2023 SOTU

Hey hey! It's time for another big end of the year wrap-up blog post, where I reflect on what happened over the year, and plan for the upcoming new year. First of all, I wanna thank all of my patrons for a huge year of support--I couldn't be doing what I'm doing without you, so sincerely, thank you. 

2022 was not without its challenges; social media seems to be going through some major growing pains and who is to say what the landscape is going to look like a few months from now, let alone a year from now. That said, I'm going to use Patreon as a blog/sporadic newsletter, with more public posts letting you all know what I'm up to once every few months, such as shows I'm planning on attending, shop merch, where I'm active on social media, etc. And I *believe* that even if you aren't a paying patron, if you follow my Patreon, you should get these notices to your email if you have that enabled.

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First, I'm planning on making some changes to tiers effective in January! Before I go on, let me assure you that if you're subscribed to any of my tiers that I currently have, nothing is going to change for you, unless you decide to switch tiers, or delete your pledge and come back later. 

Now that's been said, I'm going to be unpublishing some tiers and simplifying my Patreon page for newcomers, while raising the cost of my highest tier. It's been the same amount for several years now, and with the cost of living going wild every year as well as me switching over to a subscription model that's based on the date a new patron joins rather than first of the month, I feel it's time to bump it a little.

Again, any pledge you're currently on now is not going to change in content or in price! I'll still be able to give out rewards on the back-end, even if new patrons can't see the old unpublished tiers.

Currently, I have $1, $3, $4, $5, and $7 tiers. That's a lot of tiers, and it can be confusing to new supporters. I know, because I get a lot of notifications of new pledges immediately changing tiers, or exit surveys mentioning rewards being hard to find. So, the new tier system will be as follows:

$1 tier - tip jar won't be changing. I like having a $1 tier where people can toss a buck my way each month with little expectation, they just want to support a creator.

$5 tier - this tier won't be changing either. $5 Patrons will see pages of my comics as they're finished under the #buffer tag.

$10 tier - the *new* Junk Drawer tier, including pages as they're finished, as well as the archive of all of my Patreon-exclusive 18+ sketches (and comics, in the future). This is the only tier increasing in price, and it will be for new Patrons only. Nothing will change for any of you currently subscribed at $7--you'll still see all the same exclusive content you do now! Consider it a discount for being an early supporter of the Junk Drawer.

Once the $10 tier is in place, the $7 tier will be unpublished (ie, inaccessible to new patrons). I will also be unpublishing the $3 & $4 tiers due to them simply not being very popular, but anyone currently subscribed at that level will continue to receive the rewards they signed up for--which is pages a week early for $3 supporters, and a monthly rotation of 18+ art for $4 supporters.

This will all be effective as of January 1, 2023, so if you're thinking of subscribing to one of the tiers that will be unpublished, get on it before the end of the year! Also, if you have any questions or concerns *please* reach out to me here in the comments or through DMs.

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Next announcement has to do with my sticker shop! I was hoping to have it open in November, but now holiday shipping is in full swing and it's taking a lot longer for my stock to arrive. I will probably be waiting until after the holidays are over to re-open, and it will still be at my old Storenvy shopfront that I used before. More information to come once I have a date (and the rest of my stock).

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Finally, Lies Within will be taking a 3 month hiatus from January 13 - April 6 2023. I feel like I just came off of a long hiatus in the summer, but I'm currently working page-to-page with zero buffer, and a big scene is coming up that will require some planning, character designing, and time to get Just Right because it's important to the story and I want to take my time with it. As always, I'll be posting WIPs on Patreon for all tiers, and keeping you all up to date with how things are going. There are 7 pages left in Chapter 8, so I'm going to get them finished before the hiatus and providing nothing goes terribly wrong the final page of the chapter should be live January 12th.

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I think that's all I have to say! Thanks for reading this very long blog post, and here's to a fun 2023 full of good good comics!!