So this is what’s really going to happen come August 1st:

It’ll look prettier then, some of them will even have words, and it’ll update M-W-F. With these new strips I’ll be telling some of the backstory of Merunga and the world she lives in. We can see here she’s only 6 or 7, I think she looks like she’s 6 or 7 anyway. Each story will only be a few weeks in length, and mostly disconnected from one another.

I read in an introduction to a collection of Conan stories once, that Conan stories worked best when presented in publication order, not chronological. You get the sense of just sitting in a tavern with a guy, enjoying tavern-y drinks, and listening to the tavern folks tell stories, first this one, then that one, just each story as it comes to mind. That’s the tack I’ll be taking here. And not all of the stories will feature Merunga. There’ll be some with Lupa, Ekho, previous vampires Merunga has palled around with. Vasilia and Baba’s first visit to Torgo (previewed already,) and anything else that occurs to me in the meantime.

So as to why exactly I’m doing this, I don’t like not updating. Working each week and pushing to get the next pages done in time to post, I really enjoyed that. Telling a story by degrees and getting feedback on it, way more fun than working in a vacuum for an extended period of time. Having all summer to work on one project has resulted in one project being over worked to the point where no work has been done on it. Just in the time that I’ve been drawing this strip, and writing the main chapter, has been immensely helpful to progress finally being made. Erasing all other promises of completion, I have no idea when the next main story volume will be done, but at least now I feel like it will be good instead of just finished.

Slightly related to this, when my daughter goes back to school in about a month, I’ll actually curate my languishing Patreon page and post updates there of the work in progress pages, both unfinished strips and pages, notes and sketches, that kind of stuff. Tuesday night streaming on Twitch will be work on these new strips, penciling, inking, lettering, whatever step I’m on for that, so if you’d be interested in a sneak peak of what’s coming up, that’d be a good place to stop by.