It's the official launch day of the Cowry Catchers Comic and Patreon Page. :)
For the comic, Rah and I are doing the short story "Professionals" to work out the kinks before starting into the main Cowry Catchers story line. Feel free to comment on the pages.
At this point, the comic is black and white and will update every other week. If you'd like to see more frequent updates and (eventually) color, chip in with Patreon. Even very small donations (like $1 per month) are helpful. If everyone who loves this story gave that much, we'd hit the goals in no time.
If you're not familiar with Patreon, it's a lot like Kickstarter. However, while Kickstarter is designed to collect a specific amount of money for a single project, Patreon is designed for creators who make on-going content. So, podcasters, comics creators, and prolific novelists. :) Patreon donations are monthly instead of one-time. For this reason, they tend to be smaller than Kickstarter donations. $1-$5 per month is common.
It's super-easy to change or cancel a donation at any time. I donate to several Patreons, and I've tried changing and canceling to see what it's like. It's the click of a button. You're never locked in.
There are two types of rewards on Patreon. There are Donor Rewards for donating at a specific level (for instance, if you donate at the $5 level, you get a sneak peak of what I'm writing each month). And there are Milestone Rewards that I give to all donors at all levels whenever we hit a Milestone Goal as a group. In some cases, the Milestone Reward is the thing that we're able to pay for (like a weekly comic). In other cases, I make or commission something special for you because we hit the half-way point or covered some significant cost.
This will all make more sense if you go over to the Patreon page and poke around. Even if you can't donate, you should do that, because Rah created adorable Silveo chilbis for the page, including the one at the top of this post.
If you look above the video on the Patreon page, you'll see tabs that say things like: "Creator Posts" and "All Posts." That's what Patreon calls their "Activity Stream" or "Activity Feed." I can make posts there that only donors can see. That's where I will put rewards. You can also comment there if you like, and you can make your comments visible to everyone or just to me and other donors.
I did a soft-launch of the Patreon to my mailing list on Wednesday. As a result, we have already hit the first Milestone Goal! The reward is cute chibi art for donors. I have already seen the line art for this and the next chibi, and I'll just say that they're related to Hunters Unlucky and they're adorable. :) Since everything here is monthly, I figure we've got about a month to finish any given reward. Chibis will probably get done faster, though.
Please chip in if you can, and I really hope you enjoy the comic!