Merry Christmas all you wonderful people! Here is what is going on this month with good ol’ Taralynn.
The holidays are a bit rough when it comes to getting content out as there will be obvious family conflicts and stuff. Plus, judging from traffic data, the readers have the same issue. For that I have been trying to use December to catch up on a few things that have fallen behind.
First, I’m going to catch up on the MGP Vignettes for November and December. I just posted the November one. I’m going to do my best to get the December one up before the 31st. Once those are done, I will be working on getting the fan commentaries for the next few chapters of MGP going. Just trying to find time in the day has been hard but I have some time opening up that was going to be used before so I think I can do it. The difficulty is the job I work now is sort of swamped at the end of the year. I’m working a lot of overtime. But I will try my best!
So this is where some bad news comes in. Now that I’m working a full-time job I’m realizing I was far too optimistic with a few goals, especially in regards to my stretch goals for Patreon. These goals were created back when I was struggling through unemployment and had a lot more free-time. Now, sadly, a few things aren’t possible. 1st, two chapters a month doesn’t feel realistic anymore. I’m going to modify my schedule to try to achieve a chapter once every three weeks instead. That feels much more doable for me now.
Next big change… I’m ending SCIRT and just ending most stretch goals altogether that relate to me putting out more content quicker. As much as it pains me to do so, I just don’t like stringing you all along the way I have the past few months as I haven’t been able to hit the benchmarks I had hoped. What I did of SCIRT I’ll leave available for viewing and maybe it’s something I can go back to in the future if more time opens up.
I still want to keep doing Vignettes, Chapter commentaries, and Chapter previews for the various levels of Patrons I have. Commentaries and previews aren’t a big deal. The problem comes with the vignettes. Not due to the frequency (once I catch up I’ll be fine. My bosses indicate that once it becomes 2016 work volumes will plummet) but because, well, I’m surprised to find I’m starting to run out of ideas a little bit. I didn’t expect the Vignettes to go through these ideas as fast as they have (though part of that is the fact that I’m playing catchup and one of the longer series I had planned is something I’m having to write in quick succession). But, rest assured, if I run out of cannon MGP stuff to write Vignettes on, I might branch out into less canonical stuff. Which may just be more fun anyway >:)
In the meantime, I want to get a bit more art commissioned to make up for the lack of stuff like SCIRT. The Grimay picture turned out so well that I really am looking to get some more done as sort of a thank you to you all for your patience with me as I have adjusted to having a full time job. I’m thinking I will do a monthly commissioned piece of art and, if donations increase, we’ll do even more. Maybe if we get back up to $200 a month we’ll do something like, I don’t know, not-cannon pictures. If you can’t tell, not-cannon stuff is intriguing me right now.
If anyone else has an artist with reasonable prices on commissions up for suggestion, I’m all ears… eyes… whatever. Speaking of art, wonderful and amazing fan of the story, Darkness (please don’t attack the Darkness) has sent to us some wonderful art of Spirit Guard Valor. He has entitled this piece “Game Over”
This is obviously an amazing piece of his imagining of the end of the fight between the Spirit Guard and Polygal in chapter 1. I have to say a few things really stand out in the piece. First of all, his ability to draw a foreshortened sword is, in a word, amazing. When I draw I can’t even BEGIN to try something like that. Never looks right. But he nailed it. But the other thing that I really like is the gemstone shield. It’s not how I imagined it myself but it definitely does have that magical girl feel to it. I mean, it’s just really cool. Maybe in the next pass of the story I might retcon that because it is really quite the impressive mental image.
One last item is I have a deviantart page where I try to keep the story somewhat up to date (I’d like to keep it a little behind to motivate people to come to MY site of course) but I’ve learned I can’t really keep it up to date very well. I need help from someone who’d be willing to copy my chapters (including formatting like italics) into easy-to-post nuggets on dA. If you are willing to help me with that, please send me an email to my email address taralynnand@gmail.com Someone was gracious enough to step up and be amazing and help me out with this! Thanks so much all of you who offered to help! It warms my heart!
Hope your holidays are filled with cheer!
Taralynn Andrews
I think the only way you could make the goals work to update more often is if you made enough to make it your full time job. As a patron, and even before I was, I had always viewed your goals as very optimistic and unrealistic. Unless of course you had unlimited time and money, making the point of it meaningless. My reason for support wasn’t really the bonuses, it was assisting an artist/writer I like the work of.
If you ever do decide to make stretch goals to write more often, you’d want to make sure you could support yourself on just that, or on a part time job.
THAT’S what Angela looks like? Wow, I was way off. For some reason, I picture her as a brunette in my head, and anytime it comes i the story in my head, I’m surprised anew that she’s blonde. But even despite that, I always imagined her much mousier.
I agree with Patathatapon – very astute and articulate. What I was thinking too but wasn’t sure how to articulate it. My husband and I are Patreons because we believe in being supportive of writers and artists who we enjoy / do a great job. Not really because of anything else. Your goals are your goals and how ever you decide to meet them and balance work, family, life, and writing is cool with me. Cheers to you Taralynn 🙂
As for the Game Over art – very nice! Didn’t know that was a gemstone shield at first, though. Fabulous job over all.