Hello Emberverse!
These emails keep getting farther and farther apart, but I’m hoping to change that and be more frequent again.
One of the reasons that hasn’t been happening is all the conventions and craft shows we’ve been doing. Which you’re probably tired of hearing about too…
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy getting out there and connecting with readers and peers as much as the next person, but after such a long layoff, this year has been pretty taxing to say the least!
If you’re new to Last Ember Press (LEP) and Around the Fire (ATF), take a look around. If you like what you see, consider hitting that button below to get us in your inbox!
Here’s a quick sneak peek at what you can expect this time Around the Fire:
I talked about it at length last time, so I won’t go into all the shows again. But an update from last time: We started filling the spots of those cancelled shows and started signing up for shows next year.
So it’s just been a lot. Lisa and I have been traveling it feels like every other weekend, sometimes multiple weekends in a row!
Today, we have Pecan Fest, a festival in the next town over centered around the largest statue of a pecan anywhere… yep, that’s a thing.
Lisa and her sister are setting up plushies, of course, but Lisa has also dabbled in baking.
Serious baking.
Like 8 different items, most with pecans in them.
Breads, cookies, fudge, bars… our kitchen was a danger zone last night, which I offered to clean when I got up this morning.
Which I did.
In 3 shifts because there were a LOT of dishes, pans and cutlery…
Anyhoo, hopefully it’s all worth it and we sell out of all the baked goods and a good amount of plushies.
As I’m typing this now, the show is about to end. I haven’t heard how they did (I helped set up and then my mom and I watched my niece for the rest of the day), but I do know it was very hot. Hopefully fighting the heat was worth it!
Great, but… how are those books coming…?
Yep, that’s why you’re here, to keep up with the comics, naturally. So I guess I should give an update or two about those, huh?
Okay, here we go…
We had a discussion about In the Land of the Dragon issue 2 and the next recently, the entire team. Toben is about to start working on the lettering and we’re going to try our best to get it printed and shipped out by the end of the year!
Issue 3 won’t be coming until 1st quarter 2025 at the very least. We’ll keep you updated when we have a more solid plan of attack.
But if you backed issue 2, the end is in sight!
Curiouser art is in the bag! Paid for and complete!
Now, we’re moving onto the coloring stage.
Marco has been a champ and may be working with me on another project soon! Stay tuned for that.
In the meantime, I’m lettering Curiouser as it’s being colored, so we’re hoping to wrap that one up soon as well!
We shipped out a big batch of A Steampunk Carol books a couple of weeks ago, but then got slammed with all of these shows. We’re going to hit that hard again as soon as we have a breather. So if you haven’t gotten yours yet, it’s on the way!
And the rest…?
All I can say is we’re working on it. If you read the last post here, you know where things stand with those and not much has changed since then. As soon as there is a change, you’ll know about it here or on the various Kickstarter campaigns’ updates.
Comicing is HARD. Especially when you get a little behind. We never want to let down our fans and backers, and it hurts when you all get upset or lose faith or trust in us.
Ultimately, we’re honestly doing the best we can in our given situation. Some of that situation I’ve been transparent about and some of it I’ve kept close to the chest. It’s hard for me to just let it all out for everyone to see, and honestly that has bitten me in the backside more than once back in my blogging days!
Just know that we take this VERY seriously and we’re making EVERY effort to catch up as quickly as humanly possible while still keeping our heads above water.
Beyond all of that, I have been keeping busy in between the lines as it were. I’ve done headers and mockups for a few clients, including my wonderful friends at Lifeline Comics.
They’ll be announcing something on their Substack soon that I had a HUGE hand in (no, not a book this time…), so I can’t steal their thunder just yet. I’ll share the details about that next time.
What I will say, though, is they currently have a Kickstarter running for a brand new arc of Like Father, Like Daughter called “Five Stages of Grief.” Issue 1 is live through November 21st, so check it out and catch up on the previous issues as well!
I’ve also been trying to keep up with my Only Good Comics YouTube and TikTok stuff since those aren’t too demanding. I tend to record about 5 TikToks at a time, which takes me like 10 minutes. Then I edit and post them daily, so about 5-10 minutes each day.
Then my weekly live show is about two hours and my weekly Friday Firsts video takes me about an hour to set up and record, then another 20-30 minutes to edit and upload.
So all of that takes about 4 hours a week tops!
I got so busy for a couple of weeks I didn’t even record, edit or post a single short for two weeks and I was late with Friday Firsts for the first time in over a year!
That should illustrate just how busy I’ve been!
I’ll leave you with one last thing. If you happen to be a creator looking for graphic design, Kickstarter page design or comic lettering, hit me up. I’m taking on work.
You can view my portfolio at brantwfowler.com.
Okay, that’ll do for now. Go enjoy your weekend before it gets too cold out there!
Until next time, stay toasty!
-Brant
P.S. I just realized as I’m about to send this that I didn’t say how C.A.S.A. went. I’ll try to remember next time to give some details. All in all, I’ll say we had fun, I got to connect with some LEP readers that happen to live near me, and we did okay sales wise. So I’ll try to break that down next time.