Well, it's the start of June, and if you're a child in grade school, that means you’re probably looking forward to the end of the school year and finally enjoying your summer vacation. But maybe I can make the wait for the end of the school year a little more exciting, because the tenth and final chapter of Operation Awesome, titled "June Endings", has officially been released on the website!
But enough about that - let's get back to the story! Be prepared for an awkward invite to a pool party, a lesson in body confidence, and a romantic confession.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter, and of course, Operation Awesome as a whole! It’s hard to believe that this book has finally been completed, but here we are. As for any sequels to the book, there are no immediate plans, and while I do have ideas for a sequel, they’re currently not enough to carry a whole story. Even if I did have enough ideas for a sequel, I’m much more eager to return to other projects, at least for now. If there’s enough demand for a sequel, I might consider it, but for now, I hope for this book’s display of my writing, drawing and book designing skills to attract the attention of publishers.
You may have noticed that I revamped the Operation Awesome page to make it shorter, with a slideshow featuring the entire book, and smaller galleries for each chapter that you can expand to immediately jump to any point in the story. You may have also noticed a video titled "The Making of Operation Awesome" at the bottom of the page. For the past few months, I have been posting reels detailing the making of the book on Instagram. "The Making of Operation Awesome" is a compilation of all these reels, which includes reels that I decided not to upload to Instagram this past month. Below is the video if you haven't seen it yet!
I would also like to address a criticism from someone I received a while back that Operation Awesome just feels like another Diary of a Wimpy Kid clone. While this served as an influence design-wise (you might have noticed how much I love the series on my blog), I want the book to be judged on the merits of its story more than anything else. There have been plenty of so-called “clones” of Diary of a Wimpy Kid that have been well-received as stories, including The Dork Diaries, Big Nate, Middle School and Timmy Failure. Granted, I assure you that none of my other projects in development are “Diary of a Wimpy Kid clones”, and I’m eager to share them with the world to showcase the diversity of my storytelling.
As for what’s next for Naimoli Universe? Well, I’m happy to announce that the next big project I’ll be working on is my comic strip, Sammy Specificspif! More information about it will be revealed in another post, but for now, I hope you all have a wonderful summer ahead as Kendrick and Melinda begin their summer romance.
And as usual, stay enlightened, educated and entertained, folks.