A bit of news (03.07.2020) (Patreon)

HELLO!

It is I, again, coming at you with a few updates on things. If you're on the Discord(s) you will already have heard about half of it, so I will quickly wrote out things point by point so you can skip what you don't care about.

1. State of the Thana image

2. What's happening with Welldark?

3. Funatic is taking a vacation from the 2nd to the 4th of August.

4. Fun has quit his side job.

Let's start with the bad news. 

1. The Thana image is currently up in the air. The artist I had grabbed for it, Chris Cold (who also did the cover for Drip-Fed), had originally said he could do it, but it would take a while. Something is going on in his private life that leaves him with little time. As we have a purely professional relationship, I did not privy further. Whatever those complications were, they have worsened to the point where he told me he cannot finish the commission.

I did not pay money yet and he was very apologetic about it, so I don't want this to reflect negative on the guy whatsoever. He did warn me this could happen and I insisted on commissioning him anyway because his artstyle would have been perfect for it.

Anyway, we're back to square 1 with this one and I don't know any alternative artist for something creepy yet. I'll either have to look around or wait until Chris Cold opens his gates again. I'm still getting it done eventually, just letting you people know where we are on that.

2. What's happening with Welldark?

I finished writing the first volume of Welldark about three months ago and have since been editing it. I can report two things on that front: 

First, the book desperately needs it, particularly the first chapter. I have no idea what rode me to write Karitas early on as I did, but I have rewritten basically all of his dialogue to be more in line with his behaviour in later chapters. He is still a bit cringy and pretentious, that much is intended, but that should be a groan inducing side occurence, not the primary attribute of his character. 

Second, God, I may be a quick writer, but editing takes three eternities, mostly because I hate reading my own stuff. I hope things accelerate as I hit the later chapters, which I know are better, but don't expect things to get done anytime soon. I aim for a release in winter. If it happens sooner, that'll be nice.

Also on the note of Welldark, I decided to reach deep into my pockets and get a book cover drawn. This is unrelated of the usual commissions and won't cause a delay in the procedures. You will, however, get it for download under the usual conditions when its done. It will depict the main girl, Esther. Hopefully, it will come out great.

3. Funatic is taking a vacation from the 2nd to the 4th. This is my yearly birthday vacation. My birthday is on the second of August, which is a Sunday, and I will be taking two days off. This means that the Gamer will be delayed by 2 chapters, but Drip-Fed will continue unaffacted that week.

4. Fun has quit his side job. I doubt most of you are aware of this, but I have been working in a supermarket at the side for the past 4 years. I started doing that job shortly before I first started writing. Originally, I meant to quit there when this Patreon started paying me as much as the job did, but I realized I could keep up my schedule anyway, so I took the extra money each month and funneled it into more art. Well, nowadays, I make double my sidejob doing this and after four years stuffing shelves, I don't really feel motivated to do it anymore.

In raw time, this frees up about another 12 hours of my time every week. It should also conserve some of my energy on the days I would have worked. Whether it will have any notable impact remains to be seen. My contract ends on the last day of August and it will likely take until the end of September to see whether or not there is an increase in my production.

If there is, I would like to try to get Drip-Fed to two chapters a week. Its either that or Welldark getting more attention. Or I might start some entirely new project that's me "blog posting" a lot of worldbuilding for something, without actually putting a story into that world (yet). Again, we'll see. 

In the extremely odd case that this lack of a side job somehow decreases my productivity, human psychology is weird, I will hastily find a new one. Likely at a gas station.

This MIGHT have the negative ripple effect of me commissioning less art, cause, you know, 1/3 of my income is gone. I doubt it, but we'll see how exactly it manifests. At the very least the Chibis and character art by Monori will be safe. The Patreon more than pays for those.