The Big New Year’s Announcement Post for 2016!

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

Here we all are in 2016, a futuretime beyond our wildest imaginations where terrible things are in the news every single day and our student loan debt continues to threaten to devour us just like Artax in the Swamp of Sadness. And yet also in this futuretime we have some pretty badass ladies in big budget major motion pictures, the triumphant reawakening of Star Wars, the arrival of Doctor Who LEGO sets, the ability to watch cute animal videos on our phones nearly anywhere, the applications to allow us to order food without talking to people on the phone and coloring books for meditation and relaxation.

Coloring books, you guys. Coloring books and GrubHub. This is basically Utopia.

But there’s more than that. The Internet is a shocking place both in good ways and bad. On the better end of that spectrum, we have amazing abilities to connect not just through social media, but through community fundraising websites like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, IndieGoGo, and other variations. Artists, musicians, writers, performers, producers, and other creators can reach out to one another and their audiences online and come together in a totally new way to reinvent the relationship between artist and patron.

Since the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the concept of patronage has provided circulation of funds from the wealthy or powerful to those who require assistance to create new things. Artists weren’t the only ones who received funding from patrons – scientists, scholars, astronomers and alchemists have all benefited from the financial backing of wealthy nobles or government officials throughout the ages. Here in the modern era, we’ve confused the act of patronage with the popular concept of “lazy artist people begging for money,” but there are a lot of folks who are working their butts off to change that cultural concept to a better model for creators and consumers alike.

Enter Patreon.

If you aren’t familiar with Patreon, it is an online platform for creators to build a community with their supporters, fans, and fellow creators. A creator can open up their metaphorical toy box to the fans, who then offer up whatever monetary amount they’d like to support that creator’s ongoing projects. Unlike Kickstarter or IndieGoGo which are limited-time fundraisers for a single focused project or event, Patreon allows for continual funds, thus creating a constant flow between created content and the patrons’ financial contributions. A creator can ask for support on a monthly basis, or they can choose to have their patrons offer money “per Thing created.” A patron can edit their contribution at any time, and if it’s per Thing, they can limit how much per month they allow their contributions to amount to, that way nobody is donating more than they’d like to, or more than they can afford to.

What’s the bottom line here?

The bottom line is that through Patreon, patrons can have an opportunity to connect on a much more personal level with their favorite creators, and have the immense golden satisfaction of personally contributing to those creators’ success. Through Patreon, creators have the chance to connect with the people who like their work and want to support them, and get paid to keep making new things.

Creators get paid for the things they create by people who love them and want to help them keep making cool things.

Mindblowing? Yes.

Awesome? Definitely!

So here it is, my big New Year’s Resolution Revolution:

I’m launching a Patreon!

Since I was a little kid, I have always known that I wanted to tell stories. I wrote them and acted them out for family all the time – so it makes sense that I grew up a little bit and became an actor and an author. I have spent the last several years performing and growing as an actor as well as writing and publishing my first novel and sundry short stories. People keep asking me what’s next, and I can finally tell you that I have a ton of ideas to share and cultivate and create. There is so much that I want to write, perform, produce, and release into the wild.

These ideas include (but are not limited to):

• two (count ’em: TWO) audio fiction productions
  • one of them is a space comedy about pirates, tiny hats, talking plants, and bipedal corgis
  • one of them is a Waiting For Guffman-meets-Lord of the Rings public radio program about an orc-based community theatre company
• a customizable choose-your-format fiction commission program
  • does your tabletop RPG need background content? letters? songs for your bard? a short story featuring your character(s)? a legend or folktale about an object/ruined temple/ancient hero/MacGuffin? I will write it for you.
• MORE DISNEY ODYSSEY!
  • including the much-hyped Audio Commentary tracks
  • very MST3K
  • much wow
• a brand-new serial fiction project set in a fantasy world that I’m creating completely from scratch… The Fella will run a D&D 5e game set in this world, and I will write up the fictionalized accounts of gameplay for your reading pleasure. There will also be short stories, flash fiction, and even (gasp) possibly a novel or two down the line.

All of this is really, really exciting, you guys. I am thrilled that the blog has gotten so much positive feedback this year, and I am really looking forward to continuing with Disney Odyssey and regularly scheduled blog content as well as tackling these big new awesome projects… but none of this is possible without your help.

I currently work a full-time day job. I’m able to continue producing blog content on the regular with that job schedule, but adding these new projects will require time. Time to write, record, edit, and produce. Time to research, play, create, and explore. I am chomping at the bit to get started – in fact, brainstorming and writing has already begun on several of these new projects. These are things I am going to work on no matter what – but the support you give through Patreon will help expedite and smooth out the process of making new stuff, and making it all bigger and better than ever before.

And on top of that, you’ll get sweet perks for being a patron, including early access to blog posts, the audio commentaries, voting rights, Altered Egos for access to RPG/original character fiction commissions, monthly Google Hangouts, unique one-of-a-kind ukulele ballads, and so much more!

Get excited. Get in. Get on it. I’m really pumped to build, create, move it, and share it all with you.

*orchestral arrangement of “A Whole New World” starts playing as underscore*

Let me share this whole new world with you….

Click click click to check out my Patreon page and choose your contribution level. I cannot wait to see you all there!

 ❤