Life in a Northern Town

The January rewards package has been posted in the Patreon activity feed. See how Signy's redesign is coming along!


(Above: the sneakiest of sneak previews)

The 3-month introductory special is now over, so the rewards package is now available only to the $5+ subscribers, i.e. back to the regular reward tiers. (The last 3 months' rewards will stay unlocked for all subscribers.)

However, you won't miss out because I plan to use the Patreon blog a LOT more in 2015, posting updates of my work in progress, answering questions and whatever else you like. :) I just posted a snapshot of my drawing board this morning, with Page 66 up for penciling! All you need to do is subscribe for at least a buck a month (less than a cup of coffee!) and you'll have access to it.

Handy link to the Kismet patreon!

I've redone the reward levels somewhat. At $50 a month, the comic will pay for itself -- web hosting, software costs, materials costs like pencils and paper, etc. I would really love to get it there in 2015, and when it DOES get there, I'll post a Signy & Jude side story I've been working on that gives a bit more of their shared backstory. I'm also thinking about other goodies for both new and current subscribers (anything new I offer to entice in new people, the current subscribers will also get -- anything else would be unfair!).

What sort of rewards would YOU like to see?

This month's DVD extras for Kismet's Patreon backers are now available in my Patreon activity feed. Through the month of December, I am offering the DVD-extra package to anyone who supports the comic at any level -- as little as $1/month! Starting in January, I will be making them available only to $5+ backers (but there will still be extras available for all backers -- behind-the-scenes peeks, occasional wallpapers and so forth).

I really appreciate everyone who's kicked in a little money so far. My initial goal with the comic is really just to get it to support itself -- to cover web hosting costs and so forth … and I'm actually pretty close to that already!

I think I'm going to try doing it through Patreon.

This is a new service for creators that basically offers an organized way of letting readers "tip" creators for their work. I am committed to keeping all of the Kismet comics available to read online for free (unless I'm forced to do otherwise by circumstances beyond my control), so I will not be locking Sun-Cutter behind a paywall. However, the reason why Sun-Cutter keeps getting pushed back and pushed back is because paying freelance work and fiction that I have a reasonable chance of selling keeps taking priority.

But my ideal has always been to make the comics and get compensated for it somehow, while still keeping them free to read online. I am currently looking into Patreon as a way of doing that. Since I won't be charging for the comics themselves, I will be offering donation incentives like free ebook downloads, reader "cameos" in the backgrounds of crowd scenes, extra pages per week if donations hit certain levels, and so forth. However, you are still entirely welcome to read them for free - the donation levels are just if you want something extra!

I'm still in the very early stages of looking into this and making a plan, so things won't be happening terribly soon, but I've set myself a tentative goal of the end of July to re-launch Sun-Cutter, if I can figure out all the logistics and get a good backlog of pages finished by then. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but the calendar in Kismet is calculated from my birthdate (July 26, 1976) - originally Hunter's Moon took place exactly 500 years in the future (2476), and then when I decided to move it further out and give them a calendar of their own, 2476 became the Year 1 of their new calendar. So the idea of restarting the comic on July 26 has a certain appeal. .... that said, however, I'm not committing 100% to this date because I've broken SO many promises about restarting the comic in the past. I hereby pledge, however, that I will be devoting a lot of time over the next couple of months to working on it and trying to get it restarted.

I also still plan a Hunter's Moon print book, and intend to do a Kickstarter for it, but since it's been so long since HM ended, I want to relaunch Sun-Cutter first to generate some buzz to draw funders to the Kickstarter. That's actually what got me thinking along these lines, because I was working on my long-term goals for the year, and started working backwards from "HM book" to "what do I need to do first" and came up with "relaunch Sun-Cutter and get some readers" as a necessary prerequisite to publishing the HM book.

So that's the plan, you guys. I'll have to see how it goes -- if I can get back into the swing of working on pages, if Patreon works out as I'm hoping, and so forth -- but I'm pretty excited right now!