Vote over at TWC and you can see this week's thumbnails, as well as two thumbnails I put together for cover ideas for the first three chapters (1-2 combined, then chapter 3). I'm thinking of making normal floppy comic issues of these chapters to sell at conventions until I've got enough people interested in buying physical volumes :). Our stunning conclusion! Or not actually stunning, because we already know they're practically married in the main timeline, but still! I'd like to point out the page everyone enjoyed where Marisa was teasing Elias for not just asking out Vincent like a normal person...joke's on her, she is obviously not the smooth one in this relationship. But really, when you're faced with a 6' tall blond werewolf/amazon who's being forward as hell about being super into you...hard to resist. Anyway, here's the first kiss I've featured in HTBAW! Or real kiss, because I think Malaya's dad kissed her on the forehead once. It isn't that I'm against kissing, I just like it to have an impact. Just like a good werewolf fight, you gotta build it up and make it important. I apologize that it's very tiny! I'll put the high res version up on Twitter tomorrow ;). So, I know a few people were a little confused about why would there be a shopping montage/lesbian flashback in the midst of everything else going on? There's a house full of werewolves to save! Well, that is for next chapter, when Aubrey hopefully pulls through and we have some object for Charlene to get psychic vibes from. But for now, this chapter is largely to help reinforce the thesis of this story, which is...How to be a werewolf. Malaya is on a really long path trying to figure out who she is and her own power, but Marin's already been there. She got knocked down, but in the process of getting back up, Marin finally ended up in a place where she had power and agency. The "How to be a Werewolf" part of this story is partially the literal idea of finding out how to be better at being a werewolf, but it's also the less literal story of figuring out who you are, what you want out of life, and claiming your own power. And it was actually conceived that way! A lot of my inspiration for HTBAW comes from my own struggles figuring out who I am and what I'm capable of as an adult, and the difference between artificial barriers that I create in my head and the barriers that really exist and hold me back. Hopefully we're at a point where the less literal "How to be a Werewolf" theme is pretty clear :). And there will be more actual werewolf learning in the next chapter, but we needed to address some existential fall out from Chapter 6 first! All right, I'm off to war. I got a ton on my plate this week, because I'm helping with a fundraiser that's raising money for local women who want to run for office. It's been fun, but I can't wait for it to be over after Thursday O_O