Latest News

May 20, 2024 ITEM! 3rd Voice, that big internet comic I have been making, just got nominated for an Eisner Award. This is a huge thing I am having trouble wrapping my head around. It is lovely to have it recognized by one of our big institutions; I appreciate the nomination so much!!!! Voting is open for industry people; I encourage you to do so though the money in my category is emphatically on Lore Olympus. Thank you Eisner judges.

ITEM! My horror graphic novel The Last Delivery is finally almost out. If you are in BROOKLYN NEW YORK or environs, please join me on SUNDAY, JUNE 16, at SEA & SOIL, a sandwich shop at 102 President Street, at 2 or 3 o’clock, for A BOOK RELEASE EVENT. I will have a bunch of copies of the book, I’ll sign stuff and draw stuff, I’ll probably bring some originals and prints. At around 3:00 I’m going to "talk about the book" a little, or something. I don’t know! It’s been over 10 years since I’ve done something like this! Enormous thanks to Gaby and Noah for the use of their space for this.

Thank you for reading!!! We got an 11-page scene coming up soon so the schedule might be a little shaky. But I am chugging along. see you

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Latest Letter Column

You can email me something at 3rdvoicemail@gmail.com and I will maybe get to it here.

Hello Mr. Dahm, I’ve seen your usage of fictional scripts, language, and grammar in your novels, specifically Vattu and 3rd Voice. What is your inspiration and how long does it take for you to come up with them. Thank you, Anonymous * March 16, 2024

Hi! I have made several invented writing systems, basically alphabets— Vattu uses one of these extensively, but it doesn’t actually have an invented language behind it. I think it seemed like it would’ve been too complicated and distracting to do all of that for Vattu, it being such a broad-strokes sort of mythic history thing. 3rd Voice however does have an actual invented language in it, with its own modes of writing also. It feels to me like it fits with the world-logic of 3V a little better! Making a language with the scale and complexity of an actual language is, like everything in world-building, a basically impossible task. SO I have tried to apply the same logic I use for everything in working with invented settings: build thematic throughlines, emphasize evocativeness over plausibility, and keep in mind how it looks to the reader above all else. What the 3V language amounts to, so far, is another textural aspect of the setting, and a tool for me to build a sense of richness into all of it.

SO I mean it could take forever to make language! But what’s the point of making something so impossibly huge and arbitrarily complex? You can get some basic structures in place pretty simply, and build upon them as you need to. Verbs make sense to me as a place to start, though any attempt to universalize this sort of thing is naturally beholden to one’s own perspective from inside of their language(s).

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