They told me so. Did I listen? Noooooo!

Common wisdom has it that one should have at least six weeks of buffer pages before starting posting a webcomic. When I started posting the first chapter, it was all pencilled, and much of it already coloured and/or inked, which let me post blithely first once, then twice a week into June. In my customary eternal enthusiasm and almost pathological optimism, I had planned to jump back in at the beginning of August with the next chapter, which I did, and unwisely.

Why? Because I. Did. Not. Listen! Common wisdom is common for a reason.

As you know from my last couple of posts, I’ve been struggling a bit (okay, a lot) to keep up with a regular schedule of pages. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in a couple of big illustration gigs (which I can’t post about yet, it’s killing me!) and life just keeps happening. Which is good, one wouldn’t want it to not!  But it can have a way of thwarting plans based on sheer optimism.

Looking at my workload, I’ve concluded that I’m going to have to back off and obey the Purveyors of Common Wisdom (not to mention the laws of nature that give us only 24 hours in a day): I’m going to pause the comic until I get a backlog finished so that I can keep up a regular schedule and not have to keep apologizing (really, if I have to keep being sheepish on a regular basis, I’m going to have to go live in a meadow)! Realistically speaking, based on the last chapter, this will probably take me a couple of months, so hopefully it will be back up and running in early November.

I want to be able to spend the time on this comic to make it the best it can be, out of respect for you, my readers, and my own vision, so that when I launch back into it, it will be the best I can make it. I’m finding myself slowing down and really putting the love into it; since this is my own project, a labour of love, I need to feel free to do that.

I won’t abandon you entirely, Dear Readers; there will be sketches and news (maybe even some tutorials!), and I’ll try to do that often. So I’m going to leave you for now with a teaser of the next page: Aunt Root returns in a “meanwhile” interlude back on shore. This is the inked version, which will be coloured as I have the others. The story will resume in a couple of months with this very page in full watercolour glory!

Aunt Root is back, and about to find out about that contract she mentioned to Sami back on page 20. The Redwing logo was fun to design, and I’ll be playing with that a bit — might even make some jewellery!