April 2023 Update (Patreon)

Wow, it's Already April! No April Fool's jokes from me - maybe I'll have a story ready for next year.

Quick March Recap

- I have a couple of things that still need to be posted that were mostly finished in March, including a chapter of QT:NW I'm hoping to finish the last bit of and do an editing pass for today, plus two chapters of Love Cruise that are just waiting on approval from the commissioner. Once they are out, we'll be JUST shy of the 100k word goal for the month.

- Some of you noticed that I missed a week! I've had a lot of stuff going on this month in the background that I've been working on, and that chewed into my writing time. There is a Big Project coming up in the future that I'll be speaking on more in the next few months, but March was the time to get it started so I was doing a lot of communicating and organizing behind the scenes.

What Does April Hold?

- We're going to be working on keeping on schedule! That means weekly OFG and AMA releases, plus a planned 2 chapters each of FoF and QT:NW.

- I am technically behind on OFG releases this year as a sponsored story, so I'll be doing Double Updates for it to catch up.

- I have several folks talking with me about Commissions right now - I'm really excited about the projects that we're discussing, but my first priority will be trying to keep our regular schedule of releases and fitting the commission stories around that.

- Character Art Happened! If you happened to miss it, last month we ran Polls for which story I would commission character art for and the winner by popular decision was AMA: The Boyfriend. It only made sense to start with Cassidy, so now we have some wonderful art by Bayushi. In the next day or two I'll post up a new Poll for this month so that we can pick which of the AMA girls he'll work on this month - I have a feeling it will be a hotly contested spot.

- Character Art Bonus Info: So, what I learned through searching for an artist to do these character art commissions, is that a lot of the artists that I follow only rarely open up to commissions. Now that we're starting to get Character References, I think I'm going to keep my eye out for whenever artists I follow do open for commission submissions and see if I can get some one-off pieces done featuring our girls. They'll just be little bonuses here or there for us when they happen, and hopefully they might interest some other followers of the artists to check out the stories!

- Utility Cleaning is continuing! Many of you have likely noticed that I held that 'What utility stuff should I do' Poll and then promptly did things over the last month that countered that poll. Why did I do that? Because sometimes I sit down to work and my brain says 'Dude, this really needs to get done' and I can't get anything creative done. My goal this month is to get the AMA Compilation Bundles done in 50 chapter bunches.

- My goal for this month outside of writing and Patreon stuff is to figure out the StoriesOnline submission system. Some other authors have had great success posting over there, but my first run at figuring out their system showed me it was less than intuitive. 

- Patreon is removing Goals. Apparently it's because the stats show they don't serve as a successful marketing function, but that's something I've known for a long time and isn't a surprise to me. I'm still not sure why they are removing the tracking functionality, but they are, so I've decided that we're going to adjust how we do things here in BreaktheBar land.

New Patreon Goals

Based on the Goal Polls we held, and the changes to Patreon systems, I think the easiest way to run community goals is going to be through Patron Numbers. On the 2nd of each month if we have stayed over a goal threshold, I'll celebrate by doing something or starting a new project. (Why not the 1st? Because Patreon's system LIES to me and every month all of the stats for the previous month change dramatically throughout the day.)

GOAL 1: 500 Patrons - BUTTS
When we stay over 500 patrons, I will go back and commission back/butt references for any Character Art we've done, plus adding them to our regular commissions moving forward. Yes, this is silly, BUTT I feel like it fits. *Badum-tss*

GOAL 2: 600 Patrons - Illustrated Novella
When we stay over 600 patrons, I will hold polls for what genre of story I should start working on for an illustrated novella. This would be a one-shot story designed to be partnered with a series of illustrations and pin-ups throughout the story, and would likely be a multi-month project. If you all enjoy the process and the end result, we'll do more!

GOAL 3: 750 Patrons - Erotica Comic
When we stay over 750 patrons, we'll do a poll similar to the Illustrated Novella to decide a genre for a new erotic comic book. Again, this would be a one-shot story to see how we like the end result and the process, and would be a multi-month project. If we like it, we'll do more!

I think that's all for now, folks! Expect the new Character Art poll tomorrow-ish, and we'll likely be seeing the AMA Day 5 poll this month as well. I also think there will be an FoF-related poll too, I just need to decide the appropriate Chapter Release to do it with.

Cheers!
~Break.