2023 was honestly a fantastic year for me, both personally and in my career. It felt like I didn’t get to work on as many things as I wanted to since so much of this year was eaten up with Quindrie obligations, plus I got covid for the second time over the summer which really slowed me down for a couple of months, but laying everything out here I can see I managed to do a surprising amount of things. I’m really happy to close the books on such a strong year and I’m looking forward to taking a step back from big Quindrie projects next year and giving myself room to focus on some smaller, personal projects.

Personal accomplishments

  • I got top surgery! Back in January, after ten years of thinking about it, I finally got top surgery and I haven’t once regretted it. It’s something I agonised over for a long time and was really worried I wouldn’t actually be happy with (thank you internalised misogyny) but it has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I support getting top surgery for fun and to make you hotter, not just gender dysphoria, who cares, we are all just meat.

  • I started HRT! I actually didn’t start T before my top surgery because I felt that top surgery might be enough for me, but later in the year I decided to just bite the bullet and go for it. It’s wild how you can stress and agonise and worry over a decision for literal years and then just do it and nothing changes, and I mean that in the best way. It’s like when you’re about to get your first tattoo and you’re so worried over this huge life decision, but then you get the tattoo and forget you have it half the time. You look permanently different now, but you haven’t become a different person. This year has really changed how I think about the body and permanence.

  • I got engaged! :)

Creative accomplishments

  • I published my second graphic novel! Inhibit: Book One was kickstarted wayyyy back in 2019 and I was determined to get Book Two out this year (partly because my friend Cat’s dad has apparently been asking for it for years at this point, and Cat threateningly told me his birthday was coming up, so I had to make it happen). There were a lot of things about Book One that I wasn’t entirely happy with; it was my first ever big print job and I didn’t know about a lot of things I know now, like paper types. Book One is also really old at this point, since I drew it between 2014 and 2018, so having it on my convention table was getting to be embarrassing. Now I have a gorgeous new book to show off and I got to publish it under Quindrie Press, which was a really nice circle since Inhibit is the whole reason I got into comics and therefore publishing in the first place.

  • I built this website! It’s been so much fun getting back into coding from scratch. I’ve tinkered around a lot with basic HTML and CSS for the Inhibit website, which I’ve had on the go since 2014, and it was really exciting getting to build on all that knowledge to create my own portfolio site after getting sick of Squarespace. My website isn’t as visually creative as a lot of other sites here on Neocities (and I looove looking through them all) but I’ve had a blast fiddling around with the backend of this place and compiling all my art and conlangs from over the years into one space.

  • I set up KNIFEBEETLE! I did this completely on a whim back in February and it ended up being a great idea. When I closed submissions in May the site had 41 comics listed, and now in December the site has been averaging about 640 unique visitors a day. A bunch of people have told me they’ve found lots of new comics to read through KNIFEBEETLE which is exactly what I wanted, and I’m hoping I can find time in 2024 to open up another round of submissions. I’m considering shifting the site to a true webring with an actual widget members can place on their site instead of the current linkback system, but we’ll see if that’s something the KNIFEBEETLE members actually want; it’s not really a concept that most modern internet users are used to.

Career accomplishments

  • I held my first launch party! We ran a launch and panel event at Lighthouse Bookshop to celebrate the Quindrie Press 2023 comic collection, featuring three of the four artists, and it was a lot of fun. I didn’t want to do a launch event for Inhibit because it felt a little silly basically throwing a party for my own book, but the discussion for the 2023 collection was really engaging and interesting. Definitely something I’d like to do again for future Quindrie books.

  • I put on a successful convention! Brian and I had been working on TAGS for a year and a half when we finally ran it in early December. It was an incredible experience and went pretty well for a first-time event in my opinion. The Scottish convention scene has been struggling recently as the smaller indie-focused events have closed or are petering out, and the larger events are pivoting more towards MCM-style general pop culture than actual comics. It’s such a shame, but with the success of TAGS I’m hopeful that other people will also start to put on smaller events. I personally have my eye on Sequential Scotland, which is aiming to take place in Glasgow if not in 2024 then in 2025. I'm really looking forward to seeing what we can build TAGS into in the coming years.

Top books & comics I read this year

  • Extinction by Ver
  • The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
  • The Scar by China Mieville (this one’s a reread but I have to mention it, it’s one of my favourite books of all time)
  • THE SECOND SAFEST MOUNTAIN by Otava Heikkila
  • SUPERPOSE by Seosamh & Anka

Top songs I discovered this year

Top things I watched this year

Plans for 2024 (of which there are too many)

  • Ruin of the House of the Divine Visage! Spire is wrapping up drawing the third and final part of our first collaborative graphic novel and I could not be more excited for its release. This is a book we wrote and thumbnailed together, and it was hugely gratifying to see just how in sync our creative process is. The book will be released later this year, probably in late summer or early autumn, so keep an eye out! Left is one of the new promos Spire just finished up, it's so good.

  • Where is Charlie King? One of the other projects Spire and I have been picking away at for a little while is a short story about a vampire told through someone’s ephemera. We had a great time working on Guide to Kroma, which is a book that’s meant to feel like it exists in the world it’s talking about. We wanted to do the same with WICK but instead of a literal guidebook it’s pamphlets, receipts, adverts, articles. We haven’t touched it in a while since we’ve both been busy with other things but I’m keen to get back into that and wrap it up at some point this year. When we do eventually put together more info on this project that'll be available here.

  • Build-A-Language zine! This is something I’ve had on the backburner for four years at this point, but it’s something I really want to wrap up and potentially even put out this year: a little conlang generator zine.

  • Start drawing Inhibit: Book Three! The website doesn't get the end of Book Two until June which means I have plenty of time to start working on the actual Book Three pages, but I'm still working on the script right now. I'm hoping to start thumbnailing by the end of January. It's absolutely crazy to be this far along in the story. This is the final stretch, what the fuck.

  • A short comic! I've been wanting to do a short conlang-related comic for a while and have written a very short script that takes place in the world that these two languages come from. I haven't done a short comic in a while (not since Track & Fiend back in 2020 my god) so it would be nice to draw something that isn't Inhibit; as much as I love Inhibit, I'm dying.

  • Improve my site! I'd like to try to figure out how to make the site more mobile friendly. No idea how to do that, I barely understand Javascript. But it is on my mind.

  • Get buff! I deserve it.

  • Stop scrolling! ENOUGH!!

Projects that I probably won’t work on this year but are definitely percolating in my brain

  • Gaelic translations of the Quindrie books!
  • Virtual/visual novel convention!
  • Sticker con!

Happy new year to you all, I hope 2024 brings you nothing but the best! Get top surgery.