Jeremiah Tolbert

…and her prey.  This week, I wasn’t able to get to a decent pod­cast script, so I worked up an image I’ve had in the hop­per for a while now.  This week details the pre­da­tions and some bio notes of a unique species of spi­der that feeds on moth pix­ies in Roundbottom’s world.  Check out the Inkblot Spider and share your thoughts.

In other news, I am weigh­ing a sale for my inven­tory of images that I have printed.  I’m con­sid­er­ing $30 mem­ber­ships from now until the end of the year or until I run out of pre-​​printed stock, whichever comes first.

I’ll admit that I’m dis­ap­pointed with my suc­cess regard­ing mem­ber­ship kits.  I sold 9 kits, and I really appre­ci­ate those of you who bought them.  Unfortunately, sales have dropped off entirely.  I’m con­sid­er­ing giv­ing up entirely on lim­ited edi­ton prints and sell­ing every­thing on the site for $20 a piece.  Any thoughts?

It’s hard to keep at this so much when I feel like it’s not as pop­u­lar as I want it to be.  Traffic is low, sales are nonex­is­tent.  I know what you’re thinking–do it because you enjoy it, not to make money.  Well, no.  I’m sorry, but I’d like to make a liv­ing from my cre­ative endeav­ours and I don’t think there’s any­thing wrong with that.  I enjoy the project, but if there is not a large enough audi­ence to jus­tify my time and energy in the project, then I will have to move on to some­thing else.  I have a lot of faith in the gen­eral con­cept of the project, but I am increas­ingly cer­tain that it won’t turn a profit at all.  My best bet is prob­a­bly to use all of it as back­ground research and turn out a novel.  Keep the site updat­ing on a lower fre­quency and turn the whole thing into a good rea­son to pub­lish the book (beyond it being really good or something).

I’ve been mean­ing to write a book for a num­ber of years now.  I started writ­ing my first book attempt just before my father was diag­nosed with can­cer.  I’ve given up on that book along wth most of  of my writ­ing.  But the truth is that I haven’t been able to let go of that cre­ative urge, that drive to make some­thing that mat­ters, even if it only mat­ters in the form of fleet­ing entertainment.

But even though I’ve given up so much, I haven’t been able to give up on Roundbottom.  Maybe it’s because the char­ac­ter is a thinly dis­guised ver­sion of what I wanted to be once upon a time.  I don’t know.  But I want to keep try­ing to make some­thing of this in some form, even if it’s not the web­site and the weekly updates.  I just don’t know exactly what the best use of my time would be.  Look, I have stu­dent loans that would make you wince.  I may never be out of debt in my adult life with­out devel­op­ing some sort of alter­na­tive rev­enue stream to accel­er­ate my pay­off. I’m try­ing to buy my free­dom here.  If this doesn’t work, I’ll find some­thing else to sell, and I’ll keep try­ing until some­thing comes out of my gourd.   Because I want my free­dom so bad I can taste it, and right now, these projects are the best thing I have to accel­er­ate my earn­ing that.