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- KC Newsletter! April 2025
KC Newsletter! April 2025
how is april already over
This issue: new equipment, new website, old fcbd
This month’s finances and what all got done!
Six new comic pages! Another speedpaint on Youtube! A ton of prose writing, which has become difficult to keep up with because we’re getting very near a complete first draft! Also I built a whole entire new website lmfao
By my count my income is exactly where it was last month at 870 a month, which. Frankly, as precarious as everything feels lately I’m just relieved to not be moving backwards.
Here we go!
Shop stuff!
Literally like an hour ago I got all the outstanding book orders in the mail, because I picked up the last of the books from the printer today!! The standard editions of Volume 4 are FINALLY in the shop, and we’ve restocked both specials! Every KC book is available now!
There are also two new fanart prints in there I got together for the last show we did; one is Qifrey from Witch Hat Atelier, because I’m very predictable, and the other is ENA! You can watch me draw the latter on youtube over here, if you enjoy loud and abrasive things.
Speaking of Youtube: My partner Lee thought videos looked like fun, so they tried their hand at filming the process of sewing a chthonic companion plush. It’s cute! Lee is cute.
Website stuff!
I almost never feel like doing website stuff, so when the spirit possessed me earlier in the month I just went with it for like three days and came out the other side with a shiny new personal site. It’s sort of a personal site; it is also where the novels are going to live I think!
I’ve been trying really hard to puzzle out how to integrate the prose stuff gracefully with the comic site, and the issue is that the kinds of people who are going to need this sort of thing have proven entirely unable to navigate Old Web Style sites like KC’s. Since we moved out of the south, I am meeting a lot more folks who are interested in my work, and most of them around here don’t use the internet! At least once per show someone will take a card, stand at my table, and say they can’t figure out how to navigate between the comic pages; they don’t know how the menu buttons work, if they even twig that any of the menu items are buttons at all. They also tend to want to know about Aria The Human Artist more than they want to know about KC The Story, and the informal way I talk about myself and my work on the main site is confusing to them. I realized there IS no graceful integration I could do that would work for these folks without drastically changing my comic site, which I am not doing since. Anyone who struggles with that is probably not going to sit down and read nearly a thousand digital comic pages on the site anyway. Judging by how other, more successful writers organize their sites: most novel readers don’t want bells and whistles! They want to know why I write books and how to buy them.
So now we have shinesurge.net! This functions both as a personal site (it’s almost painfully formal and repetitive for me, but we’re going for Extreme Clarity over fun here) AND as a very easy directory for less terminally online folks to figure out how to interact with KC. I’m still working on it! I’d like to set up an art gallery and a little Friend Banner carousel somewhere on the home page. For now: if you’d like to read the novel samples without going to Ao3, they’re on there! If you’d like to see me talk about Kidd Commander and what I do in a more meta way, that’s there too! It even works on mobile! If you’re reading this newsletter I’m not sure how much of it will be News to you, but please feel free to take a look around.
Like I said on the main site, I’m probably gonna get a nice visible button to link the two whenever I get around to updating the archive and such. Here’s hoping any future people I meet at shows are able to find their way around.
Equipment problems and a request!
In case you missed it on the main site: my Cintiq chose right now to tip over the edge it’s been hovering on for around a year and become untenable for work, in the form of the entire screen burning. It’s been happening gradually for a while but took a big leap this month, which I only noticed by chance. If any of this month’s pages look brighter than they ought to, hang in there, I’ve ordered a replacement and once it gets here I’m gonna go back over the last couple scenes.
I haven’t wanted to talk about finances for a few reasons. Namely: we hit December and technically reached the huge goal I was after, AND we JUST did a bit of a rally to get those books printed. You’ve all done so much lately!! It’s so fucking cool!!
It is also like the same dozen people, every time!!
Kidd Commander is an outlier in a lot of ways but one of the things I’m very proud of is how exceptionally enthusiastic the audience is. Y’all are SO good about showing up and supporting this thing and I try very hard to accept that, for this to work, I do need to be okay with letting y’all support it. If someone wants to give a ridiculous amount of money per month I try to stay out of your way; it’s never a pride issue, I just know things are tough all over and I can’t help but worry. But over the last two years, every time some comedic bullshit has happened and I’ve needed help, y’all have kept on showing up. While I am obviously beyond grateful for it, this same core group of people has done so much more than its fair share! And I feel like you’re “having” to do it because I haven’t been able to attract a big enough audience to distribute the weight more evenly. Once folks GET here, you’re HERE, you know? But we really struggle with that first part.
So! Money has been real tight and looks to remain that way until our next show at the end of the summer! We are not Panicking, but this was a bad time to have to drop money on a new tablet. I wasn’t even going to talk about it to be honest, but since the tablet has been making scarier noises every day and the replacement won’t be here until next month, I wanted to make sure y’all were in the loop. Several of y’all have reached out with extra donations and very kind offers to simply pay for the new equipment outright, but I worry about the fact that every time this happens it’s the same folks reaching out with even more of your money.
Money is always helpful! But for the next few months, if you really want to help KC for the long term, I’d ask that you help share the comic around! Get some friends into it, post in fandom spaces, make fanwork or engage with existing work!! Help make sure when new people land on the site there’s a lively comment section so they don’t feel like they’ve stumbled into a ghost town, write an academic essay on your favorite minor character and share it on tumblr, make Appreciation Posts or moodboards for crew members! ALL of this stuff is really important for helping an independent project grow, and it looks a lot better coming from readers than from me. Coincidentally, the novel is ALSO supposed to drop in the next few months, and I don’t mind telling y’all that a sudden surge in attention would be. Really helpful there too.
I try to boost fan stuff like this whenever I can (and I enjoy seeing it!) but if you DON’T want me looking at something you share on tumblr or anywhere I frequent, you can tag it with “aria don’t look” and I will, in fact, not look.
I’d also like to say, again, how much I appreciate y’all’s support in any capacity, and as y’all can plainly see at the top of this letter I’m very aware I’m really not in a position to be turning away anything someone decides to toss my way. But here’s hoping we can gather a few more dedicated folks so none of y’all who are already doing so much have to bend too much more. You know that thing internet people like to say, “if all my followers were giving two dollars a month I’d be Set”; we are reaching the point where that would be true, so let’s see if we can get some more two dollar folks on board lmao
Novel update!
We are RAPIDLY approaching a Finished Draft, I think I might get it done in the next month if this pace keeps up. Advance reader feedback has been trickling in for the first six chapters, and it’s been really positive so far! I think the book might be good y’all!
I’m trying really hard not to get too tangled in specifics until I have a complete draft in my hand, but the next step is editing, which I’d like to leave a lot of extra time for. But not too much? Another thing I’m starting to realize about novel writing is I could absolutely sit on this thing and move commas around forever if I don’t give myself some sort of deadline. My extremely optimistic ideal is to have a finished book by the next show, in August. I have no idea how feasible that is, but it’s keeping me moving at least. Even if the print version isn’t available by then, I’m pretty sure we should have an ebook.
Once I’ve done my own editing and sent off a polished draft to my tiny team of advance readers, I’m gonna start discussing covers and promotional schemes and all of that here with y’all. I have learned my comic printer will ALSO print my novels, and they’ve even got cream-colored pages! That was the only specific I was really hoping for, so things are looking up.
State of the Artist
I’m good.
This Saturday is Free Comic Book Day, and as usual I will have some digital goodies for you! I’m gonna send out an extra newsletter so even if you don’t hang around my social media you should still be informed about how to get your stuff while it’s available. Fun times!
Thank you for reading!
-Aria