The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Hello Patrons!

All right, I'll be honest with you -- this project has been a lot more difficult to be consistent with than I thought. Every time I think I have an opportunity to get ahead of things, life comes up and slaps me back down. I know it's frustrating for you folks to get a number of excuses from me week after week, and I'm genuinely sorry about that. But at this point, I think it's best to come clean about the writing process for THE CULT OF MAXIMUS so far.

I have the rough outline for the story in my head; I know the scenes that I'm trying to write to -- let's call them the peaks -- but not necessarily how we get there. Let's call those the valleys. The valleys right now are bathed in shadow, hidden by the peaks that make up the mountainous range of the story. Up until now, I've been comfortable not knowing how I'm going to get certain places. It's been my experience that as a story finds its groove the characters tend to "grow legs" and dictate their own actions. This sounds a little strange, but when I hit a sweet spot with a story I feel more of a conduit than an author.

In order to allow the characters space to find themselves, the valleys have to be a little mysterious. Attitudes and motivations are surprising, and characters I thought I knew at first glance reveal themselves to be entirely different animals. To be honest, this Patreon was designed to allow myself the space to get comfortable with the process of writing long-form fiction while pushing me to action with a constant, rolling deadline. If the other aspects of my life had settled into a predictable routine, I should be able to handle the challenge.

The problem is that my day job has become a lot more demanding than anticipated. There have been a series of disruptions since the beginning of the year that have made it really difficult to stick to a routine, and the holidays weren't quite the best time to build a buffer for the story.

Since opening the doors of the Jackalope Serial Company, I've been flying by the seat of my pants as a result, and not very well. During particularly difficult weeks I've had nothing left in the tank after work and personal obligations to clear away the fog in the valleys so I can see the next part of the story, which means that I can't even begin to imagine what happens next -- and even if I did, I wouldn't have any time to write it.

Case in point: while my husband was away in Japan for two weeks, the plan was to take the time alone to really hammer out the structure of THE CULT OF MAXIMUS, deep-dive into each principal and supporting character, and hopefully write chapter 3 ahead of time so I could have that buffer I needed. Instead, the entire two weeks were taken up by preparing the burrow for a fumigation, crashing on a friend's couch for a weekend, and coming back to straighten and organize all the stuff I had to pack.

It was pretty much packing up to move, leaving the boxes there, then coming back after three days to unpack everything. It took a LONG time.

That, combined with the continued pressure of the day job, made it impossible to do anything else. Work, home, packing/unpacking, what little sleep I could manage with the husband away. It was not an easy time.

Now we're through the other side; the Burrow is back in order and the husband just arrived back home safe and sound. But next week will throw me another curveball -- a week-long intensive training session on new product at work, followed by the expectation to be able to support that product the week after. In addition, there's the expectation to handle whatever workload we have supporting the old product. Oof. It never stops.

I'm still learning how to keep my feet through the shifting landscape of my professional life, and unfortunately that means that I won't be as consistent as I would like with the serial for a little while. I know I really hate it when the writer/artist of my favorite webcomic maintains a really spotty schedule and I'm never quite sure when new updates are going to happen. It makes me lose faith in the storyteller and interest in the story. I didn't want to be that guy doing that to an audience generous enough to offer me payment for telling the stories I wanted to tell in the way I wanted to tell them.

I really, really appreciate everyone who's contributed to my Patreon so far -- the response to the JSC has been tremendous so far, better than I could have hoped. And I realize that this is beginning to sound like I'm shuttering the project, so let me be clear: I'm not going anywhere.

However, I would like to take a bit more time to make sure I can keep up a weekly schedule as promised. Part 9 of THE CULT OF MAXIMUS will be posted later today, which brings us to the end of chapter 2; after that, I will take another two weeks to outline the rest of the story, tighten the structure and work ahead to ease the pressure.

So: part 10 of THE CULT OF MAXIMUS will be posted here on Wednesday, May 4th. I'll let you know where I am with my progress then and how the process of building the story is coming along. It is my most sincere wish that I'll be in a better place with project management by then and I'll be able to maintain a nice, consistent pace of releases.

Thank you for your incredible patience, Patrons. I'll see you back here in May.

ONE MORE THING: Those folks who have donated at the Lucky Charms level need to make sure they have their character concepts for the Casting Call to me by April 15th. Submissions will shut down by then. So far, only one patron has gotten their concept to me. If no one else submits in three days, they'll win by default! (Which I'm OK with; the concept is pretty solid.)

BUT WE WANT TO GIVE HIM A RUN FOR HIS MONEY. So let's make this coronation a race and get me your concepts!