Been quiet around here.

Chapter 5 was a chapter from hell. But it's a chapter that I always was very proud of despite the failings. This is where my update schedule went to hell. This is where the seizures really started to get in the way with my creative process. This is where a lot of people left the story. This is where I got more hatemail than I knew what to do with. And this is where I started to lose hope as everything else around me kinda fell apart. Thinking about Chapter 5 always makes me a little sad. The nostalgia I'm sure would be nice to learn from but only that. Chapter 5 was a labor of love and it does make me proud when I flip through it. This is where I won a Cartoonist Choice Award in Drama. This is where I drew the story together in ways that were not originally planned. This is where my characters really became people to me. And if I could make a movie trailer for SCD Book 1, this is where I would do it.

Chapter 5 is a long chapter. It ends up being over 30 pages and imagine, Chapter 6 was supposed to be in it. Chapter 6 ended up being 24 pages (25-26 for the book). I think the pacing here is really good. And I'll always love my car chase no matter what I do in the future.

The old rant is a good example of classic Chapter 5 crap. My mom kept moving all my paper piles together and since I was working on Chapters 1, 3 and 5 I kept losing panels for the next page. God I about lost my mind. The fact I had to live with my parents in the first place because I was sick was bad enough. Just - gah!

But speaking of Chapter 6, it went to print and will be available at all my conventions this year and may be available online depending on how well it sells at con. I can't wait to see it! It's in issue format, kinda like Part 2 only standard comic size which is what Part 2 was supposed to be. It'll be available for a couple months and then Chapter 7 and so on will be available for a period of time. Kinda like a real comic series! lol. So that'll be fun. I hope peeps can dig it. Chapter 6 will be online sooner than you think.

Figurines are still on their way to me. They're coming by boat since flying them was just insane. So we should see them in May sometime. I'm ordering more buttons because I ran out! So I'll have some new designs for you guys. If you donate $10 or more to the comic you get a button of your choice. Fun fun. International people can get them too - just take me a little bit longer to send them is all. I'll post up new designs soon.

More about my personal life and the like over at Vague Inklings. You can comment and whatnot. S'kinda fun! See you tomorrow with the first page of Chapter 5.

ORIGINAL RANT FROM JAN 2005]

[edit - hey guys, don't apologize for maxing out my bandwidth by going through the archives in one sitting. First off, that's one of the biggest compliments I could ever get. Sure it's costing me, but we're working that out. So don't worry and especially don't apologize! I want you to enjoy this story. ]

So I've never seen something go from shitty to awesome so quick and it only took one blues jam session. All my pent up energy - GONE! XD I was asked to play sax with a couple of my mom's friends at a bar Sunday. Ended up getting hired into the band that played afterwards - Man, I forgot how much stress playing relieved. For those who don't know - I'm a saxophonist and have been long LONG before I ever started drawing pictures. Blues in the blood baby. We should have pictures at some point - Jacob (Psyche on the forums) was there. So yeah, I had a wonderful weekend with Keitarou and the blues bar. Took a shot of Jack to get me to have the balls to play in front of people (and to get my damn arthritis to stop bugging me - OUCH!) but it was well worth it. ^_^

I started my job today as well. Went very well. I work at the newspaper now which is cool. A job of stature! My god - I have a desk and everything. It's all scary. My own phone extension... I could get used to this. lol. Comic schedule's gonna be a little funky while I work out this job along with Chisuji stuff so don't expect things to be... well, I guess they never really were on any sort of schedule so... yeah. Nevermind.

Soooo. Yeah. I'll have to take a picture of the hell that is now my room with all the pages from the comic strewn about as I try desperately to reorganize them and find panels for this chapter. It's quite scary. Apparently my parents have found it necessary to move everything in my room. I've found a bunch of ch5 stuff but it's all stuff for pages like 112 and whatnot. O_o Hell on a stick!!! I am NOT happy because it seems everytime I get stuff repiled and organized they put it all back in one big pile. Someone is going to get shot tommorrow!

Also... we got some trouble. I hate having to bring this up halfly because it's a scary thought and halfly because I hate that we've gotten into this situation. SCD is funded purely by my extra cash that I get here and there. It was never intended to become a money-eater... course it was never intended to make it this far. I start calculating the cost of hosting versus the readership that has came in this month, most of which are obviously new readers going through the whole archive. I get a total of 50gigabytes of transfer a month. Yesterday, the 15th, our webalizer indicated we had 62gigs of transfer... 12 over our monthly limit and it's just the 15th. I never really thought about the fact that SCD could fold monetarily and it's quite scary to think that we're going to have to double our bandwidth for next month so we don't go over. Luckily my host is a very sweet guy so it's not like the site is going to disappear because we went over. But the point is, I lost my job a while back because of my health... I then lost my apartment (which I haven't mentioned yet mainly because the artist drama thing) and now I'm kinda stuck in limbo. I'm really not quite sure what to do at this point. I'm not going to ask for donations. I hate doing that. SCD isn't good enough for that. We're just not making enough in sales, especially since the book sales don't count as profit yet. I nailed a job at the local newspaper which I start Monday so hopefully I can start saving to keep the project up. We might have to cancel the remainder of our advertisements since that's what brought the people in... god, I hate having to do that... but what do you do? *grits teeth* Yeah... That sucks. I'll keep you guys posted on it and I'm gonna do my damnedest to make sure this project doesn't fold. I owe that to you. But yeah... scary thought and I wanted to give you guys a heads up.

Thanks to everyone who left messages in the guestbook! Those were some of the best comments we've ever gotten and they couldn't have come at a better time. I won't go into my "artist drama" on here but most know life hasn't been easy. Well, nothing's changed but being able to read those words from you guys really made my day. So thank you. Much love to all of you!

Oh and we got a new email: starcrossddestiny[at]gmail.com
So if you want to ask me questions or anything, there you go! Special email just for the comic. ^_^