What funny things did you believe as a kid?

I had a funny talk with some friends a couple of weeks ago that brought back some childhood memories. We were talking about where I grew up (Kingston, ON) and how there were an exceptional number of prisons in the area. Four being the number…which I feel like is quite a lot of major prisons, especially for a small city.

Collins Bay Institute in Kingston, ONWhen we first moved to the area, we passed by one of the prisons and to me, it looked like a castle (see image on the right). I was four years old and I don’t think my parents wanted to explain to me what prisons were. Subsequently, I went on to believe that this was, in fact, a castle. Specifically, I began associating it with Disneyland since it looked a little like the castle in the logo of the movies I frequently watched.

As a kid, of course I wanted to go to Disneyland! I couldn’t understand why it was so close and yet my parents never took me.

One day, my Oma and Opa were visiting us for the first time since we’d moved. As we drove around the city, we passed “Disneyland” and I excitedly told my grandparents about it and how someday I would go. Oma turned to me, confused, and just said, “Stephoooney, that is not Disneyland, and please do not end up there!” which thus shattered my illusions and forced my parents to have to explain prisons after all.

Like I asked at the top, what funny things did you believe as a kid? Let me know in the comments!

I love pancakes. SO DANG MUCH. I legit have a cookbook all about pancakes and try to have them fairly regularly. Although since I learned how to make Dutch Babies (aka baked pancakes), I’ve been less into the “normal” pancakes. I’ve been making them for a while now and have formulated my very own recipe! I thought I’d share since I also worked on a way to do bite-sized baked pancakes, so here we go:

INGREDIENTS:

STEPS:

Step 1
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

Step 2
Put butter in a 9-inch pie pan*. Place pan in the preheating oven until butter is melted, 5 to 10 minutes.

Step 3
Whisk flour, milk, eggs, white sugar, and salt together in a bowl; pour mixture into the hot butter.

Step 4
Bake in the preheated oven until pancake is brown on the edges and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 19-21 minutes.

Transfer pancake to plate, top with confection sugar or maple syrup, and enjoy!

*BITE SIZED BAKED PANCAKES:
Do all the steps above but use a muffin tin. Portion the butter between all the cups and divide up the same as you would for a larger dish.

ADD-ONS:
To give the pancake a little kick, play around with the flavours. Such as:

Brown sugar and pecans – melt some butter in a frying pan, add in some brown sugar. Let it melt together for a moment before adding the pecans and then stir for another couple of minutes. Add mixture to the bottom of your pie dish or muffin tins before adding batter. Sprinkle additional pecans on the top.

Bananas – mash up a ripe banana, add into the batter, pour into pie dish or muffin tins as explained above.

This can also be done with strawberries and blueberries as well!

This recipe is modified from this one over on AllRecipes.

Oh My Gods! Book CoverWe have had such a wonderful response to the release of Oh My Gods! and I wanted to share a few of the interviews, reviews, and other fun things that we’ve been seeing around the internet since the launch.

Interviews:

Podcasts & Video Interviews:

Reviews:

Other:

I’ll try to collect more as I see them, but THANK YOU!!!!! so much for all of the support and love thus far.

Oh My Gods! Book CoverOh My Gods! has finally hit store shelves, and I am over the moon and thrilled that it’s out in the world. We have a pretty big (yet small) team, so we didn’t do an acknowledgements section in the book; I wanted to give some shout outs to the people who made this book happen. This isn’t going to be a finely crafted letter…it’s a OMG I SHOULD’VE COME UP WITH AN ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PAGE post that I’m writing on the day of release. Whoops.

First of all, thank you to Insha Fitzpatrick. Somehow between our ADHD-addled minds and our easily excited selves, we managed to put this book together and see it through to completion. I can’t imagine having done this book with anyone else…nor would I have wanted to. Insha made our babies real and gave them so much backstory and life. She’s always my friend first before all else, but I’m glad she’s at my side professionally too.

And to Juliana Moon who is an ACTUAL GODDESS. We owe this woman a month-long spa day for the work she churned out on this book. Oh My Gods! was fast-tracked and Juliana hit every deadline and was an absolute joy to work with. She nails all the expressions of the characters and GODS…ALL THE CUTE CENTAUR BUTTS EVERYWHERE JUST GIVE ME LIFE.

To Whitney Cogar, we didn’t really work with you a ton directly, but you are so loved and appreciated in the #TEAMNOCHILL family. Whitney delivered brilliant colours that made Juliana’s art pop off the page and helped set the tone and atmosphere of the story.

To Lily Kessinger: I tell her at every chance I get, but she is a goddamn amazing editor that I am beyond fortunate enough to have worked with numerous times now. The feedback she gives and the care she puts into her notes makes each story a million times better. She asks questions that will make a difference to the final product, and everything that I’ve brought to her is a gajillion times better because of her. I will forever be grateful to Lily for the opportunities that she has given me and the faith that she puts into my work. Plus Masha is the cutest grump ever.

WOW THIS IS ALREADY GETTING SO LONG. HA HA WHOOPS.

Andrea Miller pitched and launched the Etch imprint at HMH Kids. But that’s not why they’re amazing. I mean, it’s part of it but they also put so much love into designing this book, doing the lettering for us, and giving Juliana constructive feedback as she did the interiors. As an artist too, Andy made all of their notes so accessible and easily understandable, and all the effort that went into making Oh My Gods! the book it is…well, we saw it, and we love you for it.

Maria Vicente is our incredible agent who took on Oh My Gods! and three clients with less than zero chill. HONESTLY, if for nothing else, I have to thank her for dealing with us and our immediate email responses, bajillion emails and questions, and for being in our corner. We were all new to the book market side of things for comics, and Maria helped us navigate it all.

OKAY THIS IS GETTING VERY LONG SO NOW I’M JUST THANKING PEOPLE IN A MORE GENERAL SENSE BUT I LOVE YOU ALL IN LOTS OF PARAGRAPH-LENGTH WAYS TOO.

To Kirk who helped me organize my thoughts and helped me learn to plan my projects. Love you.

To my parents, to Aunt Nancy, to Oma, thank you for loving me and believing in me.

To all of my friends (oh gods oh gods I’m going to forget people but I love you all), Liz, Dani, Tory, Tate, Chris, Nicole, Amy, Sam, Steven, Andrea, Whitney, Zak, Rachel, Laura, Zoe, Jenn, Sam, Fred, Bobby, Bob, Huw, Hagai, Ned, Jeremy, Tyrell, Sunny, Bee, Ashley, Jey, Michelle, David, Grace, Shaun, Olivia, Jacquie…AHHHHH I AM PANICKING CAUSE I’VE DEFINITELY FORGOTTEN PEOPLE BUT GOSH I LOVE YOU.

I admittedly don’t see my family a ton to begin with but I grew into a far more anxious person over the last few years and became a bit of a hermit as I hunkered down on projects. I missed out on a lot of parties and get togethers with my friends, and they were beyond understanding as I went about all my business. Find yourself friends who love you no matter what and even though they know you might bail or just outright say no…they continue to invite you to stuff anyways.

I’ve missed a ton of people. I know it. But know that I am beyond grateful to you, even if you’re not on this list. If you helped me in any way over the years…I see you, I remember you, I value you.

<3 <3 <3

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

I know we’re in 2021 now (thank god) but I’m finally just getting around to posting the last of the media I enjoyed last year. You’ve maybe seen that I’ve been tracking my TV watches so this is the last little bit of what I watched, which consisted of a lot of rewatches (which is pretty unusual for me). It also consisted of a lot of garbage reality TV…which is less unusual for me  take a look, if you’re interested:

I loved the second season of His Dark Materials, and although I don’t think anything ever tops the first book in the series, this did a super great job of adapting it into a worthy follow-up.

The Wilds was surprisingly excellent! I wasn’t expecting to get so drawn into the story and characters but found myself super invested in the story. My one qualm is that I feel like they’re leading up to a new set of characters without really resolving what happened to this group but I mean, I don’t know that just yet. I guess I wish there were more answers right away though. Still, it was very good!

I don’t think there’s anything I could say about The Queen’s Gambit that hasn’t been said already but I really enjoyed that too.

What have you been watching? What’s on your 2021 list?

I’ve been tracking a lot of what I watched, read, and played in 2020 and even though we’re a few days into 2021 now, I thought I’d share the games I played this year. I’m too tired to write up more about them but you can say hello on Twitter or Instagram and ask me more about any of them and what I thought!

Here they are:

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