August Newsletter: Important Updates

Hey everyone!

I know it's a little early for the August newsletter but I have some exciting news and things I need to talk to you about before next month starts!

Big News

Some of you may already know this if you're active in my Discord server but I have an agent now! My agent is Tara Gilbert of The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency in New York. This was uh... not something that I was expecting to happen at all. 

Getting an agent has been on my career goals list for a while but it was one of those things that I was expecting to have to work on over the next five years, after putting together a pitch... In many ways I'm not sure I'm ready for representation but here we are!

My agent found me through Twitter and reached out to me after she saw this comic:  

Soooo I guess the lesson here is.... if you want something, just whine about it on the internet and maybe you'll get it...?? 

But seriously, I was very lucky for this to happen to me. I wasn't sure if it was legit at first but it very much is. We had some back and forth discussing a lot of things over the past two weeks and I finally signed my contract on Monday - so I officially have an agent now!!! I'll be announcing it publicly tomorrow!

This means that I'm going to be getting a lot more serious about breaking into the graphic novel industry and putting a pitch together. I've been slowly working on Violapse for months and I've come to the realisation that I need to make more time for myself to actually work on it because so far I've been really struggling to find *any* time to work on it while still giving myself a reasonable amount of time off so I don't burn out. 

In a lot of ways I wish I could just be a machine but I'm extremely susceptible to burnout - the kind of burnout that can last for weeks/months - so I really need to be balancing my time better and making sure I'm not working all the time, which is a trap I fall into constantly oof.

It's for this reason that I've decided to go back to posting two new comics a week instead of three. Currently, there are 12 comics on Patreon that the general public haven't seen yet, so you guys are still like a month and a half ahead so I think I can afford to chill out on building a backlog for a while. 

$7+ Tier Important Announcement

It's become clear to me that I desperately need to restructure how I handle the $7+ tier Patreon sketches. It's long past the point where it's sustainable for me to be doing them as I am now. I want to be able to give you something tangible as a reward for supporting me, but doing so is stopping me from being able to work on other projects. I've decided to switch from offering a sketch every month to every 2 months instead. I'm really sorry about this change, but it's the only way I can work on new projects while still taking on commissions and keeping up with the autobio strips that I'm already doing.

The idea is that by spending less time on Patreon sketches, there will be more time to work on putting together a solid pitch for Violapse and develop a couple of other ideas. Getting an agent really hit home for me the fact that I'm not really developing projects as I should be, so I feel like I desperately need to make this change.

So, just to make sure this is clear, I'll message you all at the start of August to get your requests; I'll aim to finish them by the end of September, and then I'll message you again at the start of October and we'll carry on like that every two months.

Upcoming Content for the $7+ Tier:

•  A Better Tomorrow: an 8 page comic written by Kathryn McBeef and illustrated by me. The comic is about chronic pain and toxic positivity! Very excited to be working on this! Thumbnails coming next week (completed by mid September)
• The Hero Dies Alone Collab: a 5 page guest strip for THDA. Written by Chris Phillips and illustrated by me. You've seen the thumbnails for this but I'm going to start fleshing it out this month
• Violapse pitch
• [untitled comic project] Written by Xalavier Nelson Jr. and illustrated by me. This is still in the early stages of development but I hope to be able to start drawing it by the end of August.

Personal Stuff

So, if you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen the thread I posted yesterday but I'm going to write about it here in a bit more detail.

I'm really not ready to talk to any one person about this yet but I'm just throwing this out into the universe that I'm seriously questioning whether or not I have autism. Every time I post a comic - but especially recently - people from the autism community have been reaching out to me in droves to share their experiences and ask me if I'm on the spectrum.  Having autism is something that has *never* occurred to me as a possible reality, despite the fact that I've always known that I'm different to most people I meet... I don't mean for that to sound like I think I'm special, it's kind of the opposite, like, I've always felt like there's something deeply wrong with me, even when I was a child and throughout my entire life.

I never thought autism could be a possibility for me but it turns out, everything I thought I knew about autism was wrong. It's also a well-known fact that autism tends to present differently in women, but it's surprisingly hard to figure out what those differences are. I've spent the last few weeks intensely researching this, both watching talks by women with autism and talking to women with autism and reading books by autistic women and uh.... learning about all this stuff has been incredibly overwhelming because I feel like with this new information, my life suddenly makes complete sense...

Like literally everything from special interests to stimming to why my friendships tend to fall apart.... Why I find it so hard to just talk to people and nuture non-romantic relationships.... My intense interest in psychology and learning about other people's behaviour..... Why I find it easy to talk to people and make acquaintances because I'm really fucking good at masking but I cannot maintain those connections....... Sensory overload.... There's a *lot* of stuff....

So many of my childhood experiences and feelings make sense. The way I was always 'the weird kid'. How I always had a hyperfixation. The way my mum always told me I was 'socially retarded' and my sister bullied me for being 'awkward' and how I could never understand why because the way I acted made sense to me.... The way that I was always berated for asking things to be spelled out for me literally instead of just understanding.... The way I had to learn to not take everything literally and take everything to heart all the time like, holy shit....

I learned that women with autism tend to turn their emotions inwards rather than outwards... Shutdowns rather than meltdowns...... How I barely ever ask for help with anything..... How I long for silent friendships and non-verbal communication..... How I've always preferred to play alone..... How my identity is heavily based on my main special interest (art)..... How I don't like physical contact unless I can mentally prepare for it and it's with people I know.... How I deliberately live in the middle of the countryside so I don't have to deal with people... The fact that I've lived my Entire Life behind a mask, desperately seeking advice from any and all sources...... How I won't answer the phone or door to people unless I know who it is and have had time to prepare........... How I'm always looking for rules to follow..... The exhaustion and inability to do Anything after a full day of work or leisure..... Always eating the same food...... Planning everything....... Losing the ability to function when plans are interrupted.....

I've been learning about autism in women and relationships too. Apparently the need to try to be 'the perfect girlfriend' is a common thing with autistic women and it means that women with autism are significantly more likely to be abused and stay in abusive situations because they don't know the rules and feel like they have to fulfil a role and uh..... *screams*. 

I've been thinking I'm bipolar for a while but this actually makes way more sense to me. And it turns out a lot of women with autism get misdiagnosed as being bipolar or having OCD or ADHD and I.... I think I really need to talk to a professional about this...... And now I'm like.... fuck. Because every source on autism in women also describes how it's *notoriously difficult* to get a diagnosis or to even talk to people about it, because you're probably so good at masking that no-one will take you seriously and now I'm terrified.

Most women with autism don't get diagnosed until they're in their thirties.....   

Anyway, god, I've been intensely researching this for a couple of weeks now and I really don't want to talk to any one person about it yet haha but I think I just want people to know this is a journey I'm on..... Also I just wanna add I'm not sad about this, I'm like SUPER relieved because it means I can finally understand myself a bit more idk. I can make sense of myself. But it's also really overwhelming and I can't help but feel like my life would have been significantly more pleasant if this was caught earlier...... 

It also makes me doubt myself..... like how much of what I understand about the human experience is actually not the human experience and it's the autism experience...? Not that that's a bad thing, it just means I have to think about people in a whole new framework now and that's kind of a lot to come to terms with....

I also just don't really know what to do with this. I'm not really comfortable with saying 'I have autism' unless I know for sure.... but I'm like 98% sure........... I'm terrified that when I start talking to people about it/seek a diagnosis, I'm going to be dismissed because I'm *really* good at not 'seeming autistic'.............

It's just really scary because I feel like people are going to treat me differently. I had to unlearn everything I thought I knew about autism and do a lot of intense research and it's like, knowing that if in the future I tell someone I'm autistic, they're going to have all those assumptions too and like, having to explain it to people is going to be really fucking hard.

I just want to be like hey guys watch this hour and a half long video and read this book and then you'll understand, but I know it doesn't work like that.........

Anyway yeah uh maybe this is TMI for a Patreon newsletter but my mental health / neurodiversity is intrinsically tied in with my art so I feel like it's relevant? Also I just wanted to talk about it haha

Thank you for listening!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whooft. That was a lot! I'm sorry for bombarding you with all of that and also for having to make all of these Patreon changes. If you have any feelings on them - good or bad - please leave a comment and I'll take your thoughts into consideration!

This has been a hectic month, to say the least... Thank you so much for choosing to support me. You have no idea how much it means to me <3 <3 

Chat to you again soon!

Your artist,
Bex