Tart: Submerged Hardcover Collection

Today was the bees knees. (sort f, literally)
almost 4 years ago – Fri, May 27, 2022 at 09:45:41 PM

Yesterday was an amazing cascade of support and goodwill. I'm still coming down from the high of so many people standing up and saying this hardcover needs to happen. As of just now, we passed 150 backers and I'm excited to keep working to find readers who haven't found Tart yet, but would love it. 

But that wasn't my sole focus today. You even want to make sure you aren't fixating on something like a Kickstarter or something similar... drive an hour with 5,000 to 10,000 bees in your car.

Oh, and for good measure. Do so in a car that doesn't have a trunk.

Now. admittedly the 5,000 to 10,000 bees locked into a small wooden box known as a Nuc (named because it carries a nucleus of bees).  And they had told me it would be fine. 

As I stopped into a Starbucks drive-through  (to save time), I did see that one bee was loose in my car. A straggler. What are you gonna do? As I realized the person in front of me at Starbucks was feeding what must have been a small garrison of soldiers (okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but it took a long time), I noticed that I didn't have one straggler. I had two. No, four. No... uh oh.

All told, I'd say about forty or fifty bees crawled out of the nuc during my ride home.

It was more than a little intimidating every time I looked in my rear-view mirror. 

But they all stayed way back near the nuc, and no Kevins were stung on transport (or even investigated by a curious and possible furious bee). 

The nuc was a birthday gift for my brother (who is also my boss. Which probably explains why I was able use the morning to get them. I had a hive for the first year and a half of the pandemic, but lost them twice due to a Hive beetle infestation. We're going to see if he is a better Beekeeper than me (he almost certainly will be).

So that was my day, but tonight will be back on comics and Kickstarter. The Crowdfunding roundtable podcast that I host with Will Alllred "Explain Yourself" tapes every Friday night at 11 PM EST. We'd love for you to attend live and bring any questions you have about Tart, the other projects with creators on the chat (more on that in a moment) making independent comics or crowdfunding. 

You can follow along, and interact live at either my Youtube page:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFfgOCBCi7CuGu9Cz2ojk-A

or the Facebook Channel of the Network we run on Addicted to Podcasting by Age of Radio (which is part of The Geek Collective):

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1862005220726747/

If you're home tonight we'd love to have you join the party.

Before I introduce the creators/projects we'll be discussing, I wanted to discuss how I share other projects during campaigns. 

I believe we are all looking for as many great books to be made as possible. And I believe that no book is for everyone, and that very few people's pocketbooks are infinite (and I don't know anyone whose is anyway). So, though I hope you find that most of the books that I think are worthy of a share are up your alley, you are under no pressure from me to check out or back a book that wasn't made for you.

I curate this in two ways. One: do I think it is good enough to back myself? The answer is always yes. I don't share a book that I have not backed (though sometimes I'll go digital on different factors).

Two:  Am I reasonably sure the creator has done their homework so they deliver the project they are crowdfunding. 

Again. The answer has to be yes. 

If I share a campaign, you know that I've put my own money where my mouth is. You also know that I am reasonably sure, unless there is a catastrophe, the creator running it will deliver. Normally I only share two projects at most per update or email, but due to the crunching of the schedule, I have to share four tonight.

So who will be on:

Clay Adams Co-Writer of the gonzo comedy Pregnant Bitches of War

When I read the first volume of this insane book, I messaged Clay. I wrote, "Man. That is some courageous fuckery!" Clay still uses that as a pull quote.

PBOW as they call it now follows multiple, you might have guessed, pregnant women who, you probably did not guess, get thrown through time, meet Nikolas Tesla, kill Hitler, you get it, it's crazy go nuts!

You will either love or hate it. And I think I know how to help you choose. When you see the woman below karate kicking a man's heart out of the back of his body do you think it is as glorious or gratuitous? 

  Maybe I'm deranged, but that image sends me to the moon! If you're deranged like me, you can check out PBOW here:

 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/900595556/pbow-world-war-bitch-1-3-grindhouse-action-comedy 

Ben Goldsmith,  will be joining us to talk about his Twilight Zone-esque philosophical horror comic Seance Room. I met Ben at a Comicpalooza Convention in Houston. I was there on my own, and he was there with Source Point Press.

Ben is a good dude, and his book will make you think even while it terrifies you.  The people who end up in the Seance Room are not the bestest people in the world, and they meet with some very clever repercussions for their actions  

If you'd like to check out that campaign it is here: 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1691575473/seance-room-volume-2 

A creator I've just recently met online, and will have the fun of speaking with for the first time is Decay writer Anthony D. Stokes. I back Decay a few weeks ago because it looks really cool, and will be reading some of it before the show tonight.  So I have to steal his words about the project, but they're pretty enticing words:

<<What happens when the only family you have left is murdered in a gang shootout & the only option to bring them back is unpredictable? We find Jess Caine deep in the roots of New Orleans and her life is about to change, forever.>>

 Decay's Kickstarter can be found here:

 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/decay/decay-issue-1-2-revenge-tour 

One writer I will NOT be speaking with, but we SHOULD hear from is Farhan Qureshi, who is currently running a campaign to print the first issue of Battle Panda.

Because of the time difference between Fort Lauderdale and London, we realized it would be about 4 AM when Farhan tried to join us. That just didn't seem fair to him. But he did record a video talking about his book that we'll try to play. It's always exciting to try something new since it could be awesome! Or terrible!!! Who knows???

Like Decay, I've yet to read this, so I'm stealing Farhan's worlds:

<<Kai, a misfit teenage panda, dreams of becoming a warrior. His world is turned upside down when his village's water supply runs dry. The wolves who live upstream have built a dam to protect their own water supply forcing the Pandas out of their land.>>

 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/farhanq/battle-panda-1-big-trouble-in-panda-city 

Now that we're into the campaign a little bit, I'll probably only update you every two to three days unless we hit something cool like our goal, a significant backer number or are announcing stretch goals. 

So what that means is, I hope to write you tomorrow, but will more likely check in Sunday or Monday. 

Have a great weekend, and I hope to see you tonight during Explain Yourself.

Kevin 

Amazing first day! Thank you!!!
almost 4 years ago – Fri, May 27, 2022 at 02:16:13 PM

I couldn't be more pleased with the way we started this campaign to bring a Submerged Hardcover into the world!. We're over 50% of the way to the largest funding goal we've ever worked for.

And it's because you are with us. I can't tell you how the readers who have coalesced around our series make Ludo and me feel safe to try to do things that would be crazy without you. 

I am so excited for what we're going to put together, well, together. Because this is a team effort. And it really has been one since a group of readers who never heard of us helped us print the first Tart Adrift trade paperback.  Each successive campaign we've met new people, and been astounded by the passion and loyalty of the backers we met the campaign before. 

There are probably 50 or more backers whose names come through on a campaign and the feeling I have inside is best encapsulated with the screaming of one name:

NORM!

Rest assured. "I" may not be "everybody," but if you are coming back for another and another campaign, I probably know your name. And it fills me with joy to see it.

I'll be updating the campaign tomorrow with an invite to watch our weekly Kickstarter Round Table chat at 11 pm EST (and introduce you to some of the books we'll be talking about with their creators). in the mean time, I'll leave you with this.

You have already done everything we could ask. You've backed the campaign. You are one of 122 backers in just 10 hours to do so. If you do nothing else for this entire campaign, we are grateful.

If, however, you want to do more, there is nothing we can say to a reader who hasn't heard of us that is more compelling than you telling them they might like Tart ans sharing the campaign URL:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tartcomic/tart-submerged-hardcover-collection

You can also comment on the Kickstarter page. Like, share or comment on any Facebook, Instagram or twitter posts. I'm not on Tik Tok and though I have Reddit on my phone, I don't post there, but who knows, maybe there is stuff on there? Wherever it is, every time you interact with a social media post the algorithm is more likely to show it to the next person.

I'm going to stop this before it becomes one of my usual update novels. But once again. Thank you. We're killing it together. And I couldn't ask to do so with a better group of readers. 

Now. If you'll excuse me. I watched the first two Phantasm movies for the first time ever this week, and I'm going to celebrate and amazing day with another chapter of the Eternal battle against The Tall Man.

Kevin