8 days left to haunt your house!
The HAUNTS kickstarter only has a little over a week left, so I'm back again to tell you about it some more!
HAUNTS is a 60+ page artbook filled to the brim with haunted houses and all kinds of spooky ghosts. If you wanna learn more about the project as a whole, I've got a page on my website for that!
The kickstarter campaign for the second printing will be ending Friday April 19th — that's next Friday, if you're reading this the week I send it.
There's a huge range of tiers you can support, from a tip jar tier (if you just want to help out a bit without getting a copy of the book — every little bit is appreciated!), to an exclusive signed & numbered risograph print in the seance tier, to a commission tier!
(I haven't had haunted house commissions open in a while, and probably won't for a while after this, so if you've been wanting one, this is your chance! There's only 10 total spots in that tier, and 4 are already filled.)
The kickstarter has already reached its initial goal, which is great news: that means if you sign up, you're guaranteed to get a copy of the book! As of today, it also reached its first stretch goal, which means all copies of the book come with a special free sticker (with holographic ghosts)!
I'd love to hit some more of these stretch goals before the campaign ends, so I can make this second printing of the book really special. Some of the stretch goals on the docket include:
at $9,000, $40+ backers will get a set of 3 postcards featuring haunted house art from the book!
(Currently the campaign is only about $600 away from this one! There's another postcard upgrade at $12,000 to increase the set to 4 postcards!)at $10,000, the cover of the book will have glow-in-the-dark coating on it, for extra spookiness!
at $15,000, the book will get some brand new haunted house illustrations that have been completed in the two years since the first printing!
I'm really excited to get to make another print run of this book. It's a project that's very dear to my heart — I've been thinking about haunted houses for years, and I'm honored that almost 100 people have trusted me with their homes and their ghost stories over the course of doing these haunted house commissions.
If you can't directly support the kickstarter right now — don't worry, I totally get it! If you want to still help out, sending the link to any horror/art-loving friends or posting it on social media is a great way to do that. You also don't have to do any of that, and I'll still appreciate you being here and reading this newsletter!
Click here for the Haunts kickstarter!
Conventions! Lots of em!
I'll be at TCAF next month! I'll definitely be sending out another email or two before then, but something to keep in mind/jot down on your calendar if you're in the Toronto area and want to stop by! (I won't have copies of Haunts with me, since it'll take at least a few months to get them printed, but I might have some sort of preorder situation worked out by then. We'll see. Kickstarter's still the best way to get a copy, though.)
It turns out this year is going to be a big one for convention travel for me. Last year I beat my personal record for 'furthest convention from home' with the Alaska Robotics Mini-Con in Juneau, and this year I'll be breaking that record again... because I got into Thought Bubble for this November! I've never been to the UK before, so I'm super excited to explore a bit. And a little closer to my usual stomping grounds, but still in a place I've never been before: I'll also be at the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival in Michigan in June. Hopefully I'll get to see some of y'all at those events!
Ye Olde Patreon
I've been making lots of cool stuff for my patreon ouija board tier lately. April's reward was some fancy new stickers, which are in the mail to patrons right now.
For May's mail, I'll be sending out a brand new zine about one of my favorite weird architectural phenomenons. Here's a teeny tiny sneak preview! If you want the full zine, grab a spot in the ouija board club before the end of April!
Stuff I've been enjoying
A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast (I'm not much of a Star Wars girlie myself, but I ran out of episodes of Shelved By Genre, the other media analysis podcast Austin Walker is on, so I started this one and I've been really liking it!)
Big Game Hunger, a podcast that I think I've mentioned on here before, but every episode is just so good I gotta mention it again. It's my newsletter and I can repeat recommendations if I want to.
I got lunch with my best friend in DC yesterday and had a really good french toast and a lavender lemonade (shoutout to Busboys & Poets) and then we walked around during the eclipse and even though DC wasn't in the full eclipse path (I think it was about 75% eclipse) everyone we passed was looking upwards with their little eclipse glasses and so many people offered to let us use their glasses to look at the eclipse. I think sometimes it's magical just for everyone to do the same silly thing all at once together.
Alright, it's 9pm and I'm sleepy so that's all for today! Talk to you soon. Stay safe & befriend your local ghosts.
<3 - Kaylee Rowena