Major Update

Okay, I've got a whole lot I want to brief everyone on, and I'm not entirely sure the best way to go about it all so this might be a bit scatterbrained.

To start with, let's do an abbreviated version of October's monthly report since I didn't do a normal one. First three weeks went pretty great. I was making good progress and nearly keeping pace with the target quota despite overwhelmingly focusing on revisions which take a lot longer. Then week four started a bit choppy and by the end I had completely crashed. It got to the point that every time I tried to write I'd sit there for an hour and a half and by the end I'd have one, maybe two paragraphs of work done. Obviously, that's a pace that borders on the apocalyptic. At first I thought it was just a rut on the Artemis story that I'd been working on for quite awhile, but when I tried other projects things didn't go any better. Worked on two different shorts, Artemis, and at least one non-Mouse King project. Nothing was working. So, in the end I decided I needed to step away for a few days and recharge. Fortunately, that seems to have worked. Last night I sat down to write and things went pretty well. So I'll be picking up more or less my normal schedule again. I won't do a weekend report tomorrow, so the first will be next weekend.

As for the second item of business, I think I've already mentioned something about this but as the holiday season in November and December can cause some pretty drastic shifts in the amount of time I have available I won't feel comfortable charging everyone for a full month then. What I've decided to do is to effectively roll November and December into a single month for my purposes and up the quota an extra 10K to a total of 50K in order to make up some ground I've fallen behind on of late. There is a means to temporarily shutter a patreon account, but I don't want to go that route because while I'm not sure of the mechanics I believe it's likely to prevent new signups. Instead, what I think I'll do is make a list of all active members at the end of November, sort them by payment date, and then do individual refunds on a day by day basis. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes every day, and it'll keep things open for new patrons. This will only address people who are active when I go to do things, though, so it won't extend the membership of anyone who has cancelled before that point.

Next up, while its been fun writing the Mouse King stories with more regularity and a nice supplemental income, to date the time investment hasn't been paying off particularly well. So, I'll be making a more concerted effort next year to try and elevate things to a point where this becomes sustainable long term. That will mean a few changes of varying relevance to the average reader. First, I'll be trying to draw in a larger audience. That means expanding the number of sites where I post stories. I've got a list of possibilities I'm investigating now, but if I'm still not happy in a few months I may make some efforts to crowdsource more. Second, I need a higher rate of releases. So, while my natural writing tends towards larger projects and long chapters/stories, I have to start forcing myself to invest more time into short stories and collections thereof. More releases means more readers, more readers means more potential supporters. Simple math. This will have a particular consequence to patron benefits which I'll circle back to in just a moment. Finally, as already discussed a few times, I'll be expanding into commissioned stories. The first of which (TBD which of a few options) will come once the two WIPs are complete.

Now, what impact will those changes have for patrons? In general, they'll mean more shorts and stand alone stories, less focus on big series (Empire Games in particular is on indefinite hold.). That's not great news for the one month/six month early access system I've had in place. So, unless there's significant pushback, I'm going to shake things up (patron tier descriptions will soon be updated to reflect this). Moving forward, I intend to switch into a system where A. 'Short' stories (more or less defined as standalone stories under 10K words or episodes in a collection that is more 'thematic' than a real ongoing series with a consistent plot) will go to patrons 2 months before they are released to the general public. B. 'Full' stories (stand alone stories of 10K plus words, chapters of series that tend to be that length or longer, and chapters of series with a larger, more overarching plot.) will go to patrons 4 months before being released to the general public. And C. 'Spinoff' stories (shorter pieces that expand on full standalone stories or series) will remain an exclusive benefit for patrons. The latter should also become more common if I shift to a larger focus on short stories. It seems to me like this system will give greater benefit to patrons than keeping the current version, but I'm willing to entertain other options if people seem not to agree.

Alright, that should cover just about all the major news and progress reporting, so all that's left is a briefing on what specific stories people can expect me to be working on in the coming month or two. That, however, is going to be a monster of its own so I'm going to separate it into it's own posts which will follow this one in just a little bit. So keep your eyes peeled.