Ryk E. Spoor's Patreon: Year One Retrospective

One year ago, I posted the first rewards in my Patreon. I find it hard to believe, sometimes, that it's been that long, or that so many people have found it worthwhile to support me and my work for an entire year and, for the most part, seem to be sticking around. I cannot fully express my gratitude to all of you. But it might be worth it to show everyone just what it was that the Patreon accomplished – what it let me accomplish – and that most, if not all, of it is material that simply would not exist were it not for the Patreon.

Even the smallest level of donation is valuable, and when there's a lot of donors at that low level, it means a great deal (something that Patreon itself had to be reminded of when it made a certain monumental misstep last year; thankfully, Patreon was able to recognize that and step back.). In the last year, even one-dollar Patrons have helped me produce:

· An essay on how I write, and what I've got planned for the future (in quite some detail!)

· A series of posts on what I am not working on – ideas and series that, for one reason or another, I don't see myself ever completing. The reasons for this, I think, made them fairly interesting posts, ranging from "holy crap I was young and stupid to think this was going to work" to "well, I've used those pieces elsewhere" to "the world has moved on in ways that make this story no longer viable". In themselves, these posts also gave a different, and often much longer-timescale, glimpse at the way I work.

· Character sheets: I am a roleplaying gamer, and have been for decades (four of them, since 1977, in fact). As such, RPG work has always occupied a special place in my writing heart, and so it simply made sense to show some of my favorite characters in that format.

· Unused writing. As of February I've also posted a piece of my writing that could have been, but wasn't; I think there will be a few more of those to show.

The Early Access group is the only one that could reasonably claim that what they see would probably have existed without the Patreon. But that’s only partly true; as I'm only posting (for the most part) stories that I expect or know will be published, a lot of what I have posted (Demons of the Past and French Roast Apocalypse, especially) would not have been able to be properly published without support (as seen more obviously later). So in that sense, even these rewards depended in large part on the existence of the Patreon. So far, Early Access patrons have seen:

· Parts of Burnout, a new Jason Wood adventure. This one I actually stalled on, because as I worked on it I realized I had a couple of new issues to address. This will likely become one of the very few works I've written that I will be re-doing in a new draft. Much of what was posted will probably survive in one form or another, but the details will change.

· Castaway Peril. Third in the Castaway Planet sequence, I did stall out on this for a while (due to a lot of personal issues) but I'm now back in the saddle and driving forward. Look for me to finish this probably around June!

· Demons of the Past: Revelation. The first volume in the Demons of the Past trilogy, Revelation is finally to be published this April by Double Dragon Press. That publication is directly supported by the Patreon.

· French Roast Apocalypse. First book in the Fall of Veils series by my wife Kathleen and me, this peculiar urban fantasy is something of an experiment. It's also coming this April from Double Dragon, and again that's due in great part to the Patron's support.

The ten-dollar tier of Patrons have been seeing some unique material relating to my worlds and writing. For the most part, these either would not have existed at all without the Patreon, or at the least would simply never have been seen outside of my beta-readers and publishers' offices. These rewards have included:

· A very large and detailed timeline of my primary writing universe, starting literally from The Beginning and going quite a way into the future – and it's not even done yet by quite a long shot! I'll probably post more sections later, but I figured there should be some variety in these rewards!

· Two alternate/discarded scenes from Challenges of the Deeps in one case and Threshold in the other. These were of interest because it wasn't so much the writing that was the issue, but the way in which the scenes fit with both what went before, and what was envisioned to come after. I think these are of especial interest to those who want to understand some of the processes behind the writing of a novel.

· Two book proposals as they were sent to my publisher, the first for The Ethical Magical Girl (which became Princess Holy Aura) and the second for Phoenix in Shadow. Both of these offered a look at both the kind of thing that publishers might see from an author who is trying to get them to invest in a new series, and also insight into how things can change from the time an author outlines a series and the time they actually write the book!

· Some real deep background material for Demons of the Past, which has a lot of background to post!

The Sketchy! tier of Patrons has seen material that is almost entirely due to the existence of the Patreon. Artwork and animation is not cheap – and it shouldn't be. Artists, like authors, spend years learning the skills that allow them to produce awesome pictures and videos. Things the Sketchy! reward tier has seen include:

· Video of the race between Ariane Austin and Sethrik of the Blessed, from Grand Central Arena (this, as the first reward, was actually made some time before, but never posted publicly)

· The rough version of the animation that later was incorporated into my trailer for the Arenaverse (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIZpWLqv4gg ), by Abigail "Toastyhat" Bullock.

· Several of Morineko's pictures of the characters from Princess Holy Aura

· The Many Faces of Ariane Austin, a look at how the same character has been interpreted by several different artists

· Some of Morineko's pictures of characters for French Roast Apocalypse

· Several cover images and pieces thereof for both Demons of the Past and French Roast Apocalypse by Vincent Chong

Finally, the highest tier of rewards is the Read Me Something tier at $50 and up. I did not, in all honesty, expect more than maybe one donor at that level. I turned out to be much more pessimistic than reality. These rewards are all things that simply would not have happened without the Patreon; it takes time and attention to produce even a halfway-tolerable reading of a chapter from a book (for one thing, even though I'm very used to reading from my books, I still make mistakes in any chapter-length reading, so after producing the recording, I have to go through and edit out my oopsies). Thus far, this has included twelve chapters of Polychrome, my Oz-based novel (and the only one of mine, other than Princess Holy Aura, which hasn't got an audiobook version), and the short story "On-Site for the Apocalypse", which is set in the same world as Princess Holy Aura. 

There will be much more to come in the next year! And as always, I am open to questions and suggestions as to future rewards!