Patreon’s Reboot, new horizons.

I got an email this morning about the new bloopy Patreon icon. I’m always a bit disoriented when businesses do such rebrands, though of course some are very successful and some aren’t.

I worry that Patreon has done that thing that tech businesses do of taking too much venture capital funding (see YouTube video linked here for a good summary of the argument about why that might have happened) and therefore having to do something more and flashier than just being a solid business that serves its customers the thing they want.

Anyway, I don’t mind the bloop. It makes me feel unsettled and liminal, which is not a bad representation of art and artists and is a bit how I feel right now anyway.

I’m currently occupying a weird liminal space - I went straight from the edfringe to book-deadline hectic, and now have handed in the first draft of the D’Ancey LaGuarde Reader. In some ways it feels like a double comedown.

I should probably give that its own sentence, as a little celebration of its portent. The first draft of the D’Ancey LaGuarde reader has been submitted. Which means I’ve written a book. Which is a thing that I’ve always wanted to do, been told I should do, and feared doing badly to the point that I could never do it.

What I’ve written … is definitely something. I’m still not sure if it’s good. I think it might be unique. But! It will become a real thing in the world that I can hold in my hands (and you can also hold in your hands if you pre-order a copy)!

I’m hunting illustrations and waiting for copyedits and notes from the publishers.

The amount of profit we’re projected to make from current sales won’t cover the cost of the original illustrations that I’d like (D’Ancey Book covers, a picture of a sexy octopus, a double spread of The Lost Duke - adult regency themed where’s Wally/Waldo style D’Ancey book, etc), so I’m having to think about what we *neeeed* in the book and whether I want to break out my pencils and try to draw some of this stuff myself, and how shonky that would look.

When I mention illustrations someone always suggests doing the illustrations with AI which … consider it well and truly suggested. It’s not a thing I’ll do for this book. Even putting unsettled copyright law and broad artist pay ethical issues aside, I don’t like the weird slippery rendered look of the vast majority of AI images I’ve seen. (It makes my teeth feel fuzzy and my brain feel like it’s sliding off the edge of a table). Also, the specifications of the images I want are specifically meant to strain the limits of the human imagination, and AI so far falls well short of being able to deliver such things.

Anyway, all good problems to be having and thinking about. And I don’t want to let worrying about the next step scrape away at my determination to take a moment or two of celebrating the successful practical completion of a personal goal and (however silly and sideways) achievement of a life’s dream.

Next week I can start worrying if it’s going to be good enough or well received or applauded or rewarded or successful by other metrics. This week is for a quiet sense of satisfaction that it turns out if you give me presales, a deadline and a place to stand, I can move the world. That my brain can do the job.

Success

I’ve also been thinking broadly about success. Yesterday, I saw a tweet which asserted that disagreeable people are more likely to be successful in business.

There were some interesting suggestions about why that might be; including (most palatably) being able to express and pursue your desires even when they make other people uncomfortable gives you an advantage over people pleasers who are more likely to conform to pacify.

Less palatably, that being disagreeable can mean you get away with being a free-rider on the unwritten and unrewarded systems of mutual care and community building labour which make the world go round but aren’t measurable. And that free riding gives you a time and effort advantage towards the tick box status and financial goals.

Also yesterday, walking around Bologna I was told a story about one Palazzo we passed, which had belonged to a very successful musician. He was immensely wealthy, and lived in this huge mansion with his partner of more than a decade. He was seriously religious, going to the Catholic church opposite his house every day and was also not publicly out as gay. When he died suddenly of a heart attack, he hadn’t left a will, and his partner was booted out of their shared home and left without an inheritance. The immense fortune was split among a gaggle of cousins.

I was thinking; I wouldn’t take that deal with the devil, if that was the deal. If you could be immensely talented and successful but that every day you were tortured by your own self loathing or fear of judgment. I was thinking that part of my metric for success, however unmeasurable, is that there’s no point to it if it doesn’t come with some level of inner comfort and satisfaction. I was thinking that at some point peace and ease ought to be part of how we measure success, or maybe that those things are so much quietly their own reward that “success” as traditionally conceived and lauded must always be understood to in itself a sort of second prize.

Or maybe the two things can never be linked; they always run on separate tracks and one can’t ever be pinned (for better or worse) to the other: that even trying to connect them is stupid and misses the point. They’re different axes on different graphs.

As ever, no answers here. Just rambling and thinking.

In other news

I’ve been writing on the News Quiz. Last week I flew to london to be in the writers room, and this week I did it remotely. Both ways have their upsides and downsides. Flying in and being in the room feels like more fun to do and more immediate, and is probably good for networking and stuff, but also means I end up not making any money at all for the work.

The next adventure is next week Wednesday and Thursday, going to London for News Quiz, and then Saturday, taking my little family back to Australia to be in one place for a little while and prepare for Razor Fraser to be born. We’ll be breaking the journey for a few days in Singapore because 26 hours pregnant with a toddler feels a bit self-flagellatory.

I have promised Laser Fraser she will see a butterfly house, and have booked in an Afternoon Tea at Raffles because while colonial history is problematic, expensive little cakes on plates suspended in midair feels romantic and literary and like the right way to celebrate the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.

With that in mind, the next few Patreon events are:

Writers Meeting and Workshop

Sunday, 8 October⋅2:30 – 4:30pm (UTC +1)

Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81267286980?pwd=V2FXRlVzODlPTCtoazdzajNUN2hlZz09

Weekly Salon (doing a double to catch timezones and make up for Singapore week where I won’t have reliable wifi or privacy)

Monday, 9 October⋅9:00 – 10:00am (UTC +1)

Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82060152734?pwd=RGZnVzc0Z29vbGVuUEFUcEo1R2gwZz09

Monday, 9 October⋅4:00 – 5:00pm (UTC +1)

Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81152647483?pwd=NkEvS2N5bjU1dzRERGc4SFB3c3FkZz09

Book Club

Friday, 13 October⋅2:30 – 3:30pm (UTC +1)

Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88380138898?pwd=bUVDQkl0bVNqbjhvYjVvMWhsUWJrUT09

The following week-ish to ten days, I’ll be taking off because will be traveling, settling in new place and wrestling with jet lag but there will still be a Writer’s Meeting with a guest host.

Writers Meeting and Workshop (with Guest Host TBC)

Sunday, 15 October⋅2:30 – 4:30pm

Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89825484526?pwd=bG9OZS9CS0R0YTMyWXhOUXk4ZFlxZz09

The schedule will look a bit different once I’m in Australia but as always the best source of upcoming things and last minute changes is the Google calendar on the linktree. https://linktr.ee/alicefraser.

That link tree is also the place to go if you want to get access to my free specials, links, rundowns of what all of the meetings entail and so on.