FIVE GODDAMN YEARS LATER

So... yeah. Hi?

I'm not going to cover at length why the comic vanished for so long. Call it a combination of health issues, mental health issues, burnout, the really... interesting way family and work troubles compound each other when you work for and with your family, and uh, you know. The fascism.

I also cannot promise it's fully back, and to the extent it is back, it's not going to be quite the same. The art is one of the biggest roadblocks, both because it takes the most time and because I'm not all that good at it; the last time I made a major try at restarting the comic, I decided (with the support and encouragement of my lovely Patreons) to test out something more like an illustrated story format. So for at least the length of this storyline, that's what you'll be getting, and after that -- well, we'll see.

I've had a lot of false starts and I'm hesitant to commit to much, lest the universe hear and start lining up the bowling ball, but I am hoping to have something more than this page by March. But at the very least, I've put up the page that's been half-finished since everything went to hell in 2021.

If you're reading this... thank you for not giving up. I haven't either, not quite yet.

JoAnne Bonner Wright, 1922 - 2013
Leonard Clinton Wright, 1924 - 2021

My grandfather, Leonard Wright, died on June 1st, 2021, at the age of ninety-six, after suffering a major stroke.

For those of you interested, I've written a bit more about his life and death on my Pillowfort; this didn't really seem the venue for it. Suffice to say, I've been living next door to my grandparents since my mid-teens; I've been taking care of him for the last seven years. I'm not distraught, because when someone's ninety-six there are things you're braced for, but I'm a bit off-kilter.

As far as the comic goes, there was supposed to be one final page in this sequence; I'll get that up, hopefully by next week. The comic is likely going on hiatus for the rest of the summer. I'm thinking, at the moment, I'll start posting pages again by the first of September, but even before my grandfather's death I was struggling a bit with some of my mental and physical health issues, so at this point I'm not sure how fast (or slow) my progress will be. My Patreon is the place to watch for comic progress news. I'll try to actually post some, and leave those open to the public for the duration. I do promise not to vanish for years this time; I'm still working on the comic, still feeling those creative urges. They're just a bit... dampened.

Thank you guys, as always, for your patience. I just cannot seem to catch a break from life lately.

As a heads-up we are probably heading for a bit of a break soon. Last weekend we had 40+ mph winds here and those trees I've been thinking for two years are gonna come down? Yeah. We now need a tree removal service and a new roof. Plus I'm dealing with my day job's food safety audit, which is all the fun of tree removal only with more drain schematics, and my sister-in-law is about to have her first child, and the set for the next round of scenes is proving irritatingly difficult to build.

However, it is going to be a bit of a break; I'm getting back into the swing of updating again and it has been so good to be back, guys, and if this damned set ever comes together this next scene is gonna be so much fun.

(Also, I had a generous reader drop me an exceptionally generous donation on Sunday, which was the source of much excited yelling. All these years and it still floors me -- in the best of ways -- that people don't just read my stuff, but even enjoy it enough to pay me for it. So thank you very much, generous reader, and thank all of you guys who stick around and read my story. Especially in roof-damage-safety-audit times, it means the world to me.)

So, my daughter turns ten today. That's not horrifying in the least. What a long, strange trip she's had for her first decade on Earth....