BUT WHOSE UNCLE, UNBEKNOWNST TO OUR YOUNG SALMON, WAS ALSO A MARMOSET

As some of you may be aware, I have just been challenged. Mine erstwhile Xeno's Arrow collaborator, Stephen Geigen-Miller, hath chastened me, "Get thee to a bloggery." (Actually, what he technically said was, "I hearby declare Blog War on Greg Beettam and his Bleakwhimsy blog!"  The rules and sundry to which may be read here.)  So apparently it is ON! as the kids say.  (Kids these days, what will they say next?) So, now now NOW that I am charged to create content to fill this blatherskite of a column, what then shall we talk about? (Hmm?  Yes, we are keeping score by word count.  What's your point?)

 I suppose I could start by telling you where I've been all this time... but I don't want to.  It's mundane and boring and a little dismal in tone, some of the parts have rather poor characterization and the motivations are rather thin. I choose to unbelieve in the narrative, and that's a rather bad sign, don't you think?  Let's talk about you instead.  What do you think of this blog?

Okay, fine, that's enough filling space.  Let me tell you about some of the projects I have had or will have on the go in the coming year.  That's pretty upbeat, right?

RENT.  Everybody needs rent. Wait... is that everybody, everybody?  Damn.  Better go get some.  Give me five minutes, I'll be back.

Okay, done, moving right along...

MY FREELANCE WEBSITE.  This is how I trap clients who pay me money for my mad skills.  Have you seen the website? Oh, you should go there. Then send all your friends there, too.  Tell everyone you know how madly talented I am, and that someone should pay me mad stacks of cash for their marketing/communications/presentations/entertainment designs or visual storytelling needs.  This will keep me in mondo rent and free me up to spend less time squeegeeing on street corners and spend more time on the other projects below. Here endeth the lesson.

....XENO'S ARROW???  Yes, I know, it's in discussion.  What does that mean?  It means we're discussing it, fool.  There will be more later when announcements are ready.  For the moment, there's a website to re-tool, a kickstarter to plan, and some book-editing and reformatting to do. Remember that rent thing? It keeps me busy. Anyway, watch this space for updates.

HARRY STUMPT.  This will be a weekly webcomic when it's ready, which should be real soon.  Wait, Greg, back up, didn't you just say you were busy with that rent thing? Well, yes, but the good news with this thing is it's designed to be faster to produce than some of my other projects, so it will give me a way to keep hooking you merry little poppets up with Gregness while my bigger projects are still cooking. (Clever idea, that.... only took me, what, 20 years to think of it?)  I'm hoping to launch it in October this year, so we'll see. I've already got the first half-year's worth written. Watch this space. What's it about?  Well, if the Mad Hatter opened a speakeasy in Wonderland and Raymond Chandler and the Marx Brothers were getting drunk at the bar, and somewhere on the fourth round of shooters one of them hiccuped and said,  "Y'know... WE shud wridda hard-boiled detective novel togedder... burp!" ...then I'd like to think the result would be something like Harry Stumpt.  So now you've been warned.

MONKEYS WITH POWER TOOLS.   This will be my new magnum opus, which I've now been developing for either 4 or 9 or 11 years, depending on which version I start counting at.  There's a 22-page preview at monkeyswithpowertools.com that's been up online for 2 years, but I beg you not to judge it by that, since that version was produced under duress as a back-to-college thesis project and I've already retooled the whole thing so the story builds more properly. If I had one dream for this project, it would be for everyone who got excited about the Occupy movement to read it. This project has already become a bit of a joke among some of my friends, who I'm sure are now convinced that Greg will never fully release Monkeys because it will never be perfect enough to live up to his vision for the thing.  But that just makes it a better joke when I take them by surprise and start releasing the new version online next year.  At this point that seems like a realistic goal given everything else I'm juggling.  Watch for news in this space.

OTHER PROJECT IDEAS.  I've got lots of cool ideas on the drawing board.  I hope I manage to not die before I get them all out of my system.  Guess I'd better start exercising again.  At least I'm eating a lot healthier these days (thank you, yogic girlfriend!). Anyway, I'll plug those ideas another time when I have more to show.  Some of them I might even be looking for a publisher for, when the time comes...

Hey, that was a lot of words I think!  Poor Mr. Geigen-Miller, he has to count them all.  Blog, baby, blog!!!!

Until next time,
Gregory Edward Beettam, esq. and knucklehead

IT BEGINS IN A SMALL EAST-END HAMLET WHICH IS ON FIRE

I just want to make one thing clear: this may not be worth reading. Never blogged before, so the result could be messy.  I'm sure the first effort will be a meaningless scrawl, the fetid ramblings of an over-preening, self-styled voice in the wilderness, a new driver careening uncontrollably back and forth on the road to some dimly-remembered point. I'm only a decade behind in joining the Blog Brigade. It's a brave new Web 2.0 world out there, an era of I'm-just-making-a-sandwich Tweets, teen-angst Vlogs, and something called Tumblrrrrrrr, and I'm already late to the party... so now BLOG, baby, blog!

Some of you already know me as Greg, the co-creator of Xeno's Arrow. Maybe some of you even know me as the scriptwriter for Captain Lighthouse (...look it up! It's a thing), or as that guy who kept eating all the cookies (sorry). Anyway, I know I haven't made my presence felt in a while.  That's going to change now.  I've got some new projects I've been cooking up... some of which are not quite ready for public consumption yet, while others I hope to be launching or re-launching soon. So this will be a place to watch for news or sneak previews of all that. I also have the occasional urge to drip my snark on the news of the day—I imagine a blog is the place to put these things, much as a I imagine a Komodo Dragon could be a high-powered lawyer if I dressed it in roller skates and a bonnet. However, I have been wrong before. Exercise your judgements!

That is all for now.  That is all anyone needs to know.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the kitchen so I can tweet my peanut-butter and jam...