Nice to see y’all again. It takes way more work than it used to, but I’m still around. I mean that both writing-wise and health-wise. Covid gave me another unexpected surprise. I was a lot sicker than I originally thought. If I hadn’t gotten a full work-up after my heart was acting wonky, the doctors said I probably would have had a heart attack or stroke within a year.

I was able to receive good care due to having access to Walmart Health while it was available, so I’m very thankful for that. A lot of things happened in 2024 like I said farewell to my best doggo. My health has improved, but I did have to adjust my mentality so I could reduce my stress because heart issues and stress are not friends. It’s funny because while people are getting used to changing how they interact with others on Bluesky, I already went through that process earlier in the year. That’s not a flex. I just didn’t want to die of a heart attack over a fucking Joe Rogan post.

There are just certain ways I don’t want to croak, like this: (Game of Thrones Spoiler)

While I am better, my timing is horrible. Those who were able have already established decent audiences on sites like Patreon when social media had better reach, and presently, the publishing industry looks like a damn mess. Don’t even get me started on HarperCollins partnering with AI.

So I am slowly building myself back up. On Patreon, I post 2 episodes a week though there has been some slowdown since the US presidential election. And it wasn’t just the stress that I had to deal with, I had to seriously contemplate what happens if my stories get affected by bullshit laws. It helps that my stuff is behind a paywall but it’s not good to pretend that worst-case scenarios can’t happen.

Thanks to family, I’m still on solid ground. I don’t know what I would do without them because…*looks at my credit card debt*…all of my money is gone after dealing with Long Covid. I talk with bill collectors more than I call my friends. Don’t even ask me what my friends’ kids’ ages are now, but I can tell you that Tanya ext. 436 just finished healing from surgery she had last year and moved into a new place.

As for other stuff on the writing front, I’m doing mostly what I said I was doing in my last post due to how many interruptions had my life on pause. One change is that the pen fiends/lady fencers story will probably be a comic. I’m back to drawing regularly in preparation, but I won’t feel comfortable sharing anything online for a bit.

I will increase the price of my Patreon to $7 on January 1st once I have all of my ducks in a row. The $3 price right now is for how many times I was behind while sick, and I wasn’t sure if I could keep up the new pace. Since I now know I can post a decent amount even as my government goes down the drain, I’ll be good to go in January and post even more episodes a month. Everyone will still have access to past episodes. I like to keep my tiers simple and not have to think too much about them.

Y’all can find me posting regularly on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/indystrange.bsky.social. I only go on twitter every once in a while to keep my account from being shut down for inactivity.