The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2018

Howdy, patrons!

I can say with reasonable certainty that Boundaries #1.4 will be ready on Thursday, January 25th! Woo hoo! I'm looking forward to continuing the adventures of the Felis Away Team on Planet Sleepy, and I hope you are too! I know there hasn't been a whole lot of growth etc. this time, but don't you worry -- it's coming. 

It's a little nerve-wracking doing these serials, mostly because I have NO IDEA how people are responding to them beyond the occasional notification that someone has dropped their pledge or reduced the amount. Each part has been significantly longer than I envisioned (I write long, it turns out), and I know folks are leading pretty busy lives so they might not be able to read each new part right away. It's ALSO true that it's generally tough for writers to get feedback on stories, so there's that. I had been hoping for some fairly decent engagement with these, but that's turned out not to be the case. It took me a little bit to let go of that expectation and it's still a struggle to remember that silence doesn't necessarily mean disinterest.

That being said, any feedback is most definitely welcome! Even if it's along the lines of "this really doesn't grab me, and I'm waiting for it to be over"; it's helpful to know the stories that are hitting and the ones that aren't. It might also be a good idea to publish shorter scenes and snippets, more frequently. Perhaps it's easier/better for people to check in with snippets shorter than 2,000 words or so.

At any rate, writing for "Boundaries" has been a lot of fun. I'm getting more comfortable with the characters all the time, and I've been discovering more about them simply by taking a moment to think about their motivations in every scene and how they're likely to go about it. One of the things I've been really interested in is how the same desire can be expressed in different ways depending on a person's culture and temperament. Hunger is expressed differently by a boisterous carnivore and a quiet herbivore. But even within those broader categories, there are these small idiosyncracies that make each character unique, and it's been a right joy to discover them as I go along. 

With the disaster that struck in #1.3, Captain Tau and his crew will need to weather stress and panic in order to survive. How do people do that, when they don't have time to recover and the stakes are life and death? It's been exciting to really dig into that, especially knowing how things play out over the course of episode one.

In other news, there's SO MUCH to do: I'm getting back into the swing of things with the day job, trying to get a better hold on my mother's debt and my own finances, working on building an exercise routine for the first time in a year, and dusting off long-dormant projects like editing a periodical from a furry publisher and reviving my Pathfinder campaign. Will I get everything done? Of course not! But that's the joy of having ambitious goals, I guess.

So, sound off in the comments: would you be more likely to read (and comment) on posts if they were shorter and/or more frequent? If you support other writers on Patreon, what are some of the things they do that make you feel more engaged? What can I do to make this a better experience for you?

Until next time, buckaroos!

-Jakebe