A City that Loves to Jump Scare

If you want to visit a place with underground roads that snatch away your GPS signal before guiding you into a maze, visit Chicago.

If you want a beautiful view of a sunlit city blocked by a giant, diagonal, black beam in a window, visit Chicago.

If you want to be chased down by the musically inclined in the night, visit Chicago.

If you want somewhere with heart and passion in their art, hundreds of restaurants to enjoy, and to get together with a thousand people cheering as iced coffees and donuts race, visit Chicago.

And if you want somewhere to wake your blood every few feet while being surrounded by blaring metal boxes, visit Chicago.

A wonderland of beauty that keeps you on your toes, our dear beloved Chicago.

Disclaimer, I love Chicago, and I love these little things that make it fun and unique. Chicago wouldn’t have the personality it does without its little quirks and its love to scare and irritate its visitors with the little things. This was a fun little travel blog exercise I did recently.

Book Event

I got to attend a book event with Brookline Booksmith for the new book coming out The Adventure Zone: The Eleventh Hour which is the fifth graphic novel to release in the series. Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, and Carey Pietsch discussed it with a few special guests.

If you are wondering, they are mostly all a family. Three brothers, a dad, and Carey the cartoonist. For some of them, it was the first time they met the cartoonist, so it was cute to see them so excited to meet her. And even cuter that the dad was dressed in a chainmail cosplay.

They asked her which picture the cartoonist drew where she really blew it haha. She said something about a time-loop page.

They discussed how they really started taking it seriously with this book and put a lot of work into it and that it’s their best one yet.

They had special guests who said there were tons of cosplayers from Monty Python and the Holy Grail everywhere during release day at their bookstore. All of them, including the special guests, did a reading for each character. The colors and pictures of the graphic novel were brilliant. It was cute and funny with cuss words haha.

They also had their editor on to discuss things too.

This was a dynamic team with funny reactions and conversations between everyone. They definitely all have fun.

Carey showed them pictures of her trying out Blender 3D. The beginning pictures were hilarious from when she started the system, then later turned very magical. Seriously, it was amazing how she made interiors of buildings, settings, and references for drawings because, how she described it, she doesn’t have a lot of RAM space in her mind. The best part was seeing Carey’s sketches and everyone trying to guess which panel they were from.

What an amazing team, all of them. And the fact that they all got together to talk about the process was amazing. Like seriously! Wow!