The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Volume 2, Issue 8

Tuesday, April 4th, 2017

Howdy, patrons!

If you follow me on Twitter or read my general writing blog, then you already know the litany of problems that I've been facing over the past couple of months! If you don't, then I'll explain what's been happening to me in a bit. 

First, let's talk about the big change to the payment tiers! The Jackalope Serial Company is now asking for patronage per episode instead of per month. That means instead of offering me money every month whether I manage to actually provide stories or not, you ONLY pay when there's a tasty new episode of the serial for your reading pleasure! It's simply not fair for you, my gentle patrons, to pay for a service you're not getting -- I wanted to make sure that I'm not taking advantage of you or anything. 

However, that means the previous donation tiers are all gone. That means you'll need to choose one of four patron tiers, each with new and different rewards! At the Corn Flakes level ($1 per episode), you get access to each new episode first, months before it's released to the general public! At the Honey Nut Cheerios level ($3 per episode), voting privileges are yours -- you get to decide on new serials, which characters are added to stories, and other things! At the Captains Crunch level ($5 per episode), behind-the-scenes access is yours; you get extra stories, character profiles, and essays about the creation process. And at the Lucky Charms level ($10 per episode), you get everything from previous levels PLUS a personal gift every month -- either a personal short story or a personal tarot reading. You also have the opportunity to add a recurring supporting character to serials from time to time!

When the Serial Company is firing on all cylinders, the four reward tiers should translate to $4, $12, $20 and $40 per month respectively. Of course, you can choose to limit your donation to three episodes or below if you wish. 

Please make sure to pick your new reward level before the end of the month. I want you fine folks to make sure that you're paying what you intend to and nothing more, OK? 

Now that's out of the way -- good news! Part 2 of the latest serial, "Stable Love", will premiere this Thursday! ALL RIGHT! This one is a whopper -- 7000 words of giant horse goodness all for you. :D

The reason this has all taken so long is that life has been throwing a series of haymakers and kidney punches at me. Work has shifted to a four-day-a-week, ten-hours-per-day schedule; my abbreviated Statistics class has started, and my honors work for Debate is taking up a lot of time; I've finally put the accident behind me, though the whole process of buying a car took a lot of energy; and my family has been dealing with twin crises that I've only recently found out about. Suddenly, I'm putting in a LOT of focus trying to help my mother and sister deal with that in addition to everything else. 

Things are likely to be busy for a little while, but I'll do my best to keep plugging away at writing. :)

Until next time, patrons!