September 2024 – Project Hiatus

TL;DR – The Blacksleeves will be going on a 12-month hiatus because of reasons. 

I’ve been agonizing over the decision since August. I realize it’s insanely early days, with only four issues out. Compared to the overall projected length of this story, four issues is nothing. But after taking stock of my current reality, it would be outright irresponsible of me not to take a long break from this project. 

Here, I’ll be going over my reasons for the year-long hiatus (yes… a year) and doing a thorough breakdown of what I’ve set out to accomplish during the hiatus of this comic – because while, yes, this is technically a hiatus, it doesn’t mean I won’t be working on the project at all. 

The Why

When I started publishing The Blacksleeves, the initial plan was to have a hiatus of like, 4 months. After continued work on the project, I’d realized that this was idiotically unrealistic.

Upon releasing Issue 1, I only had a backlog of two additional issues. Seeing as I release them every month (or, at least, I tried to) and it takes me roughly 6-8 weeks to complete a single issue, you can see where the problem arose fast: I couldn’t keep up with myself. I didn’t have enough work backlogged to keep me going.

And that was… partly intentional. I wanted to release Volume 1 so the project had some visibility while I stopped to work on the game (which I will get to later), however, what wasn’t intentional about it was how long it took for me even to crank out a single issue. I was banking on having some superhuman ability to just churn out issue after issue, not taking into account extenuating life circumstances or even just the fact that I am a regular human and sometimes I get tired. Long story short: I was naive, and overestimated myself. Surprise, surprise. 

Factor in things like having a full-time job and taking care of mental health, and the timeline gets significantly longer.

The Plan

Before I get into it, I want to point out something.  For my readers, and thusly from the outside looking in, it probably seems like I don’t have a ton of stamina for this project. Like I bit off wayyyyy more than I could chew. This impending hiatus may even seem like a bit of a red flag. 

“She puts out four issues and then needs a year break? Yikes on bikes. This project is gonna get abandoned for sure.”

And while as of right now all I have is my word to convince you this is not the case and talk sure is damn cheap these days… if you think that, you can rest assured that you’re wrong. 

You see, while the comic has only been out for several months, I have been actively developing this project for over a decade. Character development, world-building, writing. Editing, re-writing… workshopping… re-rewriting. Obsession. A serious labor of love. I was doing this all before I even started layouts on the thing. Before I even knew I was going to make this story a comic.

One year is nothing. One year will fly the fuck by for me. That said, I understand where there may be doubts. Ultimately, all I can really do is show you. And that will come with time. 

SO THEN AS I WAS SAYING –

Okay The Plan Now For Real

I don’t have a timeline for the following items yet, but here are some aspects of the project that I will now have some proper time to handle during the hiatus, as well as other things that I will be working on:

I Am Making A Game

Right now, I should be saying “might be making a game” but I don’t want to jinx it. It’s honestly been a life-long dream of mine to make a fun indie game with some friends so I’m not letting go of that dream, damn it. Though to be transparent nothing is set in stone just yet. And no, the game has nothing to do with the comic. And nooo the game won’t be finished in a year either but that will give me a decent amount of time to help conceptualize and design the game, as well as building assets. More on this down the road…

Short Stories

I have a handful of short stories that I intend on publishing on the site during the break. I did mention this in a prior post but I just assume most people don’t really read these so for the few that do read my updates, I apologize for sounding like a broken record here. But yes! About 6 to 8 short stories, written in velvety prose, with a focus on character backstories and world building in ways I can’t quite execute in the comic. If you enjoy reading, then you’re in for a treat. Come November/ December of this year I will start releasing those every other month-ish.

Volume Two Script (And Future Scripts)

I have most of the script for Volume 2 completed, and now that I will have more bandwidth, I want to return to it and polish the thing to have ready for future issues. Same goes for Volumes 3 and beyond – basically, I just want to get as much written as possible during this time. 

Marketing

Ah, marketing. I love to hate it, hate to love it, and know I desperately need it. I wanna be upfront: I want to aggressively market this project. After hearing from a few readers and even some friends of mine, and their thoughts on how this story can be and has been impactful, I feel a powerful desire to make as many people aware of this story as possible. It’s not about monetizing, either. I have a job. Obviously in a perfect world, this project would be my paid job but honestly, no amount of money can make me feel the way I feel knowing this story has made a difference to someone. If that means making it free to read, I will fucking keep it that way. 

…And that may be all well and good, but successful marketing has a lot of moving parts, takes meticulous planning, and the execution has to be machine-like in order to be effective. As one singular person, I hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of being able to market this the way I wanted to while I was producing the comic – aside from the odd thread and Instagram story here and there. Now that I have more time, I will be plotting and scheming for a far more robust marketing strategy. 

And that’s basically it. I’m not going anywhere, The Blacksleeves isn’t going anywhere. If anything, come next October I’ll be more than ready to hit the ground running.

At the very, very least, I’ll have some more time to make art for fun again. If you follow me on Instagram or threads, no doubt I’ll be sharing it with you.

BUT, if you’re new ’round here and are curious about my comic, you can start reading Issue 1 by hitting the button below. 🙂