The Con Artist and the Kickstarter

in which our hero shares a story about a villain

Dear Readers,

When I launched my Kickstarter last week for The Blood of Seven Queens #3–5, the first person to back the project was a con artist. He pledged $320 and messaged me immediately thereafter, asking me to contact him immediately at a Gmail address. He asked me to “tell me more about your project and I will update my pledge to $500.”

I did a little digging Ye Olde Internet and discovered I was not the first person he’d tried this on, so I contacted Kickstarter support. They took care of it. And yet, the whole ordeal really bummed me out. To the outside observer, it looked like the campaign had surpassed the 50% mark within a few hours of launching. Then, a day or two later, half of the funding just vanished. And now, a week into the two-week campaign, we’re still $1 short of that 50% mark. All the pledges are legit now, as far as I can tell, and that’s good. But I can’t help but wonder at the damage this sleazeball may have done to my campaign.

At any rate, while all that’s been happening, I’ve continued to plug away at the art for issue #5. This past week’s stuff has been a particular challenge because of the sheer amount of characters involved. I still haven’t found a way to tackle crowd scenes efficiently, but I’m working on it. And the nice thing is that I was able to eliminate one crowd scene from the coming pages, making the scene a more intimate two-hander (to use theater slang) and making my own life that much easier.

There are seven days left to back the Kickstarter, which ends on Monday, June 30 at 11:59 PM EDT. Be sure to reserve your copy of the upcoming issue today, with digital rewards included for pledges as low as $1.

Yours,
Chris