February Progress and News

It’s time once again for the monthly report! In which I divulge to you, readers, what I’m doing, so you know I’m working hard on your behalf. Well, on mine too, because I love what I do. <3

Writing Progress

Dreamstorm is my area of focus until it’s done. I hope to polish it off at the end of March, so that’s been where most of my work’s going… but I’ve also got a “one chapter of Coracle a month until Dreamstorm is done and frees you up to concentrate on it” promise to myself now, so I did that (it’ll get posted here, for the content level subscribers). Plus, every now and then I’ve been tossing some words at Kherishdar 4, so all these projects are incrementing. Just some faster than others. (For those of you not checking percentages, since January Dreamstorm went from 18% to 42% done, Kherishdar’s gone from 17% to 20%, and Coracle from 26% to 28%.)

I have concluded I still want to finish brushing up Sword, but it’s going to take a little longer than I want. So I’ve pushed it out to after Dreamstorm and Coracle.

I feel this is pretty good progress for February, which is a short month, particularly since I lost a week to the start of allergy season. While I resent the loss of that week, I’m also grateful that it was only a week, since last year it took me almost three to get back to normal when the oaks all started exploding. Yay? Yay! I'll take it! 

Other Projects

As usual, in addition to writing, I am juggling lots of balls! Here's the run-down:

• Paperdoll Game: I’m still working on art assets for this so my intrepid coder can continue building the framework. For now I’ve trimmed it down from full-body to bust-only (good for making icons and avatar headshots!), but adding the body back on won’t be a big deal. This gives me the chance to concentrate on making the head sufficiently customizable that people will feel like their avatar is really different from someone else’s. It remains a challenging exercise…! 
• CCG: The designer and I are finalizing the card front design now, so I’m hoping by the end of this month to have the graphical elements locked in. Then I can start doing the art for my first few test cards. :D
• Kickstarter: The Alysha books just landed on my doorstep Tuesday night! I will probably have those all in the mail by Monday, which’ll conclude my second Kickstarter of the year. But if you missed this one, I’m already moving on to the next project, which will be for Dreamhearth’s paperback edition! I’ll probably be adding a couple of “be the subject of a case study vignette” cameos to that one, so if you are burning to be one of Jahir and Vasiht’h’s clients, stay tuned. :D You can see the skeleton of the project here (and favorite it so you can get notification when it goes live): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcahogarth/164617864?ref=bxzi7g&token=37148ab2
• Storybundle: Cat Rambo invited me to a “Feminist Futures” bundle which… okay, she thinks I qualify so yay? That’ll be going live this month. I’ve given them Spots.
• Print Editions (Three Jags): Getting this prepped for print has been… ah… challenging. But it’s almost ready now, so that’ll be out this month and those of you waiting to read the business book because you prefer paper will have something to buy. <3
• Art: I am doing a lot of sketching now? Nothing serious, but it’s nice to be drawing more often again. I think part of this has been motivated by the “most content goes to the $5 folks” because 1. I want them to be glad about that decision, and 2. I feel like I can set aside more time to produce things to post, because more people are paying for it. So that’s been an all-around good thing.

I’ve also got some assorted administrivia stuff going on, like wrangling cover artists and paying voice actors and restocking the Etsy store, you know, the usual stuff. But that’s par for the course. But speaking of usual stuff! All Fan Chat Day is on Friday the 16th! Put it on your calendars, and please stop by! We love chatting with new people. :D

Finally, some reminders:

• The drawing for the Dreamstorm cameo is this Monday the 5th! If you’re interested, don’t miss out! Here’s the form: https://goo.gl/forms/VXEjBuTRPihQqugX2 
• And here’s the link for all the free freebies. Future freebies are going to be locked to the $5 level, but these were released before I made that decision and I don’t believe in taking things away from folks. So pick up these short stories and coloring sheets if you haven’t already! https://www.patreon.com/posts/link-to-all-14489113 

And that's everything! The sales post will go up next, probably sometime next week. That's for the $5+ folks only from now on. It'll include my sales figures, analysis of the Mindtouch Bookbub, and my commentary on the changes to my Patreon fee structure and how that affected things.