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- KC Newsletter! June 2024
KC Newsletter! June 2024
Books and things!
Newsletter start!
This month’s finances and what all got done!
A lot got done! But mostly I want to talk about the finances. Outside of shop orders (which have been going really well lately! Orders are orders even if they’re panic buys lmao), my monthly income before platform fees and such shot up to roughly $543, from $345 last month. The actual take-home pay will be less than that in the end, but I’ve literally never had that much growth happen all at once, I’m still sort of in shock about it.
We’ve still got a long way to go, but regardless of how things work out I wanted to say it really means a lot to me that so many folks saw the last post and responded by making some kind of effort to help, or even just reached out to offer encouragement. I’m trying to temper my optimism so I don’t totally crash if things fall apart, but here’s hoping we can keep enough of this momentum going long enough to get us where we need to be. Thank you so much for trying.
Book stuff!
Again already?
For the first time in nearly three years all three volumes have been restocked (including a new second edition of Volume 1, where I’ve updated the intro comic), they’re all in new cover stock, and they look great. Everybody say Thank You Bob From Avanti Printing, who makes each one of these. They’re even nicer than the old ones in my opinion! They FEEL more like manga volumes, and I love the way the color shows up on the paper; it sort of has that lo-fi anime patina? I dunno if it’ll be obvious to people who don’t spend all day staring at cartoons, but I’m taking new photos for the shop soon so y’all can see for yourselves.
With that, all five of the existing books have been successfully made by the new printer, so barring financial difficulty or something crazy they shouldn’t be out of stock for so long for the foreseeable future. God, finally.
Also I’m releasing Volume 4 soon! Like as soon as I can get all the Extras finished. I wasn’t going to start printing Green Thousand Sing until it was done since I sorta fumbled the math with 1 and 2, but I’m pretty positive about where the split should be, and frankly I would like to put a new book out this year for morale lmao. Logistically, sending out one book at a time will be less stressful, but the other thing is if we hit December and I gotta start closing up shop I think it’ll be less frustrating to only have one more big comic task in front of me instead of two.
I’d still really like to include a new supporter page with names in these going forward, however long “forward” ends up being. I’ll have more info about that next month when things are looking more finalized. For now, maybe put a thought project in the cabinet about whether you’d like your name included in the credits or what exactly you’d like me to put there!
Summer postcards!
Okay some neutral news: after nearly nine years of constant, harrowing service, my photo printer has finally died, which means I can’t finish printing the postcard stuff until the new one gets in next week. The summer bundles are gonna be late, I’m sorry!! Thank you for your service, Canon Pixma TS8000, you printed so so many stickers please rest easy.
Uh fortunately it’s been so fucking long since I had to buy a printer that technology has advanced significantly; I didn’t tell anyone but our LESS loyal poster printer died for stupid enshittification reasons a couple months back so I have been coasting on the stock I already had. I don’t actually sell many posters so I was sort of waffling on getting a replacement, but the new photo printer that’s on the way prints up to 13×19 (and it cost less than either of them did originally, wild). So that solves both those problems, easy! Gimme an extra week or so and I’ll have everything in the mail, thank you for your patience.
Novel stuff!
I wrote around 30k in prose again last month, and officially “finished” the first third of the MHE novel! The novel process is a lot more malleable than the comic process, so nothing is REALLY finished until it’s literally printed, but I’m starting to feel good about it. Like I said in the last letter, novel production has been shoved to equal priority with the comic, so here’s hoping I have a draft of the whole thing relatively soon.
By the way, my word count doesn’t necessarily mean that many words have been added to the manuscript, good god this thing would be enormous lmao. I’m still really hoping to land below 110k in the end for printing logistics and also to appeal to publishing folks, who I’m told tend to assume readers don’t have much of an attention span beyond that (My Ao3 history would disagree, but what can u do). Right now the first third is sitting at like 35k by itself before further edits, but the other two thirds are where most of the meat is, so I’m gonna work real hard to solve this puzzle.
Anyway due to its aforementioned Malleable Nature I’m reluctant to share too much more of the draft, but I did talk about it on tumblr a little bit this week in the capacity that the prose continues to be uh. Pretty different than the source material. This first one’s gonna be especially different because I understand all these characters MUCH better now than I did back then, and I have the benefit of an extra ten years of storytelling experience, but either way I do hope y’all are ready for some changes haha. Here’s a spot where the direct comparison makes some differences pretty clear I think, from the scene in the shack where Phin and Ulrich first get to sit down and chat. Y’all here in our cool treehouse can have a little more than tumblr did:
“I did not think I would be the one breaking this deal." His voice makes Phineas think of a bug under a magnifying glass, skittering and panicked in the light. “How is it I shot you unprovoked and I’m telling you no?” He covers his eyes, raving at himself. “Rotten luck, awful.”
“No?” Phineas twists to face him but she's too nervous to actually move closer, afraid he'll bolt, so she throws herself over the arm of the couch instead. “You didn’t even hear where I was going! Can't we at least fight Hazard before you decide?”
Ulrich’s laugh is mean. The light glints in his glasses when he turns to look at her over his shoulder.
“You really think I’d follow you anywhere? I was going to blow your fucking brains out the minute you stopped being useful to me.” He smiles, his horribly perfect teeth are like rows of gravestones. “Tell me I’m lying, commander.”
She can’t. She doesn’t care.
“Well, you’d-“ She doesn’t care, but the reasons why are too weird and complicated for her to get out in the scant seconds she has before he disappears from her sight, maybe forever. He’s closing in on the recording room. “Maybe you’ll like me by then! I think we could be friends!"
His hand is on the doorknob!!
“I need someone to come to Kairos Crossing with me!”
His hand is on the doorknob, still, not moving. She barrels forward.
“I’m going to Kairos Crossing to catch the sun. I want you to come with me, you’re perfect Ulrich, I've never even come close to-" Phineas swallows. “You can’t leave me alone with...”
An awful second passes.
“...with what?” Ulrich asks, not turning around. Phineas doesn’t know what to say. She sees him shake his head.
“You really are crazy.” She can hear a smile there, not nice, but not nearly as nasty as his last one was. Ulrich doesn't slam the door, but the thud of the mechanism between them is loud enough.
Phineas slumps down into the dirty couch.
Fun to remember these guys hold hands like a LOT during this arc, shared trauma is so funny.
Thanks!
I think that’s about it for now, y’all take it easy. But take it!
-Aria