, what you liked, what you disliked, which character you empathised with, I want to know. But (me being me) there comes a point where I want to show you something, where I want to give you something to explore and examine with your own eyes instead through my lens through the power of words. The book and future books after all are indeed written with a very vivid depiction in mind, and as a very visual person, someone who relies on what I see when I close my eyes ( yes that absolutely makes sense but feel free to laugh at me) needs to express that, so that’s why we get drawings and conceptual paintings, that’s why I indulge in other mediums to tell this story. I am also incredibly excited about the finalisation of a piece of music currently being made by an incredible pianist and the potential hiring of a new editor to work on Episode Two-Rise of the Black Doves there’s  so much to talk about here, and yet nothing to show for it besides this essay. Therefore, I am compelled to write pieces like this, they are written when I am in between jobs hence the difficulty for I have no substance, but I’ll try my best to weave something enjoyable but please understand that lots is on the way out.

I had a day off last week, I had nothing to do, and it was strange, all my points were covered, all my e-mails had been sent, all the updates to the site had been made after it had unexpectedly crashed for no reason, and I caught myself waiting for pending messages from various contacts who are doing work for me. During this hollow time, I sort of floated around my house, I made coffee, I turned on the news only to quickly shut it off again out of boredom. I played a few retro games like the very first Crash Bandicoot for the PS1, Silent Hill 2 for the PS2 before Project Eden, and Max Payne for the original Xbox, still in love with their controllers, best joypads ever! I love these games, I do enjoy early graphics, the simplistic styles and remembering when these games were at the top of their class. Silent Hill 2 for example arguably still is, I rate this game very highly, my brother and I both agree it is one of the best we’ve played, and to think it started as a Resident Evil clone only to turn into something far darker and more impactful, with so much more to say. Project Eden is one of the best squad-based shooter games I’ve ever played, next to Tom Clancy’s Rogue Spear for the PC released back in the late 90s. Project Eden has not aged incredibly well, but the game has a way to draw you in and keep you there, the puzzles are awfully designed, the weapons and tools are boring, the story is extremely slow but fuck me it’s rewarding, the more you descend the more compelling. Crash Bandicoot is one of my all-time favourite platform games next to Jak and Daxter and Oddworld, I do wish Crash’s developer Naughty Dog would go back to such titles, after witnessing the horror show that was The Last of Us 2, I beg you Naughty Dog, go back to Crash Bandicoot, you are better at writing games such as this and I’m clearly not the only one who thinks this. Max Payne was one of the first games to utilise bullet time with great effect and I found myself starting up on Resident Evil: Rebirth, this time playing it on Hard Mode, where bullets are scarce, monsters are numerous, and damage taken exceeds the norm. I’ve praised this title so much on my blog, hailed it as the greatest remakes/re-imaginings of all time and I do not see my opinion changing anytime soon, at least when I get round to playing the Final Fantasy VII Remake, Resident Evil: Rebirth has the gold, it will be interesting to see if the mighty FFVII dethrones Rebirth within the league that takes place inside my crazy head, but please, please do not get me started on the new film which has been recently released called Welcome to Racoon City, seriously just don’t because from what I’ve seen it genuinely pisses me off! How can you fuck up something so bad from something so wonderfully simple, how can you literally get everything wrong from the characters, the aesthetic, the story it fucking baffles me? Maybe that is the reason I want to revisit the original game, to find that comfortable common ground where things are good, where things are safe and make sense. In the evening of my time away from my desk, I watched some wildlife clips of ants fighting termites and then bees defending their hives against giant hornets, seriously how fucking cool and scary is the insect world!? I floated around the house some more and became kinda frustrated, it had only been several hours, and I was in need of something to do, something to work on to pass the time, something to chip away at, and then it hit me, that question lingering in the back of my mind like a ghost becoming ever more real and visible as time relentlessly goes by; What will I do when I’ve completed this series of books? Every day I get a little closer to finishing, every day I near that warm horizon and it scares me. True I still have a long, long way to go and it’s likely I’ll be an old guy when I finally wrap this up from top to bottom, from the books to the other media outlets, but I cannot shake the feeling that whence this is all over, I will be over. If I cannot last several hours, how will I last several years if not a few decades without The Ancestral Odyssey, without that ability to expand upon it and all its other wonderful avenues this project has opened? I am starting to miss the characters, it has only been a few months since I finished Rise, a few weeks since I wrote new content and I find myself wanting to move on with the journey, wanting to embark upon Episode Three-Seeds of War. Questions and speculations like this aside, the TAO platform is growing at a happy pace, soon a new branch would have extended, and that branch will be called Rise of the Black Doves and in this article, I’d like to talk about what else is coming and to refresh one’s memory on what I’ am building for the future. So please, grab yourselves a drink, take a seat and read up on what’s coming. I’ve gone with classic orange squash today; I ran out of ginger ale so this will have to do. It’s raining heavily, my music is set to chill, everything is where it should be, so let’s cover point by point the projects that will enrich this body of work. I hope you enjoy this article titled, ‘Firing on all Cylinders,’ prepare for a rant, I feel one brewing.

When I first started working with Will Towns, who is my unofficial conceptual character artist, I asked him to do a drawing of the lead protagonist of Episode One-The Utopian Dream, Isabelle Verano, but as I stated earlier, I scrapped this idea for good reason, and asked him to work on other characters to assist on the promotion of Ep2-Rise, and what a fantastic job he is doing. Each drawing is better than the last, the ramp of improvement is staggering. Even though I like his earlier work, it is impossible not to respect his skills and how they have progressed over the years we’ve been building together. Keep this in mind, for I feel it will become the theme for this article. The TAO platform would certainly be a weaker place without Wills input, and I am ever so grateful for his constant contributions and endless enthusiasm. But alas, enough time has gone by, and I cannot wait any longer, Isabelle has been pitched and is on the way, she being the first Star Caller we meet in the story, but not the first Star Caller in existence to her timeline, she’s the 23^rd. I’ve a special place reserved for Isabelle, I created her from a space of uncertainty, wrote her when I first sat down to write the books back in 2007. At the time Isabelle had no backstory, no prior characterisation other than she would be part of the Star Caller line, she had no notes, no pre-concepts of any kind, but I needed a protagonist other than Lethaniel to carry this story, I needed someone rich in emotion, who was compassionate but also had a fierceness to her, using such traits Isabelle was made, and together we encroached on something that would change us forever. In a way, she was not only your guide through this new world, but my guide too, she was as naïve as I was at the time, we’re both anti-social and strive for something more, who have become tired of the mundane and the common routine. I watched her grow into the heroine she needed to be, and I’ll never forget that nor how she made me feel when I experienced her journey. Her story is not perfect, The Utopian Dream as a whole is not free of criticism, even after the nightmare that was the early editing phase, even after multiple attempts at editing the work myself from a naive place, there are still errors, errors I simply cannot undo, but that’s fine, it’s not broken far from it and it’s layered with intrigue and mysticism, but the writing here and there can be improved upon I admit, I was an amateur at the time, an amateur with big dreams drunk on delusion. I knew very little and failed many tasks when making Dream, falling short here and there is part of the journey, it’s part of growth and despite its flaws there are huge sections I still find captivating and a joy to read. I believe the positives outweigh the negatives, I believe it has the power to grip readers, to keep them immersed and Isabelle is certainly a part of that experience. I cannot wait for Will to deliver on Isabelle’s sketch, I’ve already seen the first draft of her, and he’s captured her perfectly! Everything from the surface level aesthetic to the soul of the character. Will I’m sure will do a fantastic job, he’s never gone wrong. This drawing will be the first to be coloured, it will also be the first to be given a background and the first to be used in a video paired with some incredible music, music that embodies her story throughout Episode One, and this leads me to my next undertaking and that’s the music itself which is shaping up to be…How can I put this, unbelievable!

I’ve already had a piece of music for The Utopian Dream written, it’s easily accessible and I am proud of it. The guys over at Atlas Audio wrote and performed it, it can be listened to over on my tiny YouTube and Bitchute channels, it’s also featured on my website complimented with a documentary, a video lasting half an hour, one that I sewed together myself using my God like editing skills, and when I say God, I mean extremely average editing skills. If you’ve got some time, do check it out, every view is valuable, every like, comment or share is deeply appreciated. The piece was a general theme of Episode One, a theme that had the mighty task of capturing the essence of the first instalment using the lead protagonists Lethaniel and Isabelle as the foundations, overlapped with the epic nature of the literary work, a task indeed a great one, and one that Atlas performed beautifully. I look forward to working with them again in the future, when it comes to the general theme for Rise of the Black Doves, and of course the music that will feature in the short film I’ve planned in 2022. This aside, I’ve found someone, a very talented young woman, a new reader, and a loving supporter of mine, she’s also a musician, a pianist, an extremely creative one who does have hopes and dreams of making music for films and games, and she is the person kindly constructing a focused theme for Isabelle Verano. I’ve had the pleasure of listening to some of her drafts thus far, operating in a similar fashion as Atlas, starting with snippets and building them after some feedback. I’ve heard some compositions that circulate around her initial thoughts and feelings of Isabelle, bouncing off me from time to time always inspired by the character, taking key scenes in the book and allowing them to be embellished with the language of music, forever careful to sequence the events as they would play out in the story like the notes are walking you through her growth as a young woman, struggling to come to terms with secrets, nightmarish visions and the gradual loss of her faith, and the results are simply wonderful. They are so wonderful in fact, that I listened to the first draft she sent me about five hundred times and it’s still not boring. Of course, there are niggling portions that require some work, first drafts always need a touch up and this goes for anything, whether it be literature, a scene in a film or in this case a piece of music, everything needs a second go, but if someone can get this close to perfection so soon after only a couple of weeks of work, I can only wonder what the outcome will be like, I cannot wait to hear the final, I cannot wait to couple it with a music video and include it in the archive, it’s going to be amazing, possibly one of the strongest expansions of TAO yet, and yes, that means more so than the Live-Action Trailer.

Honestly, this girl belongs on stage (okay it’s here I feel a rant coming on) she belongs at a piano playing beautiful pieces of music to audiences of thousands, and yet here she is, pressured into working multiple mundane jobs that stretch so far from her talents as a musician, jobs that offers her no meaningful nourishment of the soul and it’s depressing, it’s always depressed me. Yes, I understand that the best art comes from adversity but when your days, weeks, months, and years are filled to the brim with the daily grind, how can any progress be made and that’s not to mention the times where you need to keep your life together, and that gets to me. This world seems to cater for conformists and idiots these days, but when it comes to creativity, we’re told to snap out of it, we’re the ones ridiculed, and this has been happening all my life it’s seen as a problem when it shouldn’t be. There is no building I can show up to everyday that will support me for what it is I or anyone else in the same bracket do, there is no establishment we can apply for or be measured on, I get that that’s not how creativity works but trying to do something in this area and have it work for you, is next to impossible these days.  It’s depressing because so many talented people go under the radar for so long, unable to monetise unable to shed light on their work, some never getting picked up or acknowledged throughout their entire lifetimes and I cannot think of anything more tragic off the cuff as I write this angrily at my desk listening to trance music, and it gets worse, but before I hammer in on that point I must express that I know, I get it – The internet is a thing, it’s never been easier to share and express yourself so freely than ever before in human history, we live in that age, a technological haven, but it’s a double edged sword. On the one hand you’ve talented people like this pianist working hard, people who build themselves, who nourish their creativity, who educate themselves and become the best versions they can be, and they’re awesome, they’re people who I want to see more of, people who make me sit back in awe and wonder; How they do it? But for every one of those people, you’ve a million brainlets taking pictures of their breakfast, or snapping their living rooms or their fucking tanned feet next to a swimming pool, it’s insufferable, and these people often are hailed with unending support, lavished with positivity when all the while, there are people like this young woman I’ve described, people like Will and I suppose myself, who take years to perfect a craft and get breezed over without a second thought. This tells you something about society these days, doesn’t it? But we’ve only just scratched the surface here; Log onto your social media, I assume you who is reading this has an account somewhere on one of these soulless platforms, and if you don’t, good for you, stay strong my brother, my sister you’ll remain happier for it, but for those of you who do continue to make Silicon Valley rich, log onto your social media for five minutes and do a little scrolling. If you can last longer than five minutes without being bored out of your fucking mind, if you can last the entirety of that time without feeling sick or insulted, then you’re stronger than I am my friend, seriously because I just can’t do it anymore. I should have learned my lesson a long time ago, now I make a conscious effort to stay OFF social media for as long as possible, and if I do post something on one of these platforms, it’s usually something to do with my work, something I think people will find interesting, a joke perhaps or something other to what people are used to. Let me tell you what I saw the other day, I only scrolled for a few seconds before shutting it off and considered flushing my phone but in that time, I saw a woman re-posting a Tweet of some moronic blue check mark who was lumping every single man into a despicably category, all because of their sex, something they/I have no control over when entering this world. Because there are bad people who share the same biology as me, I have to ‘do better,’ I have to somehow bear the guilt and shame that the bad people carry, and let’s be honest the people she is talking about do not feel such things, they call it ‘toxic masculinity,’ I call it being a dick! Call me old fashioned but that is exactly what it is. Masculinity is not toxic, nor is femininity and believe me I’ve even heard from the other side of this debate that ‘toxic femininity’ is a thing, and I honestly want to tell these people to get bent. Masculinity and femininity complement each other, harbouring interesting and loose sets of traits but somehow the cretins of today who get offended by literary everything have hijacked these terms and it’s pathetic. This isn’t new, actually I am kinda numb to being called everything horrible under the sun by these people, it’s just what you have to deal with if you’re a guy on the internet or a guy who has a reasonable opinion, but sometimes you could do with not being called an asshole just for having a dick, and if you’ve of a certain melanin level or lack of one then the fun begins. Anyway, after her someone else post something below, and she was claiming that biological sex is a social construct…I don’t even have the energy to get into that right now, it’s so stupid it’s hardly worth thinking about or taking seriously, so I’ll just leave it at two genders and move onto the next. Another someone was banging on about how men can now give birth! At this point you’ve probably noticed a pattern, this hot excrement spilling onto my feed was littered among all the usual political garbage that these people ingest on a daily basis, filtered waste that they consume and regurgitate as they peddle their victim complex like it’s a badge of honour, God I am so tired of this, but this is what we’re talking about today, even in the mainstream. Replying to such people online would be a waste of your precious time, but if I were to meet them in person during this time, I would rebuttal them not with facts, because we all know these people do not like facts, but I’d approach with a different tactic; How about you do something constructive with your time instead of complaining on the internet!? How about you fix your own life before trying to ‘fix’ everyone else’s? Why don’t you go outside, put your phone down, log off for a while and find something you can enjoy and appreciate? Anyway just to clarify, social media is not exactly a bad thing, let’s just get that out of the way first, it’s actually a pretty handy tool, and depending on how you use that tool should be a supplement to your purpose in life, but what it has shown me over the last ten to fifteen years since I logged on, is that most people sadly have nothing going on, this is a sad fact I’ve come to observe, most people seem to consume the next Netflix show or Marvel movie, they’ve an unhealthy obsession with themselves, they work for the weekend or that holiday, everyone is suddenly a politician, you cannot question any of this crazy without being labelled an ist or a phobe and I simply can’t do it anymore, apologies to repeat myself but I’m done. The only reason I keep said platforms like Lamebook and Twatter, is to give my series of novels a fighting chance, because you can’t progress like in the good old days where work spoke for itself, no you NEED to be online unfortunately, and being online is for the most part a horrible, chaotic eye-rolling experience where idiots and lunatics take precedence over raw talent and genuine intelligence. Still don’t believe me, then let’s crank it up a notch and go on Tik-Tok?

Once this is over, once I’ve completed my fantasy series, I look forward to posting my final messages and getting the fuck off social media, never to return. I think I’ll keep my Blog, I like my Blog, it’s like a life journal at this point that houses all my rants like the one you’ve just sat through, and of course I’ll keep my website running, it will remain active for as long as it can, until the Social Justice Warriors take over completely of course and begin to enforce their Communistic ideology into the world, and when that day comes, I guess I’ll be as fucked as the next guy, but my presence will be a minimal one. You can derive so much joy, so much fulfilment if you take some risks, if you challenge yourself, I’ve talked about such things before, so I won’t go on and on about it, but it’s a sad reality so many are blind to or are simply distracted. Time ticks by fast, as far as we know we only get one life, it’s a privilege to be here, use that time, savour it, and leave something wonderful behind, leave your unique mark, your dent in the universe whatever that may be. Anyway, apologies for the ranting and raving, I guess my bottle is full and the cap just exploded, maybe I should set some boundaries for myself in the future? Moving on.

This young lady, this incredibly talented pianist who is gifting me with a piece of music inspired by one of my favourite characters, restores a little faith I have in humanity. Will Towns, his work too is a light on the horizon, there are in fact so many people I follow and keep up with who I want to see elevate themselves, who can be free to pursue their creative journey’s, to become the best people they can be, and this goes for me as well. I’m not a factory worker, I’m not fit for retail or most other cooperate jobs out there, it’s not in my nature to work to a bell, to arrive at 9pm and work to a rigid schedule, I simply want to tell a story, convey some powerful messages and explore the human condition through from what I consider to be very rich, intricate, charismatic characters, but I’m forever held back, forced behind bars and needless hurdles that do nothing but aggravate, frustrate and slow down my progress, and I’m sick of it. I’ve been doing it since I was thirteen, working in shite, dead end jobs for the longest time, feeding off this ray of light that I call ‘The Ancestral Odyssey,’ the one thing that truly nourishes me, that fuels me with a sense of accomplishment and progression, and no it’s not perfect, I’ve still much to learn and a long road ahead, but I’m striving to reach that place, the place where I’m content, but this life, this journey is forever stalling me, constantly halting, eating away at my time, time I will never get back and it’s all so tiring, it’s ever so tiring. So, what can we do? Well, the answer to that question is not the one you want to hear, but in order to get through this is to keep doing what you’re doing, keep making those strides, keep pushing yourself to become a better version of yourself. Whatever flare you possess, whatever interest you have, do yourself the biggest favour you’ve ever done and nourish it. Do it for long enough and you’ll notice changes in your life, you’ll be given the grace of clarity, you’ll be able to see beyond the bullshit that most people are perpetuating daily, you’ll steer away from flame wars you used to engage in and put your energy into where it’s needed, you’ll become a decent human being, someone who other like-minded people will want to have around more often. Do your best not to get swept up in the wave of toxicity that infests almost every corner of our lives and remain focused on the people and the things that you love. If everyone does this, if every human being did this, then a lot of these artificial problems I believe will simply go away, and we’ll be faced with tackling the big issues that dearly need solving, issued like finding a reliable clean energy source? How we begin to manage overpopulation? What to do with the rise in pollution? How to tackle diseases? How do we become an intergalactic species living among the starts, one day we’ll have to leave Earth, but if we’re still struggling with what gender we are what hope do we have? And what we can do to feed starving, impoverished communities all over the world? These are just some of the real big problems we face as a species, and I believe we can solve them, but the more we waste our time discussing arbitrary things like race and sex, the more we indulge in pointless dramas the longer it will be before we solve these issues which in turn harms our way of life and threatens our free societies. Right, I think the rant is over…phew…Let’s talk about something more positive.

My editor, the chap who edited The Utopian Dream, decided to move onto other things, it was sad to see him go, it really was because he worked hard with me on Episode One, it was a first for us both at the time, a project neither of us had encroached on before, we had both bitten off way more than we could chew, we did our best with the material, to weave it into the best story possible and we managed it to the best of our ability, so learning that he was no longer on board was a bit of a blow to me. As concerning as this was, I immediately began looking for another editor, embarking on a path I thought I had covered, and after many days of searching, after many days of doubt and rejection with one editor even hanging up on me mid-conversation, and most others charging me with unreasonable sums of money as if they had not even read my initial cover letter, I did eventually find myself talking to someone who I felt utterly inadequate to in terms of creative writing. This man took a snippet of my work and not only respected the material therein, not only did he understand my own unique language and structure but was able to cut out the jargon and promote the works strengths in a very short amount of time. I’m not going to name names here, I only list Will Towns as the concept artist because his name is printed all over the drawings in the Gallery section of my website, but as a precaution, I’ve decided not to drop any other names, but it was clear to me at this point after having an hour long conversation with this cultured gentleman, this veteran in the literary world, I knew that he was not the right man for the job, he was the perfect one, and the best part about this is that he’s understanding, he’s reasonable, he’s something I am not used to encountering in this business which as of yet, has treated me with a cold indifference. It’s likely I’ll go into detail about what this means in a future post, because it’s both eye-opening and disturbing, confirming something I had a suspicion of early on, but this post is not the time for it. Of course, this editor is a professional, he requires payment and cooperation for which he will rightly receive, but I cannot help but feel taken aback by his knowledge when in comparison to my own, his is far greater, far more evolved and I’m intimidated. I feel like my grounds of achievements are exactly that, grounds, whereas he boasts a colourful province. My inadequacy aside I am glad to report that this editor will likely work with me over Rise, and its anticipated release will soon be confirmed, and as nervous as I am to step back into the world of editing and revising, as painful as it will be to see scenes, moments and perhaps some characterised characters vanish, I am prepared to do what is necessary to get this out!

Another facet of TAO are the visuals. As I’ve mentioned before I am a very visual writer, and what I mean by that, is that before writing anything, I picture the scene in every detail, asking myself a series of intricate questions before constructing new content and because my vision is so vivid when exploring Equis, I’ve found myself fascinated with visual storytelling. People have criticised my work for being overly wordy, others have criticised me for leaning too far in the realms of visuals when instead I should be focusing on the language, and in some cases if not most, they’re right. This is all part of a learning curve, listening to those who know more about this profession than you do and embracing it is important, and as bitter pill this is to swallow especially this deep into a project, it is necessary. However, I cannot help who I am nor ignore what my instincts tell me, so while taking on board such comments and pieces of advice, I’ve chosen not to shy away from visual storytelling, but to continue nourishing the lessons it teaches me, and to do this I am planning to shoot another Live-Action performance from the world of Equis, more specifically from a key scene in Episode Three-Seeds of War, turning it into a short film. It’s no secret that I’ve always had plans to step behind the camera again, honestly when I shot my trailer it was the most comfortable, I’ve ever been, despite the frantic nature of film making, despite how stressful and how relentless the experience is, there is something exciting to it, something hard to describe unless you’ve done it yourself. It’s like you’re ascending a mountain, and the harder the path you take, the more beautiful the view will be when you reach the top. It’s exhilarating, the only problem I seem to be facing daily is the sheer cost of what it will take to make, even the smallest of projects are enough to set a simpleton like myself back many years, the only reason I was able to shoot a trailer in the first place was thanks to my grandmother who sadly passed away in 2018. Since then, the idea to organise such a project has been a distant dream, the hurdles so high, the path long, tiresome, and impossible to navigate, but this is exactly what stops most people in their tracks, this is where most people choose another path and turn away, and do you know what, I cannot fault them for that. If their time is better served elsewhere, if their heart resonates in other places, then so be it, this is not the path for you, there is no shame in seeking a road that speaks to you, but if you claim to be passionate about something, if you come to the decision to do something and choose not to embark on it because the route is hard, or you’re discouraged by people who constantly take the safe path, I don’t know what to say to you, and this doesn’t just apply to just film-making either, it could be anything, most things in this life worth having or doing are difficult to achieve, it often means taking a risk, it does sometimes mean subjecting yourself to humility and ridicule and feeling swathes of doubt keeping you up at night, but should you persist, should you persevere, you will be the one who comes out on top and the first step is of course making that first step toward your goal. I’ve recently made a small step, knowing what I know, I wrote a script, do I pretend it’s masterclass fuck no, I was an assistant in the design of the storyboards and am sending it off in the next few days after a couple of revisions, it’s not perfect but it is watertight in context of the story, it serves as a short film, establishes a hero and a villain and is what I think kinda compelling. Over the last forty-eight hours I’ve been back and forth with an illustrator, someone with a different skillset to Will, a different style completely. He’s a lot less talkative but he was kind enough to share his talents with his niche audience who watch his livestreams. I’ll share his link below, if you can share with him your thoughts, he will appreciate that, even a simple thumbs up is enough to make an artist’s day we often get nothing. I hope this blueprint, this plan will be enough to inspire an action, perhaps I will be given the go ahead to direct my short film, perhaps someone else will be assigned to direct and I can act as his or her assistant, either way I do not mind, so long as we are making something, so long as we are building something. I am just happy I’ve completed a script, complimented it with storyboards and there is a small chance something will happen, the hopeful knowledge of this alone makes the days at work go a little quicker, make the day to day grind a little easier fuck it makes getting older easier. I’ll report on this as the situation develops, but this will likely be in the New Year.            

Having done this for so long, having worked with so many talented people over the years, you begin to realise something, and before I finish this ranting and raving which shouldn’t even qualify as a post but perhaps part of one at best, I am amazed with how others have interpreted the creation, from Will’s drawings to the pianists music, my work may not be perfect, but if it can inspire such great work from others, if it can instil a sense of wonder and bring a little magic to the imagination that is trodden on daily, then that has to count for something, that’s a positive no one can take away, and it leaves me with a sense of fulfilment, something to be proud of whenever the shadow of doubt and uncertainty stretches over me. If you’re not a supporter of mine that’s okay, but you can still I am sure find enjoyment from other interpretations this TAO platform spreads. This article is all over the place I’m sorry, it’s a shambles of ranting, an update on updates to come, and a dive into what I do when not making new content for the books. I will have another article up soon, I am excited to cover Isabelle’s theme song and the pianists process, hopefully this content will be up before Christmas, but if not, if I do not release the work before then, do try and have a good one, be kind to one another, do something nice for someone, anything, make someone’s day, imagine if everyone took a day to do something kind for someone, that’s news I want to read about, that’s what I want to hear about instead of the chaos that is unfolding right before us. We do have the power to fix this place, we could fix so much in such a short time, I hope we do one day, actually this reminds me of a famous quote:-

“The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.” – Ernest Hemingway

Merry Christmas and I wish you all well.

E-mail – taotome@outlook.com

Official Website – http://www.taotequevault.com

Promotional Material YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-nc_VEmC27AIz6pP51UVkQ

Promotional Material Bitchute – http://www.bitchute.com/channel/x9K5vwi2SsNu/

Author Page UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B01JMZ2BE6

Author Page US – https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01JMZ2BE6

Twitter – @MegasTeque

Kenneth F Storyboard Artist’s YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV4XBhdeiOfocnK-P-99Zbg/videos

D.W.Gill