Thinking About Shaking Things Up A Bit (Patreon)

So I have a lot of irons in the fire right now, and work has been keeping me silly busy, but in an excited "can't wait to release this stuff" sort of thing. I'm chugging away on Volume 2 of the Starcaster Chronicles, Analog and D-Pad and CAD 2.0 books. I've recently finished a tabletop card game I'm hoping to bring to Kickstarter in the very near future. I just wrapped up a handful of new shirt designs, my first new shirts in ages, that should be popping up pretty soon.

The Patreon has been on my mind a lot lately as well. A while back I ended the $100 tier, and while it meant giving up a chunk of my income, it was an important step in general for lightening my workload for a bit, and keeping me sane. It's been nice, but at the same time, I'm open to doing that extra work if it's a project I feel strongly about, and that I feel would be well-received. I've been working on just such a thing, and I'm thinking our Patreon might be just the right environment to help me get it done.

It's called Analog and D-Pad: Year One. Just as it sounds, it would be basically Ethan and Lucas' origin story, that entire first year they were super heroes that we essentially shipped by jumping into the story with them already established.

I've sprinkled in bits of backstory and flashbacks for some of the important stuff, but there's a lot there we haven't been able to explore. The duo grappling with their newfound powers, how did they pick their names and costumes, what did those early days of learning to be a superhero look like, how did it clash with their normal lives, who was their first criminal? First villain? There's a fun story within that first year, not super critical to the ongoing story, but still one I'd like to tell.

I've outlined all of the major story beats, and begin scripting pages, but I also need to start thinking about how to release it.

Patreon's great for this sort of thing (for me) because rather than this huge monumental project I have to somehow find time/a way to tackle, it lets me break it up incrementally as "here's one of my work tasks for the month."

So I'm considering two options here... Option A sees a new $7.50 tier created above the Superhero Sidekick tier (I don't want to do away with the one-shots, which are fun), providing (I'm thinking) two Analog and D-Pad: Year One pages each month.

Option B is a little more drastic, as it would replace the Art Enthusiast $10 a month tier, but because I'd no longer be doing wallpapers, I could put that time into pages and aim for four pages a month.

This would be an ongoing project, but not infinitely so; I don't really know how many pages it would be in total, but it is a story with a definitive end. At some point we'd catch up to the point Ethan and Lucas are at in Analog and D-Pad #1, and this project would be complete. At which point I imagine I'd scale back for a spell, and then find something new to pour that time into.

But for now this is the thing which I see value in writing, and I'm thinking (hoping) it's something you'd all be interested in seeing. Which brings us to the comments: let's have 'em! Let me know what you think, I want to hear your comments, questions and concerns.