Newest Page: 568 - Recognize the Alpha Hen

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2024-08-31

Page 568

Page 568 is up! (And the next 5 pages are up early for patrons!)

Since last week, we've raised another $2 on Patreon, and received one donation. (Thank you, Crystal and Moo!)

My co-author has found a couple new leads, but no job yet. I don't know what else to say.

If you have some spare Starbucks money, would you consider adding a little of it to our food and rent budget?

Please help us reach our Patreon goals so we can pay our bills next month! Creating comic pages is all I can do right now. Please help me to make each one count! Per-Page Milestones: Here are three ways you can help: 1. You can pledge $1+ on Patreon, if that's comfortable for you. 2. You can make a donation with our PayPal button or directly through our Patreon shop. 3. You can recommend True Magic to other nice people who are likely to enjoy it!

Any of these things can make a big difference.

Thank you for your support!

Featured Friend:

A Drop of Blood (PG-13 - Moderate Violence) Goal: Steal artifact from temple. Step 1: Steal a jet to get there. Our heroine has some unusual abilities to help her out -- but so do her enemies. Action movie style, fast pacing and striking artwork make this an exciting read.

2024-08-21

Page 567

Page 567 is up! (And the next 3 pages are up early for patrons!)

Since last week, we've raised another $1 on Patreon. (Thank you, Celestia!)

D's job hunt so far has been a Möbius strip of hoop-jumping and disappointment. She's found a few tenuous leads on some very low-paying work, but it's still uncertain whether anything will pan out before September.

Please help us reach our Patreon goals so we can pay our bills next month! This is the only income we have right now. Per-Page Milestones: Here are three ways you can help: 1. You can pledge $1+ on Patreon, if that's comfortable for you. 2. You can make a donation with our PayPal button or directly through our Patreon shop. 3. You can recommend True Magic to other nice people who are likely to enjoy it!

Any of these things can make a big difference.

Thank you for your support!

2024-08-12

Page 566 + Progress Update

Page 566 is up! (And the next 3 pages are up early for patrons!)

A heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who has responded to the previous post so far. ♥

(TLDR: My co-author lost her job, and now Patreon is our only income.)

You've helped us make great progress: Now we're almost two-thirds of the way to our safety goal!

Per-Page Milestones:

Thanks to your support, it looks like we can make it to the end of August — thank goodness.

Our next challenge is to earn enough for September rent.

If you'd like to help, these are all great options: 1. You can pledge $1+ on Patreon, if that's comfortable for you. 2. You can make a donation with our PayPal button or directly through our Patreon shop. 3. You can recommend True Magic to other nice people who are likely to enjoy it!

Thank you for reading! (And thanks also for your patience, as I'll probably be talking about this all month long.)

Cheers!

2024-07-16

Page 565 + I Need Your Help

Page 565 is not the only thing that is up! I also have SOME NEWS, and an urgent request:

My roommate/co-author recently lost the job she's had since 2000.

For context: True Magic's Patreon has been an essential part of our income for many years. It covers our grocery budget (which is pretty important!), but not much else. Most of the rest always came from Co-Author D.

But now Patreon is the only income we have — and even if we stopped buying food, it still wouldn't be enough to even pay our rent.

So guys, I am asking you with all my heart to help us in one or two ways: 1. IF you can comfortably afford it, please support True Magic on Patreon. Even $1 helps! 2. If you can think of someone who would enjoy the comic, please recommend it to them!

I've been reluctant to ask for more support, but D's job hunt for the past few weeks has been fruitless, and it looks like our only hope is to somehow increase our Patreon income, fast.

The encouraging news (thanks to our wonderful current patrons) is: We're actually almost halfway to the level where we'll be safe again.

Here's a summary of our per-page goals, and our progress so far: If we can reach that $600/page mark (the rent milestone) before August, we will be okay. Please help us get there if you can!

A few additional notes...

Re: Patreon:

Whether or not you can pledge right now, please do join the True Magic Patreon. I post fun stuff for free members now and then!

It also brightens our day just to see you there. Moral support is real support, and every bit helps. ♥

Re: Recommendations:

I'd like to think that True Magic would naturally gain support if more people just knew it existed. :)

If you want to help us gather more readership, please keep in mind:

1. Quality over quantity: Audience happiness is more important than audience size! Please recommend thoughtfully, to the people who are most likely to enjoy the story.

2. No pressure: Please don't push anyone to become a patron! Just ask them to check out the story and see if they like it. Once TM has a substantial number of readers, the optional patronage is likely to take care of itself.

Re: This Whole Situation:

True Magic is my favorite project. The longer I work on it, the more I care about it.

There are so many fun parts I can't wait to share with you, but scripting and drawing each page takes a LOT of time. The only way to advance the story at a decent pace is to put in full-time effort (40+ hours/week) — which is what I've been doing for several months now.

My goal has always been to earn a full-time Patreon income so that I can afford to keep devoting this much time. I've also wished for a long time that I could take the financial pressure off D, after all her years of high-stress work.

I always figured patronage would grow over time, and we'd just... get there eventually.

And then D's company went and terminated many of its independent contractors (including some top performers) without any warning or explanation.

It's as if the universe said: "Hey Aja, you know that 'eventual goal' you were talking about? Guess what! It's just been upgraded to an immediate requirement!"

Ironically, I've put off a lot of comic promotion tasks (like renovating my Patreon page, and even writing posts to ask for support) because I knew they would take days of work — and I felt like I couldn't afford to take that time away from page production. (Y'know, because of the whole "that's our food budget" thing.)

Well, now I've had no choice but to drop everything and actually ask for serious help — which I probably should have done a long time ago.

So I'm asking you:

Can you pledge one dollar?

Can you tell at least one nice person about the comic?

True Magic's audience is still pretty small, so the efforts of any individual can really count. This means that you personally can make a huge difference if you try!

I have hope that with even a little more support, we can make it. ♥

Thanks for reading this far!

Thank you so much for your support (in any form), and your patience, and for being here to read this story that I'm determined to keep creating. I hope you get as much joy out of it as I put into it!

(help, help, help)