Project Announcement!
Back the New Year, New Stories Kickstarter for 19 amazing comic shorts--including "A Singular Mentality" written by yours truly!
Welcome to 2025, Everyone!
Nate here, ready to take on this year with vigor and verve unseen since…well, the beginning of 2024—but this time I mean it!
Holidays are over, resolutions are near-forgotten (I hacked the system—can’t give up on a resolution you didn’t remember to make), and the collective of humanity continues its spiral ever-downwards as we hold our breaths waiting for how things could possibly get worse—I remember when people were saying 2016 was the worst possible year ever going into 2017, and now the humor of that is just saddening.
Suffice it to say, 2025! (woohoo???)
But I’m thankful for having started the year with an incredible announcement that I was a part of on the 1st:
New Year, New Stories 2025!
I am so happy to announce the release of what has been labeled on this Substack as Project Mindset: a story written by myself, drawn incredibly by my amazing collaborator Nicolò Arcuti, and lettered by the masterful Sean Rinehart.
I am so happy that our ten-page story “A Singular Mentality” is getting its release in this collection of 19 incredible stories by various creative teams. It is a comic that Nicolò and I are so proud of, and I can’t wait for it to get out there and to be able to hold it in my hands.
Our story centers around a planet overtaken by an alien hive mind. Responding to the murder of one of its members—one seemingly impossible, as it only could’ve come from within the hive’s Mentality—an investigative drone is dispatched to uncover the truth, the collective mind unaware that this discovery has the potential to change everything. It’s a story about identity and life given both of those things by Nicolò’s incredible visual storytelling, which hopefully my words lived up to.
To get a copy of the over 160-page anthology, go to this link to back the Kickstarter—either for a $19 digital copy or a $40 physical—by the 19th!
After the story is published in the anthology, I’ll likely release it on here under Narrative Shack since the rights will revert to me again, but if you’re interested in the eighteen other incredible comics, please give the Kickstarter some support.
Okay, self-promotion is out of the way—let’s get on with this:
What I’m Doing:
This past week has been one where there hasn’t been much done outside of the later categories of this newsletter, but that is just pleasant and relaxing. I love that I get to write during the day, watch TV or read at night, and spend time with my family all through that. My final college semester starts in around two weeks, so I’m just enjoying it all while I can.
What I’m Writing:
I’ve got a couple of fantastic project updates from the past week, so strap in:
Project Mindset: Now revealed as the story “A Singular Mentality” releasing in the anthology you just read about. Guess that means in future updates, I’ve gotta just call it by its name then.
Project Nightingale: The publisher had no notes on the script, which I’m thrilled by. I sent it over to the artist and now it’s in his incredibly talented hands. I am so excited to see how this turns out—this might be one of my favorite comic things I’ve written thus far, up there with maybe Project Facade for the top two (that one will have a major update/announcement in the near future).
Project Tarot: I completed a first draft of the script. I’ll admit that it wasn’t something I was that proud of, so I decided to delete it all and start over. The second version’s first draft is something I can work with, and after some tweaks and running it by some people possibly, I’ll send it over to the artist and publisher to get it all going.
I also got news just last night about a new project I’m going to be starting, but I don’t know enough about it yet to even be able to give it a codename. I just know my artist, my publication, and of course my deadlines—from there everything else is forthcoming. More news (including a secret title) to come soon!
What I’m Reading:
All I have been reading this week is 11/22/63 by Stephen King—having been enthralled by the 450 pages I’ve read thus far. For the past few nights, I’ve enjoyed reading several chapters before bed, and am trying to pace myself so I don’t finish it too quickly. It is just so good and I want to savor it, knowing that even this 850-pager will be over far too soon. It is simply masterful, Stephen King at his absolute best. I wish I’d read it sooner, and can’t stop thinking about it and being excited to get to more—even though I know there’s no way I won’t close the book completely heartbroken by the end, both by its reputation and the fact that a microcosm of that already happened last night, having fallen in love with and then been devastated by a romantic pairing within only a hundred pages—a testament to King as a writer. It’s so weird reading a book with this title, seeing JFK and the headline of his assassination on the cover, having the book center around a man who goes back in time to prevent the event—and yet still there are moments where I’m just so engrossed by the life of Jake Epping in the late 1950s and early 1960s that suddenly I go “oh yeah, the JFK thing” when it’s mentioned once again. I couldn’t recommend this book more so far, and I could see it becoming one of my favorite novels, possibly even my absolute favorite, by the time I get to the ending—naturally assuming this highly recommended and lauded book doesn’t botch its conclusion.
What I’m Watching:
Again, I have to talk about Creature Commandos, which aired its fantastic penultimate episode this past week with its first season concluding in just a few days. It is absolutely incredible, James Gunn doing what he does best, and this episode centering around Doctor Phosphorus, one of the most underrated Batman villains in my opinion, was no exception. This episode had me just as heartbroken as the Weasel-centric episode did, and it really makes you feel for this villain as you see how he became such a monster. I can’t wait for the ending, and I’ll likely talk more in-depth about the show and season as a whole following that next week, but I love this series.
In my free time, I’ve also just been watching through It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on Hulu, because it’s just one of those incredible sitcoms that makes you want to keep coming back and rewatching. But besides this, not much more stuff I’ve been watching on TV—mostly because of 11/22/63 being my preferred means of entertainment this past week.
Okay, I’ve promoted, I’ve updated, and I’ve raved about the book I’m currently obsessed with—so that about wraps up this week’s newsletter. Hope you all have a good week! And, just because I agreed to plug it as much as possible, here’s the Kickstarter link again. Love that I get to plug stuff.
Until next time!
-NS
Great stuff!!