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

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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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 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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