State of the Jaguar, June 2024 (Patreon)

We have had the most beautiful year I can remember here in Florida… a mild spring leading into the least humid, mildest summer, with mornings and evenings dipping into the low 80s F, with breezes. I have loved every moment of it, except for what it does to pollinating plants. We usually get a break when the weather gets hotter and wetter, and instead, the plants are burgeoning with joy!

I, meanwhile, am living on Benadryl. XD

It took me several months of fumbling around for a good solution to find one, and looking backwards I imagine a drunken trail of wreckage as I went from ‘brain fog’ to ‘unable to open eyes’ to ‘headache so bad it triggers migraines’ to ‘unable to concentrate’ like a terrible merry-go-round. So, the good news is that Benadryl works well for me, and as long as I don’t skip a day I remain functional; the not-so-great news is that I’ve had so few cycles to be productive that I spent them all on family duties. Preparing a child for launch into the adult world is more time-consuming than I thought, but it’s also exciting and rife with amazing milestones and I’m not sorry to be on this ride. The art can wait on it.

 I have been filling in the gaps with tactical projects that fit well into the spaces I have left over, like the sticker Kickstarters and the short stories for Raconteur Press, but the bigger things have been on the backburner. Now that my brain’s a little more online, though, I’m returning to those things. So, an update on those projects!

• Novels – The gamelit novel I’m serializing is about half-done; we’re about to get the Big Incident, and after that, I anticipate an acceleration toward the end. I hope to wrap up serialization in autumn, and then I’ll have the full book ready for Kickstarter and retail maybe by year’s end, or spring 2025. Qora’s novel, on the other hand, is about 60% done, and is a big enough deal I’ll talk about it more after these bullet points. 

• Peradventure – The Jokka playtest version of this game is still scheduled for summer, but I’m thinking July now; we have some revolution going on in the household in June that I want to make sure I’m free for. But if you’re interested, I’ll ping you on Discord. (So, make sure you’re on Discord if you want to participate.)

• Shopify – Phase 2, which is paperbacks, is next, and I’ve started on it already. I hope to have all my existing paperbacks hooked up by July. I was planning on doing audio next, but I had to pay a fee to set up the paperbacks so I want to get to work recouping that first. And yes, I am planning on having bundles for paperbacks too… perhaps even the Peltedverse superbundle, even. I kind of wonder if anyone wants to pay a discount to have FORTY paperbacks shipped to them. That sounds like an amazing thing to have arrive on your door…! The last thing on my list is merch and ad hoc things, like signed books, but I hope the store is fully stocked by autumn.

So… Qora. I didn’t have this one on the schedule at all, considering it a filler/backstory installment I could get to later, until I started on Surela 2 and realized how big the resolutions in Qora’s story are, and how they directly impact everyone in Surela’s arc. Then, when I started writing it, I realized how many threads I was tying together in this ‘backstory installment.’ The continuity requirements for this book are stringent. It has given me fresh compassion for writers who never get around to writing their final books, because they feel helpless when they confront the sheer volume of loose ends they need to ravel in a satisfying way. This book is hard. Possibly the hardest I’ve written in a decade… not from an emotional standpoint, but from a technical one. There are days I haven’t opened the document because the dread I felt at the thought of the task drove me away…! That is some serious learning experience potential right there, I tell you. I wasn’t up to it with allergybrain, but now that the benadryl’s working I am actually excited at the challenge

In addition to my dread about flubbing the continuity, I made another error when I thought I could tell Qora’s story as a straight adventure plot: characters did this, then this, then this! But even though it is an adventure, there’s too much riding on it emotionally, psychologically, and narratively for me to handwave away all the scenes I was trying to skip past. Qora spends almost a year “adventuring” away from Sediryl. The things he finds out are enormous. The changes they provoke are galactic in consequence. There’s no getting away from this thing being bigger than I planned. So there was that mistake that I’m going to call my second challenge in the interests of reframing it for success. XD

Notably, this is the first book in a while that has had several false starts, where I’m not even sure how to frame the story properly. I’ve done two so far, only to return to the first when I decided the second attempt was a way to get around filling in the quieter downtime scenes I was avoiding by writing it as an adventure the first time. So now I’m revising the book, where you can read ‘revising’ as ‘adding twice the material.’

I’d call this book 60% done. I think it’s 60% done. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess. My hope is to have it ready by autumn, which is a long time for me, writing a book. The good news is that this is the one that’s penning up all the stories behind it; Surela 2 and 3 are going to be easy in comparison, and there’s another Alysha book waiting back there too (it’s even got a name already! Friends in High Places!). If I can learn what Qora’s story has to teach me, I’ll be a better writer… and the next books should come faster. So here’s to that…!

I’m going to need serious continuity readers for this one, so if that’s your jam, your big moment is coming. XD

So that’s where the Jaguar’s at, right now, in June. A couple of you have asked about my personal situation; I’m still job-hunting, and hopefully the right day job will show up at the right time. For now, my writing/art sales continue to be our only income so I’m grateful for all of it! Thank you all!

 More as it happens, and as always questions and comments welcome.