August Progress

Somehow, readers, it is September of 2019 and I’m not sure where three-fourths of the year went. August in particular was crazy—thank you, school year—and the changes to my routine haven’t settled yet. I know for some parents, the start of the school year means more time to work; since I am Chauffeur, Executive Assistant in Charge of Scheduling and Appointments, and Motivational Coach, the school year is far busier for me. Put that together with having to head into traffic daily, and I’m finding my days are about three hours shorter than they are during summer. Ugh!

But, we persist, because what else? Here’s what went on in the jaguar wheelhouse in August!

Writing

As we might expect with the conclusion of the Kickstarter, I have been very busy writing (and will likely be so for the remainder of the year!). I polished off all but two of the vignettes despite all of them running longer than I planned. Much longer. But I’ve enjoyed myself enormously, and am tickled to have had the opportunity to write these peeks into the corners of the storyline. And yes, it’s going to be a respectable sized book—like, I’m not even going to have to make excuses for the spine. It’s gonna be big.

In addition to the vignettes, I did some Patreon-specific content: three big meta-conversations about Ai-Naidari culture and language for my $10+ folks, and I’m not even done with one of them which is so big I’ve had to split it into parts, but that one is a long and leisurely contemplation of community values so… we’ll just take it slow. That would be the Ai-Naidari preference, anyway. In addition, I wrote a bonus scene for Kherishdar’s Exception, which ended up so long the narration for it ran over an hour. Oops. It’s almost as if I write long or something. >.>

I haven’t been keeping track of word-count, but it’s probably around 60-70K? I don’t know. Something. A lot of words were written. A lot more to come! Moving on…

Audiobooks

I feel audiobooks need their own call-out this time around.

First, The Worth of a Shell is on Bandcamp, where the narrator was kind enough to split it into functional parts, rather than piecing it by the hour. $10-a-month folks have access to the latter edition, and are welcome to download it and use that as their copy forever. If, however, you would prefer something not quite so oddly segmented, or if you aren’t at the $10 tier and want the Jokka audiobooks, it’s now available! Two notes: For contractual reasons, Bandcamp is the only place you’ll be able to get the Jokka audiobooks for the foreseeable future. And second, if you are the $5+ tier and have access to Discord and the Hydra, there is at least one Bandcamp coupon left. Nab it if you want to pick this up and don’t have the cash. (Here is where I also note that the second book of Princes' Game, Some Things Transcend, is also available only through Bandcamp.)

Next, the Kherishdar’s Exception audiobook, the last one I’m planning on doing, is done except for a few edits I need to make. It’s not yet available at retail, and I’m thinking of serializing it for you $10-a-month folks. If you’re interested, let me know? When I decided $10+ would be the audio tier, it was originally so I could pay for the hour-per-month books I was hiring the narrator to do. Since I’ve stopped doing that, I’m not sure whether to continue treating my remaining audio content that way. Let me know if you have a preference. 

Art

I’ve continued to do more art than typical, though the change in my schedule has hit my drawing hours hard and I haven’t recovered them yet. (Working on working around it, promise!) But I did a lot in August:

I sketched and inked an entire 8-page Three Jaguars comic, which I hope to letter and upload this month for your amusement. It’s… uh… an indulgent one, and probably controversial, so I’m debating whether it will be patron-only or just hosted here. I guess I’ll decide once I upload it. I also did the Three Jaguars single page silly “Marketer Explains My Books Badly,” which you all saw already.

In addition, I’ve done a lot of sketching, a little calligraphy, and I have resumed painting, this time on an experimental piece on a type of paper I’m unfamiliar with. I think I like it, but one piece isn’t enough to make a decision, so I will probably mess around with that paper some more. (You haven’t seen it here either, though I’ve been posting photos on Discord, and sometimes on Twitter. I've included a random shot of it as the image for this post!) I hope to have that done in another week or two.

Patreon

Finally, I think this deserves its own header: I finally nailed down my process for getting postcards out to patrons! Most of you have already received the Fall postcard; the next is due in December. These cards are for the $10+ people, as appreciation for the two cups of coffee they buy me every month at Coffee Shop. I like to think of my sketching afternoons there as being underwritten by y'all, and sometimes amuse myself by imagining one of you paying (or trying to pay) the irascible Sicilian coffee shop owner who only sometimes allows me to give him money. Seriously, my interactions there are high comedy.

If you want the postcard and aren’t in that tier, I’ve made it available on Zazzle, and you can make it as small (5x6!) or as large (enormoposter!) as you like. It is an illustration of the Ai-Naidari concept ‘notyevunil,’ to labor by choice, and I think it’s a warm and relaxing illustration.

In addition, we accidentally did a read-along of the Jokka series on Discord and that was so fun everyone decided to do it again, on purpose… so we’re taking on the Alysha series! Stop by anytime in the #vault channel to see where everyone is.

That covers everything for August! Looking forward, I didn’t expect September to be this full of Stuff—in addition to school and routine changes, there is some other Life is Happening stuff that needs to be handled—so I’m not sure if I’ll be as productive as I hoped. I’ll keep people apprised if I feel there will be any substantial delays in goodies I’ve promised. I don’t think it’ll be too too bad, but we’ll see. Until then—know that you are awesome patrons! And as always, drop me your comments, questions, and suggestions. You know where to find me!

Jaguar out!