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Happy November, aletsen!

I... apparently missed October's newsletter. Oops. XD

As the year moves toward its close, I want to say, most of all, how thankful I am for all of you! As the sole breadwinner in the house for now (and the foreseeable future), your support and love of my work keeps my family in groceries, and I appreciate that. I love to eat. Seriously, food is so good.😆 My subscribers, in fact, are more of my income than my royalties at this point! Which is why I'm making a push toward converting more people to my patreon. I'm running a special until November 19th: people who sign up to buy me a cup of coffee a month (or more) will get a free sticker in the (real) mail... and yes, that includes non-US participants.

I update patreon twice a week with art and serialized story, plus whatever else is on my mind, so I feel like you're getting good value for your coffee money!

Seriously, how good is food. Look at my breakfast here. This looks like a still frame from a Miyazaki movie.😁

So that's my pitch for this month.

Getting to the news: I've finished writing Red Honey, the Jokka story about the founding of the first settlement post-nomadic era (you can find out more about the Jokka here). This is currently serializing on Patreon. Originally I was disappointed when I realized that it's probably the last piece of fiction I'll finish this year, but that was before I realized it's half the length of one of my bigger novels (so call it about 170-200 pages). So... actually, I'm not displeased at all! This is pretty awesome! 😆

I'm also pretty deep into this web game I'm developing based on the Jokka world, where you start a clan and breed new clan members, dress them up, level them to gather resources, and trade with other players.

I have always wanted to make a game, so I'm excited that I'm finally digging into it! I'm learning so much, and it got so complicated so quickly that I'm surprised how well any part of it is working! But... it actually is! Right now, almost everything is functional except the multiplayer aspect; I'm tacking down the basic gameplay before I start messing with user accounts and hiring/buying from other players. But this is actually a lot of things! Right now:

• You can customize your characters by dressing them up (and layering the apparel anyway you like)

• You can pick two parents and send them to the caverns, and they'll produce a baby that looks like them, with both visual traits (coloration, markings) and behavioral (various aptitudes like nurture or innovation)
• You can watch the babies grow up from cute baby to youth to adult! They develop unique quirks, personalities, and interests as they do.

• You can assign them jobs, which they will accrue experience in until they can level, at which point they get better at those jobs
• You can buy assets that allow you to expand your clan (number of character slots, amount of items you can hold in inventory, number of breeding pairs you can support)
• You can also buy clothing, food, and trade goods, which allows you to decide to specialize--you can decide "I want to be a trading clan, and buy all my food and hire all my new members" or "I want to optimize for foraging, and trade my food for other things I need."

Probably the last stage of this is developing the immersion by tying in as much of the background as I can from the Jokka books. I love having a world to rest the game on... and I love the idea that it will give people a new way to interact with the stories!

I'm posting on and off about this project on Patreon along with everything else, and discussing it in Discord in the sandbox (thank you, all my cheerleaders, and those of you lending your testing expertise). It's definitely one of the things that having subscribers gives me the freedom to explore. Maybe I'll release this game to a broad audience... or maybe it'll only ever be available for my Patreon and Locals people. But I'm having a great time making it, and it's given me new enthusiasm for the work...!

This has been a chattier newsletter than usual, but I hope you enjoyed it. I'll close with the expected cat picture: our outdoor cat living her best life. She's usually more ladylike than this but I guess some days you have to let it all go. 😆

That's all for now! I hope you're having a great start to the month, and I'll be back in December for the closing of the year! Once again, thank you all, and happy reading!