The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Howdy, patrons!

Voting for the 2018 Pilot Season is underway, albeit a bit later than I had anticipated. Still, now's your chance to determine the weekly serial for the rest of the year! How exciting. :D If you haven't made your voice heard, no worries -- you have until next Monday (July 16th) for that. But don't wait too long, the poll will be closed before you know it!

This week I'll be trying to get in pre-writing on each of the serials, just so I have an idea of where I'd like to go with each of them and (hopefully) make sure episode 2 is ready to go once the winner has been announced. If at all possible, it'd be a great thing to write ahead as much as I can to get a good buffer going. Then I can concentrate on just a few other things -- like a longer, more polished serial for the good folks at the upper tiers; editing the serials that I've released here to go up on SoFurry; working on short stories to submit to anthologies and zines; helping with the editing for OTHER anthologies and zines; and finally getting my crap together with the pair of Pathfinder games I'm running.

Whew, a jackalope's work is never done! I'd like to think that I'm getting better at being consistent with my writing practice, but there's still a long way to go before I feel fully confident about my ability to deliver the goods. I'm just grateful that all of you are patient with me, as always.

I'm not going to lie, it's been difficult to put in the work with writing and promoting the Patreon in the face of, well, everything else. Temperatures across the United States have been smashing records already this summer, and the extreme weather events don't look to be letting up any time soon. On top of that, the news is full of our current Administration doing everything in its power to loot and plunder our society for their own ends while alienating our allies and cozying up to some truly scary enemies. It's been so hard to engage these days because the bad news is so overwhelming.

That's one of the reasons why I've been quiet on Twitter; that site has been a consistent trigger for my anxieties, and it just doesn't do me much good to be there for very long. I could carefully prune my list for a better experience, but to be honest I'd rather focus on being productive, doing what I can to fight the good fight in my own way. Besides, with the new job and new routine I'm slowly but steadily building, taking steps to preserve my peace of mind is a necessity.

I'll be putting up the pilots on SoFurry, Weasyl and Furry Network throughout the week, linking to them on FurAffinity over the weekend and beating the promotional drum on Twitter the whole time in order to drum up interest; sorry if you're following me elsewhere and all the constant "PILOT SEASON" talk gets to be a bit much.

One MORE thing -- another fun project I've started (because it's not like I don't have too many already) is Mighty Manners, an in-character Twitter account and Tumblr blog featuring my giant kangaroo, Roovumbidgee. He's an advice columnist for etiquette questions involving a difference of size. If you'd like to ask him how to navigate a specific situation, you can find him here:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Roovumbidgee

Tumblr: https://mightymanners.tumblr.com/

Both accounts are a little bare so far, but hopefully that'll change before too long.

That's it for now, folks -- see you all over the Internet this week, and here again next week!

-Jakebe