May 2019 Dispatch
Kyell Gold
April Recap
April was, in general, a very nicely chill month. I saw CHVRCHES in concert, one of my favorite current bands, and of course saw Avengers: Endgame, which I enjoyed quite a bit. It was, I thought, an excellent movie overall, and I appreciate all the fan service in it. I’ve heard opinions that the amount of fan service makes it less enjoyable for people who aren’t huge fans of the MCU, and maybe that’s true. I don’t know. I’ve seen all the prior films, so I think I fall into the “huge fan” category. From what I can see, the fan service doesn’t seem to be hurting Endgame at the box office, and mostly serves as a point for self-styled “cranky” people to write Internet pieces about, because in the last week of April, writing anything about Endgame would get you tons of clicks.
There’s an interesting question there about how you make your creative work once you’ve gathered a following. Ideally, of course, you want to keep your fans happy while also making the work accessible to new fans and also believable standing on its own. And most of the time, the things the fans want to see are small and easy to toss into a work as an Easter egg or an inside joke. But there does come a time when you are hearing about things fans want to see and you have to consider whether that fits the story you want to tell.
In the case of Endgame, I don’t think any of the so-called fan service really impacted the story. Endgame was a great comic-book movie, by which I mean it adhered to the main rule of superhero comics: the ending is never in doubt. The pleasure is in the journey and the spectacle. Continuing superhero comics by their nature have to have a status quo to return to, with the occasional exception. Alan Moore initially planned Watchmen’s cast to be second-tier DC characters (Night Owl is Blue Beetle, I believe, and Rohrschach was The Question, among others), but said that when the rights to all of them couldn’t be worked out, he felt freer with his own creations because he didn’t have to be beholden to any specific outcomes; all the characters could die or be irrevocably changed. What the MCU has changed is the audience; making these stories billion-dollar spectacles means that people unused to the world of comics are coming to see them as well, without being used to the way comics tell stories (or perhaps being disdainful of comics). So you’ll get people complaining about the predictability or the in-jokiness of comic book movies (the MCU movies have been full of in-jokes, first from the comics and later from earlier movies, from the start) without realizing that those are features, not bugs.
Endgame also added another level of meta-analysis because it was known that several actors might not return to the MCU. A couple had stated their desire to hang up the suits, as it were, while the intentions of others were more nebulous. The movie did an excellent job of crafting a story around the needs and availability of the actors, and I appreciated it in that regard as well.
As you can probably tell, we’re going to go see Endgame again before it leaves theaters, which as of this writing seems like it might be sometime in August…?
(If you guys liked this post and would like to see me talk more about movies/music/books in this space, as well as what I’m working on and conventions, let me know! I’ll take requests. :) )
Otherwise, I worked on some short fiction, did a bit of editing through Love Match, and got ready for a May devoted to editing The War and the Fox. Also set up a Soundcloud page for my audiobooks (details below in the Release section). And I was lucky enough to score tickets to Pokemon GoFest in Chicago in June. Very excited to finally get to go to one of those!
Release dates
Ty Game came out at MFF! The e-book is on all retailers now.
I published a story called “Flight” (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/30236607/) and if you liked it, you’ll have a story in ROAR 10 to look forward to (though no sex in that one). I’ve got several more stories planned for Tryk, so keep an eye on my FA/SoFurry accounts.
The Tower and the Fox audiobook came out too; you can find it on Audible, Amazon, or iTunes. If you don’t have an Audible account yet, check out my new Soundcloud page (https://soundcloud.com/user-710305036-429996600), which has samples and links to all my audiobooks. Those links help me get extra money especially if you use them to sign up for a new account.
I talked to people at MFF about 2019’s release schedule, and here’s my best guess at dates: The forthcoming New Tibet anthology and the new Dev and Lee book will probably be out late in 2019, maybe at MFF. Love Match book 3 will likely be later summer—I don’t think at this point that it will make it for AnthroCon. I’ve also got a story in Sofawolf Press’s New Fables, which will be out sometime this year.
Appearances in 2019
My full list of upcoming appearances is at http://www.kyellgold.com/contact.html, recently updated (or soon to be updated).
My next convention will be BLFC in May. I might have a little table space there but I’ll be mostly just hanging around and having fun. I do not currently have plans to go to AnthroCon, but if you’re on the east coast, come see me at Furrydelphia in August where I’ll be a GOH with Rukis! After that I plan to go to MFF in December. I’ll also be at Comic-Con in San Diego at the Sofawolf booth (1236), as usual.
Spotlight: Red Lantern: Conviction
By this point, I’d presume that most of my fans also know about Rukis, illustrator of many of my books, and author of several of her own. After many years, the second volume in her Red Lantern series is going to be published! Conviction is coming out this year, and you can see previews of it on her Patreon or over on FurAffinity. The story is great, as you’d come to expect, and the art is top quality as well.
FurAffinity: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/rukis/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Rukis
Excerpt: No excerpt this month as I was being all occupied with Endgame and other stuff.
Questions From YOU
If you’ve got a question about my books or my writing—or anything else you want me to talk about—shoot me an email and I’ll answer it here.
No questions this month!