Some slight redesigns of the goobers Cas and Val since I’ve been developing them more :3c plus some detail shots of their faces under the cut since I like how they turned out before the lighting effects 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

(Cas: They/them | Val: He/Him)

Hi everyone! I’m opening a few YCH commission slots! You can do a digital-only version for $20, or add on a physical sticker for an extra $5! You can access my Ko-Fi commission page here or through the Carrd in my bio. Feel free to dm with any questions if you’re interested, and thanks for your support!

Tutorial for drawing characters with Down syndrome.

DISCLAIMER: Please keep in mind that this is an introductory drawing tutorial and has some generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. It's more of an overview of features that are common in people with Down syndrome, not meaning to imply that every person with DS has all of them 👍 thanks.

If you draw any characters using this feel free to tag me.

books & bookmarks

The Works of Vermin - bugs, rot, perfume, & writing

The Bone Orchard - bones, necromancy, flowers, & fungi

Our Hideous Progeny - science, reptiles, & paleontology

hot as fuck trans men exist

in this world we’re in

no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.

when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.

an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).

advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.

this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!

buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....

Pre-orders and Amazon/Goodreads reviews are used as a gauge by publishers to predict how many copies they are likely to sell and therefore how many copies they want to print. They want to sell most of what they print rather than print too many and end up with a bunch of copies no one wants that they'll have to pay to store or sell at a huge discount or recycle, which is what happens to unsold books. Most publishers have a limited amount of money and manpower to dedicate to any particular book, so if there's a book building up a lot of buzz, that'll give them reason to put their resources towards promoting that book to get a better return on their investment. If the publisher can't make money off a book or author they'll dump them.

Generally, every aspect of the publishing and book industries, including writers, agents, publishing employees, librarians, and booksellers are overworked and underpaid. Unless you're Stephen King or already famous, you don't make money off of books. We do it for sheer love of the game.

Spring will bring again warm weather and letters from home.

With love,

from the hills of Faqqua ♡

Available on my INPRNT

i'm sorry if this is an invasive question, but can i ask if this is your main source of income? if it isn't how do you juggle regular work with stalling? i've been thinking about getting into it but the investment to start feels scary, and i already have a full time job that leaves me exhausted most days

Thank you!

I don't mind answering - yep, art is my full time job. About half my income is from selling stuff (events + online), half from commission work. (not counting expenses, of which obviously there's far more for products/events)

Honestly - it is a lot. I'm very very lucky to have never had to have a day job, but it's still been years of build up to get to the point I am, and a lot of lucky opportunities. and so much has changed in that time, that I think starting now for me would be completely different. But so many of my peers do manage with day jobs! it's definitely doable!

My very broad advice (for selling in general) is always: focus on your art itself first, and making what you want to make rather than what you think will sell. As you do more events you'll get a sense for what people want, and you can use that to guide your decision making (but still prioritise what you want to do!). Similarly with merch types, and setup: most people start with prints and stickers, you don't need to make fancy products. You don't need a massive setup with fancy displays, clear and simple is fine. Depends on the person whether outsourcing or homemaking is better (small ecotank printers are very affordable!), most people do a bit of each. I cut stickers by hand for years.

different events are different too, wellington tends to have a lack of good markets with some great ones every now and then - prickly pixie last week was fantastic, as is zinefest (if ya do zines)......I do the newtown market because it's close and convenient to me, but not great crowds, it'd probably be discouraging for most people starting out, lmao. armageddon is much more $ and different/bigger audience of course. If you have art friends to share market stalls with I recommend it.