Peregrine Lake – A Weekly Webcomic Written by Trae Dorn and Drawn by Ethan Flanagan

If you follow me on social media you likely already know this, but I figured I should toss it on the blog for good measure too.

For those unaware, the webcomic Peregrine Lake (written by me and drawn by the talented Ethan Flanagan) will officially launch on April 16th and update every Tuesday at peregrine-lake.com

I promised the follow up to UnCONventional was “coming soon” four years ago. Well, “soon” finally got here.

I know I actually talked about it back in January as arriving this spring, but it’s actually “this spring” now. Frankly, I’m incredibly excited to show you guys what we’ve been working on for the last year, and bringing you the story that I’ve had in my head for so much longer.

As I’ve said, this is a follow up to UnCONventional, but it isn’t required reading. Peregrine Lake takes place ten years after that comic’s end, and only Lynn and Megan carry over from that cast. This is also a very different comic tonally. Peregrine Lake is a “Northwoods Gothic” tale that follows a young woman named Bev as she inherits her late uncle’s house outside of the small town of Peregrine Lake, WI. That’s the short version.

I hope you guys end up liking it as much as I do.

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For those who (somehow) missed it, my debut (non-graphic) novel The Witch and the Rose is now available for purchase. It’s a contemporary fantasy novel. It’s got a witch, it’s got queer people, it’s occasionally a little spicy, it has the occasional bleed through of my witchcraft opinions… it’s fun! It’s the first book in a series, and I think folks will enjoy it.

So let’s talk about how folks can buy it!

For one, it’s on Kindle (also, if you pay for Kindle Unlimited, you can read it right now for free), but there’s also a dead tree version too. While eBooks are exclusively through Amazon right now, the dead tree version comes in two (identical) forms. First off, there’s the version listed on Amazon. This is the fastest way to get it, and probably the version with the cheapest shipping (since it qualifies for Prime).

I know some folks don’t like Amazon though, which is why there’s a separate Paperback edition done through a different printer. You can either order that directly, or booksellers can order via ISBN 9798869132666.

Those are all the ways you can pick up the novel. So, to quote the eminent critic Jay Sherman, “Buy my book!”

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(A Rant Where Trae Has Written Too Many Books This Month)

So since most of you started following me because of Witchcraft or podcast stuff, I realize a lot of you don’t know how much fiction writing I do.

(I originally wrote this on my tumblr, but I’m realizing that if you’re reading this here you do know this in all likelihood — but I don’t feel like rewriting the whole post so just pretend, okay?)

Primarily what I’ve published are comics. The big one is UnCONventional (which ran from December of 2009 to December of 2019), but I also did a steampunk comic called The Chronicles of Crosarth (which I put on hiatus in like 2018 intending to come back to… but I haven’t, and I make no guarantee that I will even though over 650 of the 800 planned pages are done). Crosarth is… fine? The art isn’t great in either of these, but UnCONventional carries itself with the humor.

But that’s all old stuff. You may be like “Trae, what have you been producing for the last four years,” and the answer is “not a lot.” I got major creative block with the pandemic. Peregrine Lake, the “Northwoods Gothic” comic I was supposed to launch in 2020 (which has some characters from UnCONventional in it) didn’t materialize when I said it would. What storytelling energy I had went into Stormwood & Associates and The Meatgrinder (my two actual play podcasts), but that was it.

And then 2023 happened, and the juices started flowing again.

Peregrine Lake is moving forward — but with me just doing the writing. My urge to draw has not returned, but my urge to write has. A friend of mine, Ethan Flanagan, is drawing it, and I’ve written the first year of comics. It likely won’t launch any time soon (the artist I’m working with is busy as hell so we want to get a shit-ton of the comic done before we launch it — we have like the first month and a half of the comic ready?). But yeah — it’s happening. I hoping for Spring, but we’ll see.

The other thing though is that I’ve started writing, like, novels. I’ve always had like twenty ideas in my head, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I decided to start with the idea I cared the least about (in case I fucked it up): A queer urban fantasy story.

In the last month and a half I’ve written complete drafts of two different novels in this setting, and am halfway through another one… and have another one outlined.

I, uh, had some ideas.

If you’re asking yourself “Hey Trae — what the fuck? That’s a lot” you need to know a few things that aren’t obvious. At one point in college, in 72 hours, I produced over 40 pages of text between three research papers. All were for 300 level courses, and I may have disassociated while writing them because I frankly don’t remember most of it. But, like, they were decent papers.

One of those papers is in Google Scholar.

Anyway, yeah. I haven’t been sleeping great because I’ve been obsessively writing, but you might ask “Why didn’t you just write one and get it ready to publish?” That’s a great question. Because I wrote a book, and when I was 3/4 of the way through it I realized something very important: This book would make a great sequel to a book I haven’t written. I’ve been writing book two in a series where I haven’t written book one yet.

Well fuck.

So I finished that draft, and I went and wrote book one. Now that book? That book I’m getting ready to publish. I expect to have it out in January. Part of my editing process involves setting what I think is a completed, good, revised draft down for a couple of weeks and then returning to it with fresh eyes. We’re in that waiting period right now.

But I still had a bunch of energy.

So the first thing I did was a revising draft on book two (the one I wrote first), but I finished that. And had more energy. And more stories in this setting kept popping up.

So I started a third book. And I’m halfway through the first draft of that book. But then I realized yesterday… shit, this isn’t book three.

This is book four.

I need stuff to happen before we get to this story.

So now I’ve outlined the actual book three, and am working on literally both of these books at once (I’ll take a break for Christmas and then go do a final edit on Book One).

And… I’m just like… why am I like this?

I need to stop myself for a few days and get more sleep.

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