Weekly Update - 12/8/21 - Soap for sore eyes (Patreon)

Hey Team CP, time for your regular Wednesday update, letting you know where we're at, what's in the pipeline and (generally) when you can expect to see things hitting your eyeballs.

I am definitely on schedule to get Brewster's Brood 5 out for Friday, 12/10, with a few pages already written before I even started into writing for the day. I pounded the keys pretty hard at the end of last month, so taking a few days off at the beginning of this week was definitely a smart thing for me to do, but I got started on this week's post yesterday and found it was flowing at a decent clip. While most of it will be written over the next few days, Brewster's Brood 6 will be targeted for 12/21 although it might be either very early on that day, or a day late, as that's around when I'm travelling. Oh hey, I've just realized there's a "schedule this post" function on Patreon, so maybe I'll try that for then.

Along with that, on Friday I am also going to publicly post Brewster's Brood 1-2 for everyone, including non-Patrons, but I want to fundamentally stress something - this is all of Brewster's Brood that will be made available to nonPatrons in any form other than a possible book sale in the very distant future. I've always tried to be as transparent as I can with Team CP about what I'm doing and why, so let me give a very brief explanation.

I've gotten a handful of emails over the last month asking for some sort of proof that the second tier is worth the extra cash every month, and that's absolutely fair. With everything else I'm writing, you can get huge amounts of the text publicly, so you know what you're buying into. But with BB, you're just sort of taking me on faith, and I adore all of you who've done that, but for those on the fence, consider this your option to see what the story is about, how it's being written (as it is being done quite differently than my other stories, as there are MANY viewpoint characters instead of my much more common single viewpoint character style. But these first 30 pages or so will be all that I'm going to release publicly for a very, very long time. After the story's gone on long enough, I may eventually do a compiled version for sale as a print-on-demand physical/e-book somewhere, but we're fathoms away from that still, so no need to worry about that for a long, long time now. 

Our second monthly poll for tier 3/4 subscribers is also up, allowing you, my patrons, to decide what I'm writing for 12/31 and right now, it's a dead heat between a new chapter in Morgana's Gift and a new high fantasy story (think Lord of the Rings or Dungeons & Dragons) start, but lots of you haven't voted yet, so be sure to get in your vote on that post, which went up Monday and will end next Monday. And for those of you who want to help make that decision, consider upgrading to t3 if you feel comfortable with that. I'm also thinking of what else I can do to make that tier feel a bit more significant, so anyone who's got thoughts on that, let me know. 

One thought I've had is that maybe if I get a certain number of subscribers at that tier, I will revert back to just one poll per month, but guarantee a second chapter of QT every month, taking over a Tuesday slot. If that happens, there will be enough people that the poll would open up entirely, meaning that if I got to that, every other month, you might get as many as three QT chapters in a given month, as every other month I would allow QT to be one of the choices people could vote on. That's a lot of writing to commit to, but if I can get up to the point where this Patreon is paying the entirety of my rent, I'd feel comfortable committing to that. 

I have high confidence that If I'm Honest 7 will make 12/17 (+/-1 day) and Quaranteam 34 will make 12/24 simply because the last several chapters of QT have been flowing fast and furious, and I know exactly what's happening in the opening of QT34. I think IIH7 may surprise people, as you start to find out why Deke is one of the more morally flexible of my protagonists. He's far from villainous, but let's just say he's the most visible of my nom de plume in effect out of all the stories I'm currently doing regular writing in. (Although he's not even close to Jonas Silversmith - that man's a right bastard.)

Also to be put down on the schedule, Quaranteam: Phil's Tale 2 is currently locked in for 12/28, although it may swap places with BB6 (which would mean QTPT2 on 12/21 and BB6 on 12/28) depending on how my writing goes for the month. I'll have a better read on that in next week's update, after I'm on the other side of this week's BB post. Commissioned works always come out during the month they were paid for, but the time I release them depends on what the months' worth of writing looks like. Most of the QT universe writing flows out easily, though, so if I can get PT2 done in time for 12/21, I'm going to do that and will just push the back half of the month's BB towards the end of the month, which will leave me a bit of space to get my other commissioned work done for the month.

I'm sure I've rambled on long enough at this point, and now you've got a good idea of what December is currently looking like.  We'll have more clarity next Wednesday, and next week I've got a good window to let me get a lot of writing done before the Christmas holidays, so I'll see everyone next week. Until then, let me leave you with a band that just played their yearly reunion show a few days ago, a band that I wished more people had listened to, with some of the most inventive basswork to come out of the 90s that wasn't done by Les Claypool. The band is Ned's Atomic Dustbin. And the song is "Kill Your Television."

Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Kill Your Television - YouTube