announcements Archives - Page 8 of 11

October 31, 2019October 31, 2019

I’m Moving…

I talked about this before (especially to patrons on Patreon and a mention in this video), but here’s the news: I’m moving.

How soon?

Well, January 2020 at the soonest. Spring of 2020 at the latest.

Why am I moving?

Because the house I’m renting right now, which belongs to my mom, is going to be listed for sale soon.

Now, here’s the thing that makes this situation unique: mom and I haven’t lived under the same roof for nearly two years.

See, she and her boyfriend embraced the RV full-time lifestyle for a while, so they could travel and work. But that left the house unoccupied. So I lived in it.

But now, mom lives in Florida. And she wants to stay in Florida. Which, for her, means buying a house.

She doesn’t want to own two houses at once. So she’s selling the one I’m in right now.

I already did the math, and determined that my best course of action is to find an apartment to rent. NOT as soon as possible, but close to it.

Stay tuned for further updates on the situation. I’ll be blogging about the Adventures of Moving Out for the foreseeable future.

In Other News…

Dragons: A Sketchbook is NOW on KickStarter. Today’s the last day to grab an Early Bird Special, so GRAB IT.

Also The Legend of Jamie Roberts updated today. One of my side hustles has been making me work full-time hours this past week, so that threw off the update schedule on a LOT of things. My bad.

But hey – if you’re in the Robinson, PA or Pittsburgh area, I’ll be at the Nerd and Hobby Flea Market this Saturday (Nov. 2) from 4 pm to 8 pm. Because I need to move, I’ll have a crate full of my old nerd swag available for sale, as well.

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading!

You. Are. Awesome.

October 24, 2019October 23, 2019

Dragons: A Sketchbook Coming Soon

lady dragon watercolor marker sketch for inktober 2019

My newest book – Dragons: A Sketchbook – is coming to KickStarter soon. As in, in the next few days.

The trend of these sketchbooks started with Witches: A Sketchbook, which collected all of my Inktober sketches of witches from 2017. (Inktober is the artist challenge to draw with ink every day during October. Usually there’s an official prompt list. I ignore all of them.)

Last year, I followed this up with Gods & Spirits: A Sketchbook, collecting all of my Inktober sketches of gods and spirits.

This year for Inktober, I’ve been drawing dragons and nothing but dragons. And I’m loving it.

And soon, they’ll be in a sketchbook.

In previous years, I ran a KickStarter campaign to fund book printings AFTER Inktober wrapped up.

This year, I wanted to start the pre-order ball rolling sooner, because November is going to be a bit of a schedule whack-a-mole for me.

So here’s the deal: email newsletter subscribers are the first to get the news of the Dragons: A Sketchbook KickStarter launch. If you are NOT an email subscriber yet, get on that ASAP. There will be early-bird backer rewards available, and the best way to get them is to be on the newsletter.

Then – I’ll be at New Dimension Comics this Saturday for Halloween ComicsFest. If you check out my table there and back the KickStarter campaign on the spot, you’ll get some goodies from me in person.

After that, I’ll be posting links to the KickStarter campaign on social media on Monday.

How long will the KickStarter campaign last? You’ll have to see the campaign when it launches to find out.

The initial asking goal will be to cover the basics to make this book project happen. Stretch goals after that include:

a KickStarter backer-exclusive miniprint
a baby dragon sticker sheet
an appearance at a large comicon (hopefully near you)!

In short…

Get on the email newsletter if you want to back this KickStarter ASAP and get your hands on an early copy of this book.

If you’re broke, though, don’t stress – just share the link to the campaign when it finally launches. Every share helps more than you know.

Thank you so much for your support!

You. Are. Awesome.

October 17, 2019October 16, 2019

The Email Newsletter is BACK!

The email newsletter is back, and I’m happy to introduce some new things to it!

I had put the newsletter on hiatus for a few weeks because of a fatal design flaw in MailChimp’s system. This design flaw deleted all of my subscribers, with no way of putting them back on the list.

So I deleted my MailChimp account, and started shopping around.

It took a little while to find a good substitute – for a hot minute I was afraid MailChimp had monopolized the free email client market.

But I found two services: Moosend and MailerLite.

I tried to make Moosend work, but it kept rejecting every email I tried to use. See, when you send emails, you need to specify who the sender is. And Moosend kept rejecting every. Dang. Email. That I wanted to use.

“This email is from a free client.” “This email is invalid.” Bleh bleh bleh.

So I didn’t want to dick around with them.

After a little more research, I found MailerLite.

And, for what I need it for, MailerLite has been working marvelously.

It’s a bit of a curve for me to get used to: it has different terminology and layouts than MailChimp. And I had been using MailChimp for like 3 years. So it’s still a process to unlearn MailChimp’s clunky-ass design and use MailerLite.

That said, now that I’m getting the hang of MailerLite, it’s smoother to handle than MailChimp. I also have zero fear of accidentally deleting all of my subscribers. And that’s worth everything right now.

Now that the email newsletter is back, I can bring in some new ideas: like exclusive offers for folks I meet at specific events, and even a Patreon-only newsletter.

That said, here’s the thing:

If you were on my email list before, odds are high that you got deleted. My back-up files were very limited. Not everyone was able to get back on.

So.

If you would like to get email updates from me once a week, you can re-sign up at this link.

If you’d rather not, that’s ok too. There’s still Facebook, Instagram, Patreon, and this blog.

(But newsletter subscribers get the news first when I launch KickStarter campaigns. Plus I make announcements of my convention appearances on the newsletter.)

But whatever choice you make is the right one.

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading!

You. Are. Awesome.

October 4, 2019October 4, 2019

Email Newsletters Are On Hiatus

So I HAD an email newsletter. The service I used was MailChimp.

I logged in this morning, thinking, “Hey, I should delete the unsubscribers from my contacts. That should improve the open rate on my emails.” So I go to the menu showing all of my subscribers, including unsubscribes and bounces. I go to check the box to select the unsubscribes on the page shown to me.

Little did I know: clicking the “select all” button selected ALL of my contacts, not just the unsubscribes shown on screen.

And, well, all of my contacts got deleted.

Active, inactive, and unsubscribed people – all gone.

THREE YEARS OF WORK. GONE.

Due to a clunky mechanic through my email newsletter service, I have permanently deleted all of my subscribers.

I can’t contact support to fix this because I was on the free member plan. Tech support is only available for people who pay for a monthly plan.

There is no way to get them back on again. So I have to start over. From scratch.

And I’m going to start over with a different email client.

Please bear with me as I get this fixed.

Words cannot describe how disappointed and angry I am at this.

June 7, 2019June 7, 2019

NOW ON KICKSTARTER: The Legend of Jamie Roberts, Chapter 1

HOLY BANANA PANTS, it’s finally here – The Legend of Jamie Roberts, Chapter 1 is now on KickStarter, looking for funding to get to print!

Patreon support has helped make the production of each individual page possible. But KickStarter will help cover the gap to get this first issue to print.

The book will include a never-before-published short comic about Captain O’Malley (just how DID she lose her arm?). Plus there will be behind-the-scenes sketches showing how pages for the comic are made.

Among the rewards available for backers, there’s commissions, WANTED poster-style mini-prints, and even a new 11 x 17 inch print!