ellenmillion

The Kickstarter is done and went well - we ended up over 3x the goal and got all of our stretch goals, including this piece of artwork as a Kickstarter-only bonus page:



This was MEANT to be a random, generic lion shifter for my next coloring book when I first started on it, but it was totally Graham. (Of Shifting Sands)

I've also released this piece, that I've been just dying to share, but I didn't want to confuse the Kickstarter, because this is NOT in Splendrix.



This tragically handsome guy is Justin, star of Spy Snow Leopard: mybook.to/SpySnowLeopard - it is a Zoe book, but not MY Zoe book. I didn't write this one, but it's a fantastic book - lots of hurt/comfort and healing and people overcoming guilt and doubt. There are also food scenes that will make you honest-to-god drool. It is temporarily priced at $0.99, but only for another day!

In other things, Kindergarten comes to a close WAY too soon, I've approved the coloring books for printing, these are the VERY LAST coloring books I will be printing myself, and it has snowed three times in the last week and I am so very over winter.

April was amazing. And weird. And I feel like there were a lot of things I could have done better, but overall, it was good. If busy.

May looks no less busy.

Also: SEA MONSTER MONTH! I haven't decided what I'll do this year! Should I do sketch cards? I want to do a field guide to the sea monsters of Torn World, in print, but I fear that's too much to bite off as a whole, so I'm thinking I'll start working on this with the aim of releasing it NEXT sea monster month. Muse Fusion is next week!

Wheeee...

My tentative plan: run the Kickstarter the last two weeks of April. Garden and Goddesses Volume 3 (by Mitzi) would be the stretch goal.

No collaborative titles this time... I have a basement full of coloring books and the market has chilled pretty significantly, and the group titles don't sell as strongly, as well as being more work. But I want another solo coloring book for purely selfish reasons, and I'm hopeful that the Kickstarter will stimulate some back catalog sales as well.

I'm gathering up my resources and numbers and print files for this right now and should have a Facebook event and some concrete dates and such pretty soon.

Have a sneak preview of one of the last pages for it:



Which is also part of my next bit of exciting news, but that shall wait for another post.

Also coming up!

Sketch Fest on Friday! Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/183217659122508/ Site here: https://ellenmilliongraphics.com/sketchfest/

Muse Fusion the last week of March! Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/191419308289421/ Site here: https://www.tornworld.net/musefusion.php

I had to butcher my garden on Tuesday. I was so pleased that the delphiniums had survived the Sunday hailstorm... and on Monday, the wind knocked most of them over into a big, tangled, broken mess that was smothering my strawberries. Except for two of them, none of the flower stalks were far enough along to bring them inside to bloom... and I'm not even sure about those two. I'm still grieving... you may remember my previous years struggles with these delphiniums - aphids, storms, etc - and this year they were flourishing. I had more than a dozen flower stalks, and they were well over four feet tall. There are three now, and the rest had to be cut back to stumps, even the ones that I had staked. Alas! The many trials of gardening! I wish I had gotten a photo!

In other news, I have SO much news.

I am officially doing a First Friday this Friday, at the lovely Sipping Streams Teashop. There is a Facebook event for it here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1170531656302771

I am also a guest in a multi-artist coloring event on Facebook, with loads of giveaways and contests. My official hour is July 9th, 9-10 AM PST, but I've just opened a pre-contest - color any of my pages and enter for a chance to win your choice of my solo books. Details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/618818858282117

I'm also super excited to announce that I am one of the illustrators for Hidden Youth: Speculative Stories of Marginalized Children - it's funding now on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1537879721/hidden-youth-speculative-stories-of-marginalized-c

Crossed Genres, the publisher, is one of those places I've always wanted to break into as an illustrator, and by the time I worked up the nerve to apply, I found out they were closing, so when I saw the call for artwork for this, I had to leap on it. I have already started my sketch for it:



I got my coloring books!! I haven't unloaded them all from the car yet, but they are on site! I am filling Kickstarter orders this morning!

I also have a gazillion emails to work with, but I'm making good progress - I got a big freelance project finished up last week, and my not-a-book is ready to go up in just over a week, and the other anthology piece I'm doing is well-sketched, and I'm sending out #junicorn orders today and holy Julymonkeys, I better get going...

It's the final hour! I'm a wreck!

We've funded the AlphaBestiary! We are less than $350 from funding reprints of Dragons, Fairies and Fantasy Horses... with a fabulous NEW color cover:



So very nearly the end!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1624616265/more-fantasy-coloring-books-for-so-called-grown-up

I have chocolate and fine German Lambic prepped for celebration.

I have finished my novella! There are some decidedly rough bits that I need to go over with sandpaper, but the rough draft is DONE. It clocked in at 28.5K, and that's the second-longest thing I've written. (Oo, wait, maybe third. Rails is 50K+, but since that was a series of short stories, it doesn't feel the same.)

Serenitrix funded on Kickstarter! And we're already almost halfway less than $190 to the next coloring books, Samantha's Fairies and Friends. And the next one has been revealed!



Quirky, clockwork, alphabet animals, by Tallulah Cunningham! (Yes, Jenny, that is N is for Numbat)

I? Am tired. And excited! But mostly tired right now (I have a headache. :(). There are just two more days of Kickstarter left, and then I can shut up about it forever and stop stressing about funding all the books. :P

I love this piece. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I've already started coloring a copy of it. It was originally for the Natural Magic coloring book, but that got stalled due to lack of submissions, so it will hopefully be included in my new solo book.

Which is the stretch goal after next at the Kickstarter!!



I am SO excited about this book. It is my best yet, for sure, and it's got some of my favorite artwork in it. It's more than half new stuff, with a few things from books that are now out of print (Tam Lin, Taming the Sea, a few sea monsters that were only released half-sized), and four pieces from the new series of collaborative books (Trying on Treasure, Rose Angel, Bearing Gifts, and Snow and Feathers). It also has a superhero weiner dog, and a set of winged kitties, because you couldn't possibly expect it to be all serious. Tentacle Friends (the cover piece) is exclusive to this coloring book.

I am seriously bit-between-the-teeth about getting this into print - and we only have a week left and a chunk of money to go. So! I am also offering a very rare opportunity to commission me to do a coloring page, through the Kickstarter ($400 includes 25 coloring books, all the PDFs, AND a custom page), AND I am offering HALF off any of my available originals as add-ons. If you've been eyeing something, this IS the week to get it. Help make more coloring books happen, and give some original artwork a good home!

So, this weekend was Sketch Fest (I did two sketches), and I also co-hosted a Coloring Tea Party at Sipping Streams, which was SO MUCH fun. (It was also a better show for me than some weekend-long shows that I've done, AND I got a bunch of un-molested art time, AND I got delicious cocoa and tea sandwiches and gorgeous facepainting.) The attendees were all really wonderful and extremely talented, and I absolutely loved seeing them work.



The Kickstarter is less than $200 from funding the third coloring book and releasing the cover for the fifth book! *squee!* https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1624616265/more-fantasy-coloring-books-for-so-called-grown-up

Have some inventory to do, and updates to make, and Guppy's quiet time has NOT been quiet. *rubs head* It's going to be an interesting evening... right now she's trying to chainsaw my mouse, so I think my work and blog time is at an end.

Less than $70 to go to unlock Equine Enchantment at the Kickstarter! Then we'll start funding Splendid and Scaled (Dragons) and I'll release the fourth cover, for Angels. :) So exciting!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1624616265/more-fantasy-coloring-books-for-so-called-grown-up

Also, I have unleashed the All-PDF add-on option, and also have an event for the Coloring Tea Party on Sunday: https://www.facebook.com/events/100488983692739/

In less awesome news, I have a cold. I am hoping this is the tail end of it - I seem to be coughing more productively today. I was really dragging this morning, but feel better now.

Lots of tea and water!

After too little time playing at the park, I talked for as long as Guppy would let me with the owner of the local tea shop and some lovely marketing people and should have some exciting things to talk about after the weekend once details are finalized.

I also finished the color version of Tentacle Friends, and scanned it, and laid out my next coloring book cover. Miraculously, the house is also clean and I did a load of laundry, mostly fueled by ice cream and the soundtrack to Shrek, which has been on repeat for the last several days.



The Kickstarter is at 81%! I kept thinking this was a really SLOW start, then realized that my goal is higher this time, and we're actually doing better than the start that the last multi-book Kickstarter had. (I think I'm just comparing it to some of the other amazing projects I've been watching lately and feeling small. It's all a crazy comparison game. The only way to win is not to play.) We need a liiiiittle more this time to get to all 7 of the coloring books I want to do, so hopefully we keep going at this rate. Because I am SO excited about these coloring books. Easily my best yet!

Okay, now I'm off to make au gratin for dinner and take Guppy for a walk.

First the great news: my home Internet is back up and working. *wibbles gratefully*

(Seriously, I was getting a little desperate. I did a lot of my work in advance, so the Kickstarter has been ready to go for a while, but there's a certain amount of hype you try to generate right before you launch, and I was feeling like I was going to miss that precious window...)

And on the topic of Kickstarter...

EEEEEEEEEEEE!

I plan to launch it tomorrow morning about 10 AM (2 PM ET).

I am very, very nervous.

You'd think, this being my fourth Kickstarter, that it would be old hat, but it's still a Really Big Deal. There's a lot more competition for so-called adult coloring books these days. Maybe the market is saturated. Maybe mine just aren't awesome enough to compete! Or maybe I'm just not enough of a marketer to convince people that they are that awesome (because they ARE, darn it).

And the video, it is so epic. I will probably never live it down. When you see it, you will realize the lengths to which I will go to sell coloring books. I kickbox*, you guys. Very badly.

And I want to apologize in advance, because for the next few weeks, this is going to be a Big Deal in my blog. I promise to try not to make it All Kickstarter, All the Time, but I will undoubtedly blather about it a lot, and link to it every time, because Links Matter. Your links matter, too, and I do hope that you will share it. It is always awkward to ask, but I am really, unbelievably grateful when you believe in my projects enough to spread the word.

(I have a tendency to be a bit precious about what I share because I don't want to play favorites or leave anyone out; if you don't choose to share my projects, I will never, ever be judgey about it or think the worst. You have no obligation to market for me, and I would be a heel for trying to make you feel like you did.)

Anyway, these are my rambling night-before thoughts.

I am nervous and excited and terribly proud. (And a little embarrassed. This video, OMG.)





*I have never kickboxed in my life. I have only the vaguest Hollywood idea of how it works. This video is wonderfully terrible.