Chapters of an early project (Patreon)

Hi all, thanks for the support!

Before I start talking about this project, I want to make sure everyone is aware of the BEETLE CAMEO COLLECTION POST! If you would like to have a CREATURE CAMEO in BOOK 2 OF THE BEETLE SERIES please respond to that post before DECEMBER 31ST.

I'm sharing the first few chapters from a project I'd like to work on more fully when I can, a kids' novel in prose. The idea is blending "doorway to another world" childrens fantasy with a murder mystery story, but I find writing murder mysteries quite challenging, so I haven't tackled the outline for this to my satisfaction yet. These first few chapters that I wrote to determine the project's tone, and to flesh out the vivid beginning I imagined to the story, are work I'm very proud of and want to share with you. I figured the format of kids' otherworld fantasy would work really well with the murder mystery format, since those books usually include an ensemble cast of colorful characters. Telling characters apart in mystery novels is sometimes tough without a visual element, so making each character wildly physically different should help. 

I was also inspired by playing through Umineko no Naku Koro ni, which tackles somewhat similar ideas, although I don't think this is very similar to read. 

Although I like this beginning a LOT from a writing standpoint, I've also been wondering if it tackles the main character's desperate circumstances in the real world too quickly. Ideally, I want the reader to feel that they've read the "book before this book" and care about the characters even though that book doesn't exist. 

If you decide to read through yourself, please let me know in the comments how you feel about these chapters as an opening!

_

I also wanted to give you a BEETLE UPDATE! 

We are nearing completion of Beetle and the Chimera Carnival in January/February, which means it will be out in Spring '25 unless something crazy happens. 

I wanted to write up a really clean explanation of the process and especially the time frame for those of you who are interested, because the back end of publishing is quite confusing. 

There were two years of publisher delay to start Chimera Carnival, and it will take a year to publish it, so that's three years of delay that I couldn't really do anything about. I can break it down for you. Beetle 1 wrapped about a year before it was published in August of 2020. I was not officially contracted to work on Beetle 2 until September of 2021, so in the end book two took a little over two years for me to make. My publisher really wanted me to be able to make the second book much faster than the first because of all these delays, so they initially slated the book for spring of '24. But I would have actually only had a year to outline, script, thumbnail, sketch, ink, hand-letter, paint, and take editorial notes on the book, because to come out in spring '24 it would have had to have been done a year in advance, so last spring. So I would have had from September '21 to about March of '23 to make the book, which just doesn't work for a graphic novel that's 360+ pages long and painted. I hope that satisfies your curiosity about that timeline! It's not what readers would expect at all, so I wanted to be transparent about it. 

Thanks again!