July Newsletter - July had no chill and I am suffering for it

Between Patreon-exclusive pages dropping down to once a week instead of twice, the Surgery Fiasco I had this month, and then the Stalker Incident on Bluesky, this has been the slowest month my Patreon has seen in a year, and I am both so sorry and appreciative of everyone's understanding!

If you're not following me on BlueSky, you probably don't know about either of the last things I mentioned, so let me catch you up real quick. July's been extremely eventful, but for all the wrong reasons, haha!

The Surgery Fiasco

I had an in-office surgical procedure planned for Friday, the 5th of this month! I was supposed to be able to do it under local numbing and be in and out in half an hour. It took more like an hour and a half, but other than that, it all seemed to go to plan.

...Except, it didn't. My doctor didn't have the right type of sutures for the six stitches I needed (most patients who undergo this procedure get away with either one or NO stitches, so I was already pretty unlucky). She wanted the thin ones that dissolve in a month, and only had really heavy duty ones that dissolve in two months available. Well, those heavy duty stitches came loose and caused a lot of internal abrasions, which meant I had to go to the ER two days later, on Sunday, because my doctor's office was closed.

The ER visit both helped and made things worse, but luckily (or unluckily?), I had an unrelated, routine check up scheduled for that Monday, the 8th, with my regular doctor (not my surgeon), so both the ER doc and on-call surgeon for my doctor's office asked my primary care doctor to check out the stitches again. Every time these doctor checked on the area, they were making it worse just by nature of the inspection, so, haha! One step forward, two steps back.

So then I had to have an urgent follow-up with the surgeon who did the procedure that Thursday, the 11th, and she was aghast with the uh, unfortunate state I was in. So instead of being up and about in a week from the procedure, like she originally quoted me, she now told me I was probably going to be out of commission for AT LEAST an entire month.

Well, we're three weeks out from the procedure date, and my surgeon is probably right. I'm still not all healed up, but I see her again next week, so hopefully I'll be all better by then and I'll get the all clear to resume normal activities like exercise and bicycling.

As you can imagine, an ER bill just to check on some stitches hurt, particularly my wallet, but a lot of folks came through on BlueSky and offered gifts on Ko-fi which has significantly alleviated that pain!! (Thank you all!)

So, that's how the first few weeks of July went. This past week gave me the fun surprise of dealing with...

The Stalker Incident

A couple days ago, my bud and fellow comics creative, Zoe reached out to me on discord to show me an account that had interacted with her called, "Kody Okamoto Fan Club" with the handle of "mrsokamoto".

For the past 11 days, this account has been posting about me, grabbing really old artwork I've made over the years (like the Fire Power cover that's their profile header), reposting things I was reposting as call for actions, and cross posting screenshots of my posts from other social media.

(probably an allusion to that Denver and Daniel piece where Daniel plays Wonderwall)

Also made weird comments about friends I've interacted with on BlueSky, like Lacey of Lies Within

or going so far as to dig up photos of other friends I've interacted with/mentioned from their social media

(For the record, this is Mark Bouchard and their partner, and Mark has this to say about their beautiful partner pictured here with the green hair: "Yeah this is wild. It would be funny if it wasn’t so unsettling. Also my fiancé isn’t even pregnant 😮‍💨😭Lmao yeah like they are just both fat and so sexy they appear glowing, it’s not that deep 😩" (Mark rules)

Anyway there's just a whole lot more of this, and I genuinely cannot tell what their goal was. I can only assume it's a troll account of someone who really dislikes me, meant to weird me out. After I blocked them, they alluded to knowing where I live, and also made a point of showing that they could see my posts by getting around the block. (In a public reply to another pal, Kaycie, I told Kacyie I just wanted to take my cat to the vet and deal with one problem at a time, and the stalker account subsequently posted about me taking my cat to the vet, lol.)

A bunch of folks reported the account and it's now either deleted or suspended, but I wouldn't be surprised if they showed back up.

As a queer BIPOC person working in comics, I've always been cognizant of the extremely real danger posed to marginalized folks in this industry by movements like ComicsGate and forums like KiwiFarms, where trolls doxx comics creators for the audacity of being not white and not but working in comics. I know there have been attempts to swat marginalized comics folks (calling SWAT on someone's home address as a potentially life-threatening prank), so personal safety is a thing I don't take lightly.

Anyway, all this to say, this was a Less Than Fun experience and I'm glad it's over, but this is all why...

I BARELY GOT ANY SHIT DONE THIS MONTH

YEP. YEAH. LOL. The headline says it all. I meant to take the two weeks of Keeping Time's public hiatus between Chapter 1 and 2 to get ahead in scripting, which - okay, I did do that. I hammered out a lot of issues that were bothering me about Chapters 3, 4, and 5, so I'm now set up for success for at least another 90 pages or so, script- and plot-wise.

But I ALSO meant to get way ahead on Chapter 3's pencils, which definitely did not happen, AND I had hoped to do one or two more pages of the 18+ NSFW manga, which did not happen at all, either.

This is the first time my Patreon has ever surpassed $400/mo, and I am both so grateful and SO DEEPLY APOLOGETIC that I have almost nothing to show for this month.

By way of apology, please enjoy what little progress I can share in this thumbnail to pencil comparison of the scene I'm working on right now, which introduces Daniel's mother. I am pretty stoked on how well the acting is coming across. Thank you, Kody of the past, for having such a clear vision on the body language that needed to happen in this mother-son interaction!

(Also, that's so cute. Past Kody thought this scene was going to be happening on page 33. It's actually happening on page 73, lmao!!)

I have so much more to say about some new things I've been trying out on the Keeping Time website, but this is already egregiously long, so I'll sign off here and plan to do an earlier newsletter/blog in August.

Alright, off to chip away at pencils!

Thank you all again for all of your support. You folks make a HUGE, tangible difference in the financial security of my life, and I am eternally grateful.