So if you haven’t heard the news yet, No Brand Con is coming back. Not only are we running the convention again, but we’re bringing it back to Eau Claire — something folks have been begging us to do for the last decade. May 1st-3rd 2026 we’re going to be down at the Lismore Hotel for the twenty-first No Brand Con.

It’s been hard keeping the news under wraps, as this has been in the works for months. We’ve kept our mouths shut, because we didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up or let folks down if plans fell through. We’re literally bringing the convention back to its home town, and to the only remaining venue it had in this town too (the Lismore used to be the Ramada we were hosted in from 2006-2010).

No Brand Con, to me, never felt right in the Dells. The Chula Vista was way too sprawling a venue for us, and we never felt connected to the location. We ran five cons there from 2016-2022, and each year it just felt like we were drifting away from the core of the con’s identity there. Stevens Point wasn’t a bad home, and I think 2023 did feel like we were recapturing something, but things just didn’t work out there.

So we took a long hard look at things over the last two years, and I think some of us really took a hard look at what made the con great for so long. Our most successful years were tied to our home town — the town that most of the staff still live in honestly. And every time we held it away from that, we were just losing that identity more and more.
Coming back to Eau Claire was the obvious and only choice.

I co-founded this event with a few other folks so many years ago. We’ve seen generations of staff come and go, and lost a few of them along the way. But the core of this convention is the community we build together. Growing up, conventions like this were the first place I truly felt like myself, and I’ve been very clear over the years that my goal was providing that kind of place for others.

I’m so excited that we’re back, and I don’t think we’ll ever leave again.

Also, remember, you can pre-order Buried Memories, the fourth book in my contemporary fantasy series the Mia Graves Saga, out December 15th 2025.

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The last few months have been busy ones for me. Between August and September, I was at four different in person conventions, recorded an entire season of The Meatgrinder in a cabin in the woods, presented at the virtual event CritWitchCon, a bunch of other stuff I can’t mention, and, of course, went to my grandmother’s memorial. Also in the mix I started a new medication, and kept up with my creative projects (like getting Buried Memories across the finish line).

I feel like I’ve been running a marathon, honestly.

But starting now, things are calming down. Like, there’s still stuff to do (like I have a dentist appointment coming up — exciting), but I finally feel like it’s not everything happening all at the same time. July and June weren’t all that calm either, but those months were at least a bit spaced out. I look forward to (check’s notes) working a regular work week at my day job and re-watching The Librarians with Crysta.

I just need to get my brain to relax for a bit.

Of course, I know that once I recover, I’ll get back to work on the draft of The Perfect Host (the fifth Mia Graves book I want to get out next year) or some other thing. We’re also going to get started on Campaign Three of Stormwood too. But I’ll get to take my time with this stuff, instead of having to crush it into what little time I have.

Also, maybe I’ll go and watch Blade Squad again. Have you watched Blade Squad yet? You should get some friends together and watch Blade Squad.

Remember, you can pre-order Buried Memories, the fourth book in the Mia Graves Saga, out December 15th 2025.

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It’s taken longer to get this book out the door than the previous ones, but I’m excited to announce that Buried Memories, the fourth book in the Mia Graves Saga, is coming out December 15th! Like the previous entries in the series, you can pre-order the book on Kindle, as well as pre-order it in paperback from any retailer with the ISBN 9798349560958 (like, for example, Barnes & Noble).

This book is a little different than the previous three because rather than focusing on Mia, we’re following Sarah instead. Here’s the basic rundown from the back of the book:

Sarah Masters is having a bad time.

After completing her first job as a courier of occult and magical objects, her car breaks down outside of the small mountain town of Halcyon, CO. What at first appears to be just another fading community turns out to be so much more sinister. Between Mysterious sigils, people disappearing without a trace, and dreams that seem to taunt her with memories from her past, Sarah wouldn’t even be able to escape even if the roads weren’t closed.

With nowhere to run, she has no choice but to confront the danger around her.

Besides Kindle, the eBook will be available on Kobo and through my Patreon store come December. I’m really excited for you guys to read this one, and I’ll think you’ll enjoy it. And, of course, remember that you can catch up on the rest of the books in the meanwhile if you want to get started on the series.

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So I spent the last two days at two different conventions. Saturday, of course, I was at Eau Claire Comic Con here in town, selling copies of my novels and comics. It was a good time overall — saw some old friends, made some sales, and got to meet some new readers. Overall, it’s just a great little convention, and if you’re in town next year you should go.

But the day before that, I decided to volunteer at “Booked Eau Claire,” a bookish convention that was simultaneously happening that weekend downtown at the Lismore Hotel. I mean, I had the day off, so I figured what the heck, y’know? I’m actually signed up to sell at their 2026 event, so I thought I’d check it out.

Overall, it was fun, though imperfect event. I obviously have a lot of thoughts as both an author and someone who’s spent almost thirty years working cons. Hopefully they’ll iron out those growing pains for next year, because I’d like to see an event like that do well in this town. For people who’ve never run a con before, I think they did a decent job from what I saw.

And while I was there I got to have a lovely conversation with E.H. Lupton and their friend helping at the table, after discovering we were both strangely aware of each other for completely independent reasons on Bluesky.

Anyways, looking forward, I do have an updated convention calendar to share with y’all.

Here’s what I have currently booked:

• UWEC GEEKcon Dec 6, 2025 Eau Claire, WI
   
• Evercon Mar 6-8, 2026 Wausau, WI
   
• Big Minneapolis Anime Aug 8-9, 2026 Minneapolis, MN
   
• Eau Claire Comic Con Sep 12, 2026 Eau Claire, WI
   
• Booked Eau Claire Sep 18-19, 2026 Eau Claire, WI

Now you’ll note Anime 414 isn’t on that list… because as far as I know they haven’t announced a 2026 date yet. Honestly year two was leagues better than the first year for that show, so I kind of hope it comes back.

Also missing from that list is No Brand Con, but expect to hear more on that front soonish.

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So it’s my birthday today. I’m forty-five, halfway through my forties, and everything is… everything. I’m not doing anything really special today for it — maybe I’ll order dinner or something — but we’ll be doing Meatgrinder Weekend in a couple weeks, so that’s kind of the party.

But Crysta did give me a couple of gifts this morning, including the stuffed raven pictured above, so I’m already pretty happy about it. I don’t know, I’m feeling good.

Anywho, just as a reminder I’ll be at Eau Claire Comic Con on Saturday — so if you’re in town, you should stop by. I had a really good time there last year, so I’ve been looking forward to it. I need to do some updates to my con calendar this week, because I have shows booked that aren’t on it right now.

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So my personal site, which has been around in one form or another since 1996, has been running on Perl since 2001. Especially this blog.

And lately my webhost has been shitting the bed with Perl scripts. Like random 500 errors will just kick up on scripts that otherwise work. The problem is not my code (which I maintain and normally runs fine), but something that’s intermittently happening on my webhost’s end.

And support is just awful.

I’ve cycled through half a dozen support techs. Initially it took me forever to find one who would believe me when I said I was talking about Perl and not PHP. Then I found someone who saw the problem, and asked me to document instances of it happening, and acknowledged my code was not at fault — but then I got cycled to ANOTHER tech, and this one thinks it’s my code not serving headers.

Which it is.

And this guy just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s not as easy as just finding a new webhost either — a lot of hosts don’t support Perl anymore. So now I think my only solution is to recode my whole site to run in PHP — either to stay with my current webhost or to move to a new one.

Which sucks, because I don’t know PHP anywhere near as well as I know Perl.

So now I’m stuck googling functions, figuring out shit in a language I only kinda know. I’ve gotten one script done, and I’m just going to have to build a whole parallel version of my site in PHP and launch it when I’m done. But if you get random 500 errors on my site, that’s what’s happening.

Just hit reload in a few minutes I guess, and it’ll come back.

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I’m finally finishing the last edits on the fourth Mia Graves novel, and over the next few days I’ll be doing the formatting of the book’s interior and reaching out to the company I pay to do my book covers. This book was supposed to be in this state literally six months ago, and while I know the deadlines are self imposed, I really do hate missing them.

This month is a busy one. Besides my birthday, I have Eau Claire Comic Con in a little over a week (September 13th), followed by “Meatgrinder Weekend” (where we’ll record season 6 of that podcast), and then the week after that I’ll be doing a small appearance at CritWitchCon on Friday the 26th. Mixed in, I also have to finish prepping stuff for the opening of Campaign 3 of Stormwood & Associates, write more comics for Peregrine Lake, and get a couple of months of BS-Free Witchcraft prepped and recorded. Also, there’s some other stuff I can’t say publicly yet (in case it falls through).

It’s a bunch of stuff.

And honestly, I still feel bad that it’s taken me this long to finish this novel. Like I forget that I am doing all of this plus working a full time job. I did two cons in August, went to my grandmother’s memorial, and finished production on Season 5 of The Meatgrinder. I think I need to give myself a break sometimes.

…we all know that’s not going to happen though, right?

Anyways, I really like what I’ve written. It’s not quite the book that I originally intended to write, but I’m proud of what I came up with in the end. I won’t announce the title until the cover reveal, but you’ll find out before the end of the month most likely. In the meanwhile, I need to remember that even if some things are taking me longer than I hoped, I’m still getting them done.

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I know I’ve been a little quiet these last couple of weeks, but for the record I’m still here. Still existing. Still getting up every morning.

This was my first weekend at home in like a month and a half. No travel, no conventions, nothing but sitting back next to an open window, watching TV with Crysta, and ordering delivery food. It’s been nice, it’s been quiet, and I finally feel like I’ve been able to relax again.

Last weekend was my Grandmother’s memorial, which was an emotional experience I’m not going to go into all that much — but it was good. Emotionally draining, but good. The two weekends before that I was conventions, and the two weekends before that I was in the Northwoods. And even though I spent many weekdays back at home, it’s not the same as being able to fully relax.

Relaxing is good.

So right now I’m enjoying the cool breeze on a Sunday night. The sun has set, the bugs are making their nightly racket, and I might try to get some more writing done before the end of the night. Sometimes life is about the simple things, the simple joys, and just being able to take a deep breath and appreciate them once you’re given the opportunity. Tomorrow the cacophony will begin again as I go back to work, but for now the world is quiet, peaceful and still.

And I’m going to appreciate every second of it.

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So this year’s convention train keeps going, because even though I’m still exhausted from Big Minneapolis Anime last weekend, I’m off to another con in a few days (August 9-10).

Like last year, I’m tabling at Anime 414 in downtown Milwaukee at the Baird Center (a name I can never remember for the life of me). I’m in spot 122 (to the right side of the room as you come in), and you should stop by and say hi if you’re there.

Big Minneapolis Anime and Anime 414 are both interesting shows because they’re very “comic con” in their business model even though most Anime cons are like, the exact opposite of this? But hey, whatever works. I had a good time last year at 414, and I hope to have a good time this year.

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So Big Minneapolis Anime was a lot of fun. Ethan and I talked to a bunch of folks about Peregrine Lake, I sold some books, and overall got to meet a bunch of interesting people. Overall, definitely a good trip, and I plan to return there next year.

But when I got home Sunday night, I got the unwelcome surprise of my personal website being down.

You see, literally millions of requests were coming into my server, hitting very specifically the old PHPBB2 forums that used to be the cornerstone of my site (and still manage the logins for the comment sections). Like it pulled 123 gigabytes of data in transfer in one day on a site where I normally do like 50 gigabytes per month.

I’ve pulled the files for the forum offline, and that has restored the website. Obviously if you try to access the forum, you’ll get a page not found error (because the scripts are literally no longer on the server). Only anonymous comments will be allowed for now (since I literally had to remove the login scripts).

Now what’s resulted is that the bots have died down… but they keep coming back every few hours checking for the pages I’ve removed. And while the rest of my site is fairly hardened against a DDOS, it’s frustrating. Requests were coming from so many IP addresses, I’ve had to block them based on the useragents — so sorry to anyone who accesses this site with old versions of Chrome. I had to make a call somewhere on how to stop them.

If we go a few weeks without those requests coming in, maybe I’ll reupload those scripts (under less common names) and tweak the code so the logins work again — but that forum will likely never come back fully online because of this and it sucks. It was a nice archive of a time of my life where my friends and I posted here instead of social media.

Honestly, this whole thing has been exhausting, and an annoying way to end an otherwise amazing weekend.

So I’ll probably make another post on this later in the week, but in good news I’ll be at Anime 414 this weekend in Milwaukee, WI. It’s just me on my own this time, so stop on by and say hi if you’re in town. In the meanwhile I’m going to do my best to take it easy…

…and to keep monitoring this damned website. Ugh.

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