The Dawn Chapel

It’s been a minute, huh? I didn’t mean to let the comic lie still for this long, but then again I never mean to let it lie still for longer than a week. Sometimes life gets in the way! I kinda got buried under commissions last year and they have a way of running out in front of me – the bills stack up faster than I can finish the work I owe, and then one thing leads to another and I’m permanently months behind.

My wife and I had kind of a financial disaster last March, when we found out that she wouldn’t have a classroom to come back to at the end of the 2016/2017 school year, and so we decided that it was time to leave Weaverville to move somewhere that I could also be employed. Weaverville kind of only worked for us as long as my wife could be the primary earner, but when there’s hiccups in her job situation I’d prefer to be part of our financial safety net, even if that means I’m not doing art full-time.

So last summer we moved to Seattle. It’s been an ongoing process – we took what remained of our savings and rented a room from some friends who already lived here, both of us were able to find employment, and last month we moved out into our own place. There’s just been a lot of other stuff that’s had to take priority over working on the comic, I’m afraid.

There’s some positives: since I started the new job, I’ve spent most of my free time cranking on commissions, and because I haven’t really had to take any new ones, I finished up all the outstanding illustrations I owe. (I still have some 3d work to finish up and will continue to work on those!) And I’m not stressing about money anymore, with the two of us working we can actually pay all our bills without having to take on more work, and still have money to set aside for other things.

We’re not quite done moving yet. We knew we’d be spending the first few months here in a single bedroom so most of what we packed was clothes and computers. Most of our things are still in a storage unit in California, and that includes a lot of the things I use to make the comic: my watercolors, printer, and scanner.

If you want to help us finish our move so that I can get back to work, we have a fundraiser going that you are welcome to contribute to. We’re pooling it with our own savings – once we reach $2500, we’ll make the final trip down and then back up again and finally settle in. I expect it will still take another month or two before we’re finally there.

In the meantime, I’ll be using that time to do some long-overdue housekeeping on the comic: overhauling the Patreon page, compositing and uploading the new scans of old pages, and writing and penciling the rest of the story so I’ll have a running start.

Thank you for your patience! I can’t wait to jump back in with you.