State of the Patreon and upcoming stuff (Patreon)

NOTE: Also, I have yet to go and retag all of my old posts with the new NSFW and SFW tiers. I still need to do that. I'll get on that soon, fell off that wagon.

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I wanted to make a post before the month ends, about the state of things and upcoming stuff.

Long story short: Remember that coloring job I finished back in February? Well, I still haven't been paid for it. I'm not going to rehash the details, I've already pulled out hair and cried a lot over it. But not getting paid what was supposed to be 90% of my income this year has pretty much messed up my plans month after month after month. Like, my goal was to get paid, and take less side jobs, so I could spend a month on Love Me Nice, another month on Slipshine, another month on Starry Knight. You know, focus on stuff that pays off later, since I wouldn't have to worry about being paid ASAP.

But that's not how it happened, and while the payment is finally being sorted and the problem that caused it fixed, the reality is I've had to month after month deviate from my plans to take odd jobs so I can, you know, pay living costs and postpone moving out of my family's guest room indefinitely (again).

So my very stupidly optimistic brain wants to now be like, "Hey the payment thing is being sorted, I can finally get my original plans back up running" but that's probably be unwise. Who knows how this could get messed up. Until I get the money in my own account, I just can't afford to do anything but live day-to-day and not plan further than a week into the future. Had I known it was gonna be like this, I'd have been looking for part-time jobs 6 months ago. But here we are, lol.

ANYWAY, that probably seems very doom and gloom, but I'm just explaining why I keep saying that "next month I'm gonna be working on X" or "expect pages from Y" soon, because month after month I just... assumed I was going to be paid any day now by a major publisher. A reasonable assumption.

But, I still have plans for upcoming months. Once I finally get paid, I'm setting a lot of things in motion.

• A month of Slipshine work
• A month of Love Me Nice work
• Starry Knight progress

And on top of those things, remember my Home-Bound/Porrima pitch? I've decided I'm going to start drawing that NOW, to make as a webcomic, even ahead of my Love Me Nice plans.

For various reasons, I've become pretty upset with certain parties, and don't really trust publishers and their adjacent businesses and practices. I don't want to put this story's success and existence in the hands of editors and marketing people. I don't want to see it pitched around for 5 months just to be rejected, or for me to get jerked around. I probably sound a little combative, but the last 1-2 years of dipping my toes into mainstream comics has been goddamn harrowing. Maybe I got unlucky, and I'm trying to be vague about the specific incidents and people involved who put me in such a bind. I wanna maintain working relationships, I wanna hope they'll do better, and I'll have people in my corner.

But I gotta plan for the instance I can't count on anyone, and I wanna have contingency plans if I say "fuck it" and just take my bags and return home to indie publishing. So I'm gonna start working on Porrima as a webcomic ahead and alongside the pitching period. This will be to gauge interest, get started on it, and should the project not get picked up, it won't be something that gets shelved. Cuz I really like the comic, I want to make it no matter what.

I don't know if it'll be viable as a webcomic, but I'd rather try and fail on my own terms, where I'm not sitting on my hands while people are too busy to communicate with me. Maybe mainstream publishing isn't for me and I need a patreon-supported webcomic that isn't as niche as (and is way better planned than) Love Me Nice.

I don't know if this overly-venty state-of-the-Patreon makes much sense. But that's where I'm at and what I'm up to.