“Your great grandfather must have loved the drink as much as you do, Jasper Soule. He was nothing but a faker. There’s no top of the world. Where is it? In the trees?” Keen widened his eyes and looked up, craning his thick neck left and right as if searching the firelit ceiling for the top of the world. The place roared with drunken laughter. “And when it rains, the moon has babies in all the puddles, right?”
Hello! How are you?
The scene snippet above takes place in the Starboard Watch, a cozy and sometimes volatile public hearth and village watering hole in my novel in progress, The Afterlife of Ink. Jasper Soule has made the mistake of waxing sentimental over drink and song, sharing his great grandfather’s stories of what the world was like before the Big Winter. Fanciful tales about things that aren’t here and now don’t fly with pipeman Keen Mingo and the rest in the riverbank village of Duskside. Watch out, Jasper.
It feels great to share this with you. I’m happy with how the work is coming along, and I’m eager to find ways to ensure that I have the time and energy needed to get this novel to completion in a satisfying timeframe.
I recently posted the following or similar on my Facebook writer page, also known as https://www.facebook.com/jensextonrileywriter/. (Please do visit and follow.) (**Edit of… not sure when, 2020? The Facebook writer page is no more.)
“For those who are not in the know, after a solid December of preparatory work, I began my new novel in earnest on January 1. It's coming along. I'm hitting my word count, dreaming the setting and characters when I am asleep and waking up ready to write.
The Sexton-Riley-Hischak household has experienced a few challenges lately in the form of illness and The Incredible Exploding Water Heater, but we are surviving and thriving. In addition to my day job and Dan's two day jobs, I am juggling my usual necessary supplementary freelance work to keep the lights on and the bodies and souls together, but as so many of us know, paddling like crazy under the surface is not conducive to cohesive long form creative expression. That's why so few ducks write novels.
After lots of thought, I've decided to follow in the footsteps of many non-duck artists and writers I deeply admire by launching a Patreon to help ease some of the pressure and facilitate the energy, brain space and awake time required to pull off this incredible feat. Stay tuned for launch!”
So! After several years of slow-mo consideration, I find myself preparing to launch a Patreon. This means I am deciding exactly what that means, what my Patreon goals are, what success will look like, what the doable perks are for patrons at various levels which will not take too much time and energy away from writing and so on. I’m excited!
But wait a second. What’s that you say? What’s a Patreon?
First let me emphasize what Patreon is not. Patreon is not charity or crowdfunding, although some people may use it and view it that way. Patreon is a return to the rosy days when artists and writers---creative types like myself---sought and received patronage, defined as support, backing, encouragement, protection, guardianship. Remember the 18th century? You don’t? Well, I don’t either so I’ll skip to the point: Patreon is a way to buck today’s capitalist nightmare, cut out the middlemen and bring creators and supporters together in harmony and golden symmetry so that books can be written AND bills can be paid.
Deadlines can be met AND roofs can remain over heads.
Brains can take a minute out from juggling eighteen freelance jobs to do that ever-important daydreaming, suppose-iffing and I-wonder-what-would-happening that results in inspiration and literature AND food goes on plates and into dog and cat bowls. The lights stay on. The writer can both write AND live.
I do not live high on the hog. I have been an adult for a long time and I have yet to have a proper bed of my own with a bed frame, for example. My 1999 Toyota sits dead in the backyard because I can’t afford to have the brakes fixed, so I am driving my mother’s 1992 Dodge Colt, whose transmission is failing. I haven’t had my hair cut in at least a year. I tend to wear one pair of shoes until the soles separate and my feet get wet in the rain, at which time I replace them with one new pair, which I then wear until they disintegrate. Our 30 year old water heater finally gave up the ghost last week, to the tune of exactly our entire tax refund amount.
I am not looking for caviar money.
I just don’t want to have to work so hard at freelance in addition to my day job that I have nothing left to give to my writing.
Who is quoted more often than Shakespeare? Polonius gave his pep talk to Laertes in Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Malvolio read this letter from Olivia (or was it really from Maria?) in Twelfth Night: “…be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.” We hear a lot of quotes from the Immortal Bard. What we don’t hear are his words like these, penned to his patron, the Earl of Southampton:
“The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety.”
I do not dare compare myself to old Uncle Will except in what I sincerely offer, as he did, to my beloved patron: love without end and many, many superfluous moieties. So, so many moieties.
If I may humbly ask, please become my patron. It will mean the world to me.
Stay tuned for launch announcement.
See you soon!
Jen Sexton-Riley