Hello again everyone! Today's update is a present. FOR BACKERS!!! And a blueballing for followers. Below you'll find the full first episode of my upcoming web serial, SUMMON THE MAGE-WIFE. Well, if you're a backer. If you're a follower you'll see the blurb and a few paragraphs. THE REST IS BEHIND THE PAYWALL LIKE I'M SOME KINDA BIG SHOT.

As a reminder, if you are a pre-launch follower who BACKS the project, you'll get early updates to magewife on my patreon FOR FREE. Twice the writing! Twice the moms! TWICE THE ME!! Each episode is a "novelette" or very long short story at 8-10k words, equivalent to a few chapters of a novel.

Summon the Mage-Wife is a procedural fantasy about a midwife who delivers babies others can't–or wont. It’s The Witcher meets Call the Midwife meets Rourouni Kenshin with a magipunk twist.

 

River of Blood is a woman with a dark past and a lust for vengeance. Too bad she's sworn off killing. Now she brings life into the world instead of taking it out. From celestials to kelpies to sphinxes and draconic empresses, everyone gets a baby (if they want). More importantly, everyone gets the help they need–regardless of whether the vampires in government want them to get it or not.

 

Colonialism, women’s rights, personal crimes versus systemic injustices, Summon the Mage-wife covers it all with humour, magic, and depictions of birth that don’t shy from reality despite being wholly fantasy.

Enjoy!

***

With the grass wet on her back and the sun creeping over the horizon, River of Blood watched a vampire take over her nation. The livestream was a bit fuzzy; reception wasn’t great out in the boonies. River didn’t listen to the words the vampire said—if she had to see its face, then she could at least avoid hearing its voice. She read the captions and cursed the long-dead man with the wide moustache and goatee, the grey skin that once had been swarthy, the dead eyes that had watched her home burn.

“You may have escaped death, but there are other places to send you than hell,” River said.

 The vampire thanked everyone for voting it in. spoke of taxation and innovation, of the importance of personal autonomy and national autonomy. It then said the words River knew were going to come out of its mouth, the words that everyone said would never come out of its mouth even though the vampire had clearly and repeatedly said that it would say exactly these words at exactly this time.

(continued for backers below...)

Good day to you all, and a fine Black Friday. You’re late, by the way. Canada beat  you to Thanksgiving by like 6 weeks! I thought you guys were the best at stuff. Maybe move it into September. That’ll show us. 

 

Anyways, today’s update was going to have some sneak peeks of the FREE comic you’re getting for being so cool, but... WE HAVE THE COMIC ALREADY. DAMN. HERE YA GO!!!




This wasn’t a stretch goal. It’s just something I want, and want you to have. So 2 pages to whet your whistle and if we get to 11k, we’ll do a 12 page short. So tell your friends! We only have until MONDAY to hit those stretch goals. YOU CAN STILL MAKE ME EAT MY OWN HEAD.

  

Now there’s one more update following this one FOR BACKERS ONLY. The first episode of my upcoming web serial SUMMON THE MAGE-WIFE, about magic midwives who deliver babies magical, monstrous, and mundane. It has a vampire prime minister, banning abortion, and smitten butch werewolves who are also illegal. It’s just like real life!

 

But before that, I want to shout out some other projects that deserve love. Some are in the Book Bazaar, while others are people who have helped and inspired me and deserve some recognition for that.

 

Space Wizard Science Fantasy—Crack open one of seven new books, or buy ‘em all! We’ve got dragons. We’ve got gays. We’ve got gay dragons. We’ve got wizards who in all likelihood, are gay. Check em out! William, the figurehead of SWSF, helped us out with a spreadsheet for costs, shipping, and other financial matters. For a newbie, this was a huge help in getting the campaign setting up and setting my prices and expectations. I can’t thank him enough!

 

Tales from the Alley—many of you probably know Seven, the Publishing Goblin. Hell, my wife was on their email list before I know about them. But Seven has been SO helpful, inspiring, and lovely and even if you aren’t familiar with their Alleyman series (which has a LONG history and a radio drama???) I think you’ll enjoy this urban fantasy anthology. Seven made sure to look over our campaigns and give us notes. They’ve run 28 of these things, almost all successful, so they know what they’re talking about!!

 

The Hero Rebellion 10th anniversary edition—Belinda, the author, helped us understand how to write our campaign pitches and present ourselves. She’s been around the block a few times, as you can tell from the anniversary edition. She’s been super helpful and supportive and I wouldn’t have gotten this far without her. The Hero Rebellion is an action-packed YA with a mouthy heroine and mutant animal companions. If it was popular enough to earn a 10th anniversary edition, you can bet it’s good!

 

The Lucky Machine—Aimee put this whole thing together, so I owe her a huge thanks. I would never have tried crowdfunding if it weren’t for her, and now I’m getting my book printed nicer than it would have been through a small press. Her 2nd book, the Lucky Machine, is a lovely tale of humanity despite being about robots. Because unlike the damn LLMs, robots in stories are fun, smart, friendly and actually capable of thought. Thanks so much Aimee!

 

Non-Bazaar thanks and referrals

 

Wendigo Workshop! This Canadian trio has been sharing posts and just being super supportive literally just because they’re cool and love the book! They haven’t even read it yet! Just another backer like you, except they have cool games, including the Arkelon system (on sale now as part of the Winter Market) and their upcoming Dark Magical Girl game which you can follow—the campaign will be starting next summer.

 

Rachel Distler/redtiebear—Rachel makes rad comics and has made her own giant Edeleth zine with stickers and art and everything. Normally this is a big project undertaken by a bunch of people, but it’s just her. Her comics are fun and full of colour and well laid out. There’s a few stretch goals left to hit for her campaign which ends on Dec 5th!

 

Conjured Ink—this project I’m helping out with has been very patient with the fact that I’m busy on this crowdfund and is a place where I’m ultimately going to be selling the book. CI is the first iteration of an open-source storefront index to replace itch.io as a safe, secure, and profitable place to sell art, books, games, and music.

NEON PANTHEON!—if you're like "this book sounds pretty good but i'm not a lesbian I'm more into T4T but i really love your colour palette then do i have news for you this comic is like if boombride was all trans, all the time, and 10x as colourful and disco??? Rynn has been hugely supportive and lovely and i met them like, last fucking week? Anyways they're my best friend now so go read their comic OR ELSE.
 

Okay, thanks everybody! Followers, watch out for the next update for a teaser of my upcoming web serial about magical midwives called Summon the Mage-Wife. Backers, well, you get to read the entire first episode. Enjoy!

  

 

Hello everyone!

We hit the stretch goal i wasn't ever sure we'd reach. So we are getting that conventional cover, and well, what's a campaign without stretch goals? So, let's have some new ones. Because this train is still chugging and we're not stopping until we experience an exciting derailment or fly off the bridge in we didn't notice was under construction.

Without further ado... COMIC.


The fantastic Renzo is doing a helluva rush job to bring a 2 page comic "teaser" for our final week. Get yer meet-cute here! These are obviously just the rough sketches. I'm so excited to see how this turns out. Honestly, it looks bad as hell already, rough though it may be.

But 2 pages is all i can pull by myself right now. If we want MORE, then i'm gonna need MORE. Smash those piggy banks, call that aunt that you hate, tell her this helps starving walruses in Kamchatka, that if she buys this book she'll own a star, whatever the hell you want. Because I WANT COMICS.

Here is your mission, should you choose to accept it.



If this isn't enough to whet your whistle whell then I've got some whelcome news. READING STREAM. Wednesday, 26/11/9997. I think. Or tomorrow. It's one of those. 6 PM EST. Here's a link to add it to your schedule because you are an important busy person who deserves to have events put into their schedules.

Last but not least, i want to shout out some of our underfunded projects. 16/22 projects in the Book Bazaar have funded, which is absolutely fantastic, but i want 22/22!! So here are 3 i think deserve some special attention.

Space Wizard Science Fantasy should be enough on name alone to get you in there. A small publisher with a fantastic track record of weird, queer, and fun books, and this time there's SEVEN TO CHOOSE FROM. GET IN THERE NYEAOW.

Fairy Seasons is a collection of dark poetry and short stories by my lovely colleague Machelle, who has been promoting the HELL out of the bazaar and giving everyone a little taste of the spotlight. NOW SHINE THE HELL ON HER.

Gems and Stars Flowers Audiobook is a sweet scifi romance that ALREADY EXISTS. now that's nice. No waiting! Well, you have to wait for the audiobook which DOESN'T EXIST. YET. So get them words in your damn ears. Let them slither down your aural canals deep into your brain like some sort of literary yrrk.

WE HAVE FOUGHT HARD. WE HAVE FOUGHT WELL. But the war against tedium continues! Onwards, I say, to glory! To valor! To VICTORY.

Oh also there will be another surprise update on wednesday for the backers and BACKERS ONLY so become one if you aren't already. Trust me.

Peace

The final(??) stretch goal has been reached!

That means I'll be purchasing a fancier "hybrid" print instead of a standard digital one. The cover will be done "conventionally" as in they will mix custom inks to match the vibrant, gorgeous, incredibly gay colours chosen by the cover artist Kholbatar (with extremely limited input from me, i might add. She really just reached directly into my skull, said "what are you, colourblind?" and threw my ideas in the shitter where they belonged. then she made something good.)

Just as a friendly reminder, Kholbatar brought this:



To this:


That's pretty fuckin' metal.

Hey all, thanks so much for backing. We're 300% funded in 6 days, which is pretty incredible. I can't thank you enough. Didn't quite make $1k per day but uh, sitting at 5.4 six days in feels pretty good. So, here's a funny video to keep you company, and a timeline for delivery. You'll probably see the timeline again but I wanted to give it out early in case this was something holding people back.

The timeline as follows shows the range of delivery dates in a hopefully pleasing manner. I will explain each point below the image.



November-December. This is the now. not the then. Not the will be. Now. Line edits are underway and are expected to be finished the first week of December. I will then format the novel for print and send it to my printer. They will deliver me a proof within two weeks after that. I will order the print run assuming everything goes well.

The reason I am not ordering a test at this moment is because Houghton Boston is a smaller printer, I have been asked not to make too many changes after we get the print set. Because this is a crowdfund and we may get to the traditional print stretch goal (more on that later) I want to hold out for the higher quality print rather than get a standard digital print in hand earlier.

Once the order is made, I have been told that it will be 4-10 weeks, depending on how busy they are. It's possible that with a small print run they might be able to shove us in somewhere, but at the earliest i expect to have books in your hands in early February, maybe March with the latest being in April. Delivery time outside NA will take a bit longer, but still within the same timeframe.

I also don't want to promise anything but I have sent out some feelers for EU shippers. I really want to be able to ship to the EU, and since the risk of losing all my money on a single return is fading (this is a real problem for most indies) I might be able to make it happen. Again, no promises, but I will update again on this hopefully next week.

Please remember that SHIPPING IS COLLECTED AT THE END OF THE CAMPAIGN!

Last note, ebooks will be released as soon as i have confirmation of paperback delivery to buyers. That means that a few people might get their paperbacks before everyone gets their ebooks, but on average the digital bundles will be released before all the paperbacks get there.

Thanks again everybody, sorry for the long post about boring things like actually getting the thing you bought. If you have any questions feel free to let me know in the comments or pelt me with rocks in the street.

Cheers