May newsletter (Patreon)

It is May, as foretold by the five prophets of synchronicity.

Links/notes:

• Calendar attached!
• Link to the credits form for 15 WET 

Also cw: I talk about my eyeball/retina in this post in a medical sense.


Chapter 14 is complete!

I did it. It came in at 25 pages and ends with a moment we've all been waiting for. The final title is OPEN (it was previously tentatively titled Live). I've added the drop dates for August of 2022.

Chapter schedule/number changes

As I've been working through the plot pacing of the last few chapters, I've ended up spending more time developing the relationships between the main four characters in more chapters than I originally planned. This is great and good. And, in light of it, two things to mention in terms of the schedule:

1- Chapter 15, if it goes as planned, will be the finale of Act 2 and will bring us into Act 3, which means filler chapters will expand to include Rosemary and Freddi.

2- I've actually decided to increase the total number of Familiar plot chapters to 21. It was previously 18, then 18 chapters with a 2-part finale, then 18 chapters with a 3-part finale... I think I'd rather just say 21 chapters.

That said, even though we're at 15 of 21, because of how I've structured Familiar, we could basically live in Act 3 for as long as we want. I do not have any current plans to wrap up the story. In fact, I've been spending the last three years trying to get to this point, so I can write short sexy, fun fillers with four amazing and beloved characters. So... 2022. We made it! But we still gotta get through the summer. LOL.

As usual, all chapter info can be found here. 

Patreon updates! THANK YOU!

April was... immense... here on Patreon. Just yowza! Welcome to all the new people, and uh, we hit the $1500/month goal. I'm so flattered and humbled by the support that has been pouring in. With this amount of support, I am basically working on Familiar as my priority work/project, and have been delegating less and less time to my day job, which has been, honestly, amazing. I had some really bad anxiety about this earlier in April (I'll talk about this in a minute), but things are clearing up and I'm excited to just keep plugging away at this little passion-project-turned-sustaining-work.

I have been playing around with a few ideas for the next Patreon milestones. I'm not sure if the things I have in mind are things that people want, or that would motivate Patronage (new or existing). Here are some things I'm considering, and I've love to hear from everyone about their interest and/or suggestions:

• Familiar artbook. I have located a printing house that also does fulfilment AND adult/explicit content. While I'm not yet prepared to do physical copies of the comic (yet), I would be interested in exploring this printer with a Familiar artbook. Because I do have to buy inventory in advance, I thought that using the proceeds from Patreon to produce the book and make it available would be appropriate. Patrons would still have to buy the book, but I think I can offer discount coupons.
• Albright Grimoire. Another book/physical project, but this would be the recipe/meditation/spell/workbook I've been slowly working on. Since any of the adult content in this book would be in text (i.e. not illustrated or photographic), I could produce a book like this in high quality with a service like Lulu.
• Get Jude Sex Ed Certified. Something else I've been interested in is to get certified as a sex educator. I'm not in a position to get fully AASECT certified, but I am interested in SHA's program and potentially a couple other certification/trainings provided by kink and sex professionals. At a certain point, a milestone I would really love to reach would be able to use the funding from Patreon to be able to afford to go back to school for this certification. If I had this certification, I think I would feel more confident in publishing more sex/kink education material, whether in book or comic form. I don't know exactly where this certification might take me (which is why I haven't invested the money into the program yet) but I think that it could greatly enhance the media and content that I produce.

Health update ha ha ha ha

I was very hesitant to bring this up in the April newsletter because I still didn't have any answers about anything at the time, but now that things are resolved I am going to share for the purposes of transparency. You may have noticed that my content creation volume in April was drastically reduced compared to my normal levels, and also my engagement in the server and online (Twitter, etc). So the following is an explanation in case you were wondering about that. The short version is that, as far as I can tell now, there's no danger of further reduced content volume or an impeded/delayed chapter release schedule. Things are "back to normal" and I don't foresee any issues returning to my regular volume in May.

The long version is that in the middle of March, while I was coping with the loss of my friend and some other sudden developments in my non-Soushiyo work, I was also diagnosed with a retinal hole during a routine opthalmic exam. The doctor that diagnosed me didn't give me any information about the diagnosis, and just referred me to a retinal doctor and left me to basically question WTF a retinal hole was and how it might possibly impact my livelihood. 

I had to wait two weeks to see the retina specialist and in that time I basically stopped using screens, stopped drawing, and fell into a pretty extreme emotional abyss. I tried not to look up retinal holes on the internet, and everyone I told in my real life reacted really badly to it (they were basically like "oh... how long do you have?? will you lose all your vision??" etc -- it was NOT great for my emotional state or morale). 

I didn't know if I would have to quit Familiar/drawing/etc. I didn't know if I would be able to continue doing my work. I didn't know if, even if I didn't completely lose my vision, I would have to reduce my screen time so much that it would impact the Familiar production schedule. I just didn't know. So I really didn't want to bring it up on the server or here in Patreon until I knew what the outcome or prognosis would be.

Anyway, fast forward two weeks after that, I went to the retina specialist. This guy is the most highly awarded retina specialist in my region, chairs several research boards, etc. And he very firmly, after looking in my eye for like 45 minutes with a variety of tools and imaging technology, told me "There's no hole." He didn't even know what the other doctor had seen in there. ("I'm going to write that guy a letter. This is ridiculous. There's no hole.")

Basically I spent two weeks replanning my entire life, because of an imaginary hole in my retina.

lol

So anyway. Glad to be here, I'll be getting back to work as usual, and let's get Diana and Rosemary smooching. Talk to you soon.


Jude