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- KC Newsletter! March 2025
KC Newsletter! March 2025
keepin' up
This issue: man i always forget how much conventions throw off my schedule i’m tellin’ ya
(comics on itch.io, some traditional stuff, lots of novel news)
This month’s finances and what all got done!
We ended up with four pages during March; that church sequence really took it out of me lmao. It looks like I wrote around 17k words but the counts this month are really muddy for reasons I’ll get into here in a minute.
My paycheck eked up to around 870 this month, hey! We’re almost at the original goal I set for last year! That fuckin’ rules thank y’all so much for keeping this thing moving.
Digital Editions (and those preorders)!
They’re available on itch.io now! That’s all. There’s no discernible difference on my end whether you go through my normal shop or this new place, please pick whichever avenue suits you.
Also: that little preorder event I ran earlier this month went well!! We pulled in enough money to get Volume 4 stock ordered, restock both specials AND order more Volume 3 before they completely sold out again. We weren’t even testing for that. Thank y’all so much!! The order has been placed and now I’m just waiting for it to get printed, I will keep you all posted and send out the existing orders as soon as they’re in my hands. As always, if you have any questions about the status of your order please reach out, I am Around.
Youtube stuff!
Youtube slowed down a bit since I’ve wanted to prioritize comic pages after the slow start this month, but there are two things you can watch if you want! One is an order packing video. The other is a dip pen drawing, and you can choose to listen to me do another one of those off-the-cuff rambles over it or watch a quiet cut instead. God I feel like all of this went up a fuckin’ year ago March has lasted half my life.
I’ll probably get back to trying for a weekly upload schedule when I feel like I’m moving along with the comic again! I have lots of different ideas for stuff I’d like to do over there, but do feel free to let me know what sorts of things you’re interested in. I’m thinkin’ real hard about doing some comic retrospectives at some point, probably once the novel is closer to getting done.
Ink!
The latest news for The Sketchquest is I’ve started an ink-only sketchbook! No pencils, nothing that can erase. It was a little intimidating at first, but I heard the advice from someone else ages ago and definitely recommend it to anyone looking to get more confident with their lines. I have a lot to say about it that I’ll probably save for a sketchbook tour once it’s finished, but folks seem to really like the bits I’ve felt comfortable enough to share, so I’m sort of entertaining the idea of compiling it into something you can own at some point too.
Thinking about it does remind me I still gotta make some digital sketchbooks with all my kc art over the years, oof. Always something to do. Speaking of which, I got a handful of digital sketches done this month and this letter could use some images, so here are some:
i’m having a LOT of fun revisiting rook and ulrich in the novel lmao
Also a thing from Honest Work.
lotta ulrich lately, hi ulrich.
Novel update!
This morning the draft is sitting at 99k! That is, alarmingly huge given I still have two mostly empty chapters, but it does mean the draft is getting close to being finished. I have seven chapters that are readable from start to finish and, possibly, it is even pleasant to do so. At the beginning of March I compiled the first half of the novel as it stands and sent it out to a very small number of advance readers to see if I’m on the right track!
After sharing my work page by page for so long, sharing the product of months and months of work is horrifying lmaooo. Posting the novel might kill me actually. That said, the feedback has been encouraging so far! I’m excited!! I think this is going to be a good thing when it’s finished, and I’m so grateful for the kind folks who are taking the time to look it over and share their thoughts with me to make it better. If I’ve spoken to you about being an advance reader and didn’t contact you, no worries; I got all of y’all in different categories for the type of reader you are, and I wanted some of you to get a later draft than this one. Adapting an extremely niche webcomic is a really, really weird project and it’s a hard thing to find, like, The Correct Combination of Qualifications in a reader to get the kind of feedback I’m looking for at this stage. I wanted some of you to get the full thing at once, so you’ll probably get your chance here in a few months. We’re gettin’ close, hang in there!
I suppose some other news regarding the novels is I’m pretty much killing the idea of seeking traditional publication for now. Is that news? I feel like I may have brought it up before, but it’s a pretty big shift from my previous plans so I guess it doesn’t hurt to mention it again. I had intended to pursue it because I was really desperate for any help at all to make Kidd Commander, and I still am, but after some behind the curtain stuff over the last few months I’ve learned that help isn’t going to be provided through any traditional avenues. Stranger things and all, anything could happen in the future I suppose, but as things are there’s nobody coming to save this thing. A ship is not miraculously appearing to help me off this island because there are not actually any ships anywhere, and that’s disappointing, but! I’ve been self publishing comics forever already, industry help being beyond me is nothing new hehe. The financial situation also looks significantly more positive than it did last year when I formed my plan of attack for the novels; we’re still not anywhere near getting the assistance I need to finish the comic itself, but we’re in business for now and that’s not nothing. I’m just gonna keep working on my own like I always have and see where it gets us.
So: as we get closer, I have Some Ideas about how I might like to guide the release of this thing from out here on my little homemade raft, and all of y’all here in the newsletter will be the first to know about it. Anyone who has been following me for more than five minutes knows my feelings about how advertising is done these days, primarily that I loathe the abject disrespect it tends to have for its audience and consider many of its practices to be an affront to creativity as a whole. Especially with regard to novels. But also, if I don’t drum up some support from somewhere we’re sunk, so in an effort to stick to my principles (and not lose your respect, I hope), as we go forward with this I’m going to be extremely candid and honest with you all about what is or isn’t some kind of Necessary Marketing Scheme, continue to be clear with you about what your support is accomplishing, and how you can help get this thing in the air if the spirit moves you to do so. I do not have the stomach for carnival barking or squiggly arrows, but maybe if we all work together we can get these books out there without changing Ulrich into a skinny love interest or renaming anything for the sake of an algorithm.
You are never Required to do anything, of course! But I get asked about how to help pretty often and A Novel Launch is a concrete event we haven’t attempted here yet, so I’m going to try and make it easy for y’all to get involved as much as you want to be. Please stand by!
State of the Artist
I had TWO dentist appointments this month and I was extremely stressed about it, but we’re on the other side now! There’s one show next month, but other than that here’s hoping April is more productive than March was.
Also if you’re in the US don’t forget to do your taxes,
-Aria
Upcoming Appearances!
Wicked West Comic Expo
April 12-13, Fort Collins, CO