The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette - 3/14/16 (Patreon)

Here we are, in the middle of the month. It looks like Tom and Jerry will need to beware the ides, but we won't! THE CULT OF MAXIMUS rolls on with chapter two and we'll (finally) get some additional world-building materials later in the week! How exciting!!

THE CULT OF MAXIMUS

Part 8 of the serial will drop on Wednesday, March 16th; in this section, Chief Jones will have a serious talk with Tom and Jerry regarding what went down last week. I won't say much more than that, but you can imagine how well it went over to treat poor Mel so harshly. The fallout will send ripples through the rest of the story, so stay tuned for that!

The narrative is picking up steam here, and I hope that's coming across in the new pieces. It feels like the world and the characters are finally starting to cohere, and the momentum is making it easier to write each new part. I'm really looking forward to putting out the rest of chapter two, and chapter three is where things get even more interesting!

MARCH MARSHMALLOWS

The first bit of extra content for our Golden Grahams patrons will be released this week as well! Character sheets for Officer Thomas Beck and Officer Jeremiah Mintson will (hopefully) go up on Thursday and Friday, respectively. If you haven't donated at that level yet, there's still time! You'll get background information and author's notes on our two protagonists, and get to see how my initial concept for them was rather different from what you've been seeing on the page.

In addition to that, I'll be pinging the patrons who've been kind enough to donate at the Lucky Charms level to come up with concepts for a recurring character set to appear in future chapters! After a brief period of time, voting for which character will appear will begin towards the end of March for our Honey Nut Cheerios patrons and beyond!

ROTATING SERIALS?

One of my patrons asked if it was possible to perhaps do a set of rotating serials here, where one month would feature four or five new parts of one story and patrons would get to vote on whether to continue with another chapter or introduce another serial for the following months? What do you think? I had envisioned that the JSC would work on one serial until a "season" of 6 - 13 chapters was finished, but it's an intriguing idea. If there's enough support for it, we can definitely begin moving in that direction!

That's it for this week, patrons! See you on Wednesday with part 8!