(permalink to this week’s page)

Just a little transition page! Good timing for me to have a simpler page this week, since I am pretty dang tired out from all the last-minute excitement of the Kickstarter project. It was a huge success – 808 backers for a total of $36444 (over 240% of the original $15000 I asked for).

I’m  loopy with gratitude. It will take a good long while for those funds to translate from operating funds into any serious income, but being able to publish three books without major financial risk is quite a gift for a small businessperson like yours truly. And I’m excited for what it means for volume two of Family Man.

I’m grateful to Kickstarter for providing a clever, fun and intuitive platform. While I don’t think it’s the perfect system for every project, this has been a great experience for me and a wonderful way to play with longtime readers and attract some new ones, as well. And now I’m very much enjoying the newfound peace and quiet of my post-project inbox, and taking great pleasure in all the fiddly art and pre-press work that I have left before it turns into a whole bunch of books. 

All the progress I make on that front will be restricted to backers of the project from here until I start getting physical proofs, but before the project finished I did post a single rough version of the first page from the new Bite Me! short story that will be appearing in the anniversary-edition (PDF and print). Posted below for your perusal and enjoyment!

It’s been desperately fun to revisit these characters, and the process of putting the grey washes down digitally – while figuring out how to retain the very hand-done character of the original – delights me.

A number of people have written to me expressing dismay that they didn’t come across the project until after it had closed. Don’t worry! I’ll be selling copies of the books produced for quite some time, and they’ll go on sale to the general public towards the end of October; the extras (prints, patches, bookplates etc) are the only things exclusive to project backers. I’ll let you all know when the new books are available for purchase!

I’ll see you all next week – when we find out what Ariana is waking up to…