Okay, folks, I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails on this general range of subjects, so I thought I’d take a moment to go over where we’re at right now and hopefully answer your questions.

First and foremost…

When is the store going to reopen?

Well, the short answer is, I don’t exactly know.  When we closed the store the idea was to change cart systems and redesign the store to make it more efficient and more user-friendly (as in, no having to register for an account in order to purchase, a shorter checkout process, and no having to specify gender with an order, which one customer quite rightly pointed out was a bad thing to require).  However, the idea was also to do those things last fall, and because I was busy not dying and Poe was busy making Important Decisions about my not dying, NONE of our to-do list even got touched, and we’re only just now being able to start on it.

Additionally, in order to open the store again, I need to be reasonably confident that I can be counted on to fill orders, OR I need to have reliable help doing so.  Right now, I’m not in a place to do the fulfillment myself, and our home/offices are completely buggered from all the chaos, so I wouldn’t bring in an employee even if the temp agencies would send people to a home office (they won’t for the few hours a week we’d actually need, I checked).  It’d be nice to have a bigger webcomic store company take over our store for us, such as Topatoco or Blind Ferret, but honestly we’ve been so screwed by my illness that I don’t think they’d benefit from it right now.  Maybe if we successfully rebuild, then we can see about putting the store in the hands of people who have people to do shipping.

Meanwhile, back in the immediate future, the store will reopen when I’ve had a chance to find a site designer, get a new design, move to a new cart system (I’m thinking shopify), redo our entire inventory, and find someone to fill the orders on a regular basis because I really don’t want to wait the year it’s going to be before I’m seriously up to it.  If anyone wants to help me check off a few of those items, I have now realized the futility of trying to do it all myself, and I’d welcome the help.

What about an Errant Story book collection?

This would be another complication.  Errant Story is seven volumes, of which only three have ever been published.  Those three volumes are not consistent in terms of printing, they include errors, and we’re already going to be reprinting a corrected Volume One no matter what.  So, what we’d ideally like to do is just sortof start over and print the entire collection, all seven volumes, at the same time with all of the errors corrected and any other changes that Poe feels would be appropriate as well.  However, this requires that all seven volumes be made print-ready, which means I need to edit every single page Poe has ever done. 

Now, I have already made some progress on that, but here’s the thing… we finally managed to set aside the money for Exploitation Now:  Done With It All last year, just before I went under.  I promised you guys that book, and now to print it the way it should be printed I have to redo a lot of the work that went into it.  For the curious, that means correcting panel layouts for the new book dimensions, redoing the color in a way that preserves as much of RMG’s work as possible, and relettering every page.  I am going to do that and have that thing sent to the printer before I touch any other book projects whatsoever.  It is my number one priority, but that means that Errant Story, well… can’t be.

So… I will put together the Errant Story collection after Exploitation Now:  Done With It All is actually done. That, uh, that isn’t going to be soon.  I’m a lot slower than I used to be, and this is a lot more work than I originally planned for, and because it was my promise and my screw-up that delayed the project, I don’t feel comfortable turning that work over to anyone else. 

In order to let you all know when the books are ready to go to print, so that we can get the necessary orders to pay for the Errant Story collection printing (I’m thinking of running it through Kickstarter because it’s a large project and I don’t want it to run into the same pre-order delays as the EN collection did), I’m putting together a mailing list.  It will be used to notify everyone when the store has opened, notify everyone when Exploitation Now:  Done With It All is complete and in our hands, ready to be ordered, and to notify everyone when the complete Errant Story book collection is available to order.  That’s it, no other e-mails.  If you would like to be put on that list, click here and fill out the form.

If you’d rather not be on a mailing list, I understand, and suggest that our forum is also an EXCELLENT way to keep track of what’s going on.  We often post stuff there that never even sees the news box, and it has the added benefit of stimulating conversation to tide you over through the long and bitter wait.  Of course, I’ll also be posting the store announcements on twitter and the comic Facebook pages, as well.

What happened to Errant Tales?

Put bluntly, it got screwed.  Hard.  I was just too sick to keep up with it, even before I wound up in a coma for a couple months, and now I’m so busy trying to get us caught up on everything else that I’ve had no time to work on it, and neither has Poe.  Plus, the budget for it evaporated into all the down time when the business had to stay alive but wasn’t able to be generating anything in terms of income.  Scripts are still being made, there are still amazing stories that we do in fact plan to tell, but until all of the other projects are done and dealt with, we will have no time or money to hire artists to work on it.  Once we do have time and money, it will still be six months before we have anything to publish, because we’re completely starting over.

So, here’s what I’ll do about that.  If you want a refund, as always, I will cancel your order and give you one (there are a few of you who asked for one already that didn’t get one because I was sick, I will get to you by the end of April, I promise).  If you subscribed or pre-ordered and you want to wait, you will get extra presents when we can finally send you the first issue, and I will arrange for you to get previews of interesting things along the way.  We will not take any more pre-orders or subscriptions until this project is back on track, by which I mean new artists hired and pencils approved for all of the first six issues.  We’re running on fumes, so aside from offering a humble apology and doing my best to prove that when I promise a project nothing short of death will stop me from eventually finishing it, that’s about all I can do.  I’m really sorry, of all the projects this is actually the one I’m most excited about, but it can’t be helped.

I heard rumors of an Errant Roads RPG book?

Ahahahaha… Yes, we’re working on one, if by working on one, you mean “poking it with a sharp stick during those moments when our brains cannot possibly do any of the other things that are higher on the priority list,” that is.  It is not even remotely in the works enough to offer up a deadline for completion, yet.  Right now, Jim and I are at the stage of doing research and developing a system that we like and feel reflects the attitude of the Errant Universe, plus I’m fleshing out data based on Poe’s master timeline.  This is really less a project of Poe’s and more a long-term side project for the studio, but there will be no data, world-building, or mechanics involved that are not approved by Poe and based on Poe’s original world building.  He may even be the one to do some of the illustrations, but we’re nowhere near far enough along to know, yet.

So, that’s what we’re up to.  Poe is making that new comic now, I’m trying to both work diligently on the EN book and keep myself physically active enough to continue healing, Jim has a three year old and his own projects and a full-time job but is helping when he can, and we’re looking at getting some more help wherever we can.  We got massively, majorly screwed by my illness and the timing, and in all honesty it would be a much smarter decision at this point to just give up and shut the business down and go try to find any horrible soul-sucking labor that even CAN be found in this economy, but well… we love this job.  There’s nothing in the world we would rather do, so even though we don’t have the resources to do it as well as we would like, and even though I personally am now trying to balance my efforts with a lot more down time, this is still what we want to wake up to every morning er, afternoon.  We’re just glad that so many of you still want us to be doing it.  Thank you all for your patience.

^-^’

One of the things I’ve been after Poe to do for the last eight years is putting together a timeline of the Errant Universe so that he could have a tidy visual representation of all the loose data in his head (and I could know what was going on and plan/edit accordingly). Last week, he finally got to it and gave me a list of dates and events, which I then asked him a billion annoying questions about. I put everything he told me into a quick visual arrangement which was so awesome to finally see that I did it a second time (removing all the spoilers) just so that I could share it with all of you.

And so, without further ado, I give you the fruits of Poe’s brain!

^-^’

Click the image to see the timeline in all its gigantic, complicated glory.

I’m home at last, and my life has changed forever. Some ways are little, like the stretch marks all over my body from swelling up to the point of being unrecognizable during dialysis, or the scars all over my body from the IVs. Some ways are more major, and I don’t quite have a handle on those yet. I know I’m going to have to learn a lot about nutrition, because I will have to be careful about what I eat, and how regularly, for the rest of my life. I can walk again, but I can’t yet stand up from the floor on my own power, I have to crawl to a chair, lever myself into it, and stand up from there because I’m still so weak. I have, by my reckoning, at least another month of physical therapy coming, and I have to get through it before I’m even going to ask to be cleared to drive again. I have suddenly had three of the fingers on my left hand go numb, and have developed a tremor that makes typing a challenge. I’ve been assured the numbness will go away over time, but no one has even diagnosed the tremor yet (my family has a history of tremors, and I suspect that’s what it is, in which case it might go away for a while, it might be treatable with medication, or I might just be stuck with it forever). I bit off a chunk of my tongue while I was under sedation, so the tip of it is numb, too (though I have regained my ability to roll my rs, and can thus make cat noises at the cats again).

I find that almost dying has made me very aware of the little victories… things like getting a bottle to open, rediscovering how to get in and out of a car on my own, or just being able to still type with reasonable speed and accuracy (though I am slower and make a lot more mistakes than I used to, I feel that will pass as I get back into doing it). My stomach had nothing in it for two months, so I consider eating a victory, too… I can now make it through about two or three ounces of food before I start feeling sick from being over full. My friend had a gastric sleeve operation shortly before I went in the hospital, and has since lost 80 pounds. I have lost 40, most but not all of it muscle mass. I can’t be sure, but aside from spending the rest of my life on rat poison, I may come out of this whole thing stronger and healthier than I was before it, though I will have to work hard to get back the abilities that most of us, including me, have always taken for granted.

Which brings me to how this will affect the comic. Now that I’m home, Michael can get back to work, but he’s now my primary caretaker literally until I am reliably back on my feet. The books will happen, but I obviously haven’t been able to work on them, and I’m not sure yet how much I’ll be able to do on them and when. The store will remain closed until I am all better, or until I can find someone else to run it, which would be my preference. We still have estate stuff to deal with, so that will be a consideration, too. All in all, I don’t think we’re going to be able to work on Errant Tales until late in the year, so it probably won’t premier until the summer after the coming one. Does Not Play Well With Others should resume updating, though, especially as Errant Story is so close to ending (there are sequels planned, but Poe needs a break from fantasy, so they won’t happen soon). I highly recommend reading DNPWWO if you aren’t already, especially if you were a fan of Exploitation Now, and the new comic will be where the news goes when Errant Story ends, so that will be a thing to watch as well.

To end on a very personal note, I want to thank everyone for all the prayers and well-wishes they’ve been providing. I found out after I had been awake (sortof, I was hallucinating for most of the time people thought I was lucid) for a while that apparently thousands of people were pulling for me, and I can’t even begin to express what a difference that made. There was a point when the doctors told my family there was nothing more they could do, and refused to tell them they were even cautiously optimistic. I think you guys may have made the difference where medicine ran out of options. I owe you all my life, and that is something so profound that I have yet to process it beyond basic gratitude and a renewed faith in the power of prayer. Thank you.

- Hilary