I’m going to be honest––and I’m under no pretense that my statement is any different than every single person’s journey through this plague that blanketed the world around us––my day job has become 100% more difficult, time-consuming, and exhausting since the coronavirus has forced my university to work and teach and grade from home.

However, progress is being made on Chapter 5.

Unlike Chapter 4, I feel way ahead of the game in many respects. Okay, mostly in one respect––I have a title, something that came to me exceptionally late in the development of chapter 4. Chapter 5 in terms of story feels very worked out, with things like heavy dialogue scenes being much more fully formed than they usually are (nailing down the dialogue in those two Long John-Geoff scenes was like steel on a grindstone). Like Chapter 4, on the other hand, I have a cover design in the can; it’s just a sketch at this point, but it’s ready to go to paper when I find the time and inspiration.

Since production is so slow right now due to lack of time and energy in many cases, what progress I have been making is getting well documented along the way.

All of this to say, all the images in this post are from the same page and, for some reason, I really like this page a lot even though it’s simple and pretty unimpressive by the standards of what will be big splash pages and big emotional beats. I think my sentiments have been painted by the weight of the coronavirus––I was able to draw a page while being the busiest, most stressed, and drained as I’ve ever been, and it’s a good page.

Who knows when I’ll get to throw ink on it, but I really can’t wait to get to it.