April Patron Hangout, Relics By Rild & Update

Check out our April patron hangout - patrons are welcome to join the call and hang out for rabbles after the public update portion is complete. :)

I did want to call out one important item - Tortoise & Hare Creations will be retreating to our secret mountain lair starting this weekend (after Creator Con today!) and remaining there - painting, making pigments from flowers, hunting mushrooms, and shooting a video and many, many pictures - until May 4th.

The Etsy store is on vacation, but while you'll have to wait for prints and such, the Shroud of the Avatar: New Beginnings comic can still be purchased around the web. In fact, you have a brand new option for unsigned copies in case you've struggled with the IndyPlanet site - Relics By Rild carries copies as well! Check the site out, and pick up some other excellent Shroud of the Avatar merchandise while you're there!

Now, the mountains are calling, and we must go.

April Showers & Growers

Alright, LOTS of things currently happening, so skipping right to the bullet list.

• Shroud of the Avatar: New Beginnings is NOW AVAILABLE to everyone! Head to IndyPlanet to pick up your unsigned print and/or digital copies, or we have signed copies available on our Etsy store ! Check out Portalarium's feature on us HERE! :D **UPDATE** We are currently sold out of the signed comics on our Etsy store - we have more on order, so once they arrive, we sign 'em and bag and board 'em, we'll renew the listing. Apologies for the delay!***
  
• Completed the first of four geocaching-themed pinups, "Autumn." Available for purchase at our Etsy store. 
  
• Next piece for the Dark Unknown Bestiary Project is done - meet the Ettin: 
  
• The GeoPunk broadcast is BACK! What is GeoPunk, I hear you ask? Listen and find out! If you enjoy geocaching, olde tyme radio(e) programmes, and general badassery, then definitely give it a shot. 
• 
• Thank you to our Patreon Supporters, who just pushed us over our first monthly milestone! Join up today! 
• GoCache Expansion! We will have a limited expansion of 6 Maryland-specific cards to celebrate this year's Maryland GeoWoodstock, they are done and in our hot little hands and ready to sell. They'll debut at GeoWoodstock, and we'll have a small number of them that we can sell online as well, for the collectors out there! (Not sure what GoCache is? Click here! Want to pick up a copy? Click here!) Here's the first of a few we'll share before GW: 
  
• Upcoming Convention Appearances:
• 4/17-4/19: 1d4Con - Martinsburg, WV
• 4/25: Creator Con - Silver Spring, MD
• 5/15-5/17: SciFi in the Valley Con - Altoona, PA
• 5/22-5/23: GeoWoodstock - Boonsboro, MD
• 5/29-5/31: AwesomeCon - Washington, DC
• Reminder! May is MUSHROOM MONTH! Keep an eye on this space for lots of Morel & morel (the heroine and the fungus) information. :)

That's it! We'll be setting up our Patreon hangout in the next week or so, it's likely to be a mid-week hangout this time. 

Spring has Sprung!

It's April, and we at THC are ecstatic to finally be able to venture back outside without fifty layers on. And this bright light in the sky - what is that? It's so warm!

Other than today, of course, because it decided to rain.

Here's a few bits and pieces we're working on currently!

• New Print! Tyrion Lannister, available in 11x17 at our Etsy store
• New Dark Unknown Bestiary piece! Giant Spider
• All of the GoCache expansion cards for GeoWoodstock are DONE! We'll share one or two as GW inches closer, but you can check out a preview of one of them at our patron feed: www.patreon.com/tortoiseharecreations (must be a patron to view)
• May is MUSHROOM MONTH! Join us as we share a bunch of Morel-related items for the best gathering month of the year. 
• Into Dreams, the third Gina Harwood novel is in the hands of the beta-readers, and following a final editing pass, will be finished. I'll have a release date for you in the next update, I think!

We have several more convention appearances on the horizon as well, come out and say hello if you're in the area!

• 4/10-4/12: Steel City Con, Monroeville, PA
• 4/17-4/19: 1d4Con, Martinsburg, WV
• 4/25: Creator Con, Silver Spring, MD
• 5/15-5/17: Sci-Fi in the Valley, Altoona, PA

Morel - Chapter One: Sacrifice, Page 5

April's comic. In May, I will be doing "Mushroom Month" over on my Instagram page @w.billman. I'll be posting pictures each day from my mushroom-hunting trip in April, along with tips, recipes for dinners, and some artwork to boot. -Will

Bits & Pieces from March

Hey, everybody! Wanted to take a moment to catch the ol' website up on a lot of the work going on behind the THC doors.

• Gina Harwood Book 3: Into Dreams
• The final first draft was completed on March 13th, and numbered 516 pages (136,710 words). I've been working nonstop since then on editing, and am on through my second runthrough. My alpha editor is 80% through his read, and once I get and evaluate/apply his feedback, it'll be sent to the beta readers for their reads.
• Into Dreams Giveaway: 
• Like with Descending, we'll be giving away two advance copies of Into Dreams through the fabulous GoodReads Giveaway system. We'll post here (and everywhere!) as soon as that contest opens.
• Shroud of the Avatar: New Beginnings:
• The proof came back perfect, and now we're just waiting on the full order to get printed and come in!
• Dark Unknown Bestiary: New Piece - Giant Insect



• Patreon pledge drive rewards! All Patrons who were signed up to support us by March 20th, 2015 receive an original watercolor & ink sketch card. I had the idea to do a series called "Windows," where they had an overall connected theme, but each piece was interesting enough that a patron would want to own it. These got mailed out yesterday, so patrons should be receiving them soon. 

• New Red Ink blog post: The Pros & Cons of Self-Publishing
• Upcoming Convention Appearances!
• Mar 27-29: (Re)Generation Who - Cockeysville, MD
• Apr 10-12: Steel City Con - Monroeville, PA
• Apr 17-19: 1d4Con - Martinsburg, WV
• Apr 25: Creator Con - Silver Spring, MD

I believe that's all for now! Happy Spring!

Morel - Chapter One: Sacrifice, Page 4

This one is pretty self explanatory. One thing you may (or may not) have noticed is that Donna uses a different font then the other characters. When she was little she had a bad speech impediment, this was fixed through therapy but it tends to give her a slight accent. I will probably touch on this sometime down the road, but for now its a good piece of trivia for you.

-William

Come on, Convention Season!

This weekend marks our first 2015 convention, and we're excited to be returning to Harrisonburg, VA for the excellent, chill Madicon. We enjoyed the hell out of it last year, so we're looking forward to breaking in the season with such a laid-back con. Come and see us if you're in the Harrisonburg area!

Our display is prepped for this year's stock, now including GoCache. Also, we've begun work on the Maryland expansion that we'll have available for purchase at and after GeoWoodstock, and I don't mind saying they look pretty good so far. I had a dream about painting the caching-themed pinups last night and woke up excited to get started on them - but there's several other things that have to come first, so I'm chomping at the bit to get everything done.

I finished another bestiary piece for the Dark Unknown, loving this project. I have a soft spot for true b/w linework pieces, so these are a lot of fun to do. :)

We are still posting several exclusive items per week to our Patreon stream, and we're running our quarterly pledge drive at the moment - we have until Sunday to achieve nine more patrons and every patron at ANY level gets a special birthday package from THC for my birthday! Come on in, the water is glorious. 

We'll be drawing the 1st quarter winner of a piece of original art this Sunday (possibly Monday depending on how late we return from VA), so watch for that news! All patrons are automatically entered into the quarterly drawing, so sign up today to get eligible!

See you in Harrisonburg!

Birthday Presents for Everyone!

Hey everyone! We're doing a pledge drive for the end of our first quarter on Patreon, culminating in my birthday on March 15th! Why is this a special day for anyone but me? Well, my hope was to hit 10 patrons, and we've blasted past that in the last few days, so it's stretch goal time! If we can hit 20 patrons - at ANY level - by March 15th, then everyone gets birthday presents! We'll send a package stuffed with THC loot and gifts to every single patron we have, regardless of their pledge level. So, check out our levels now and jump on! www.patreon.com/tortoiseharecreations

A few other things of interest:

• I'm so close to the end of my first draft of GH3 that I know how many chapters are left, exactly. SOON! I expect to be finished by the end of next week if I keep buckled down.
• I finished "Seven" - Sylvester McCoy as Doctor Who. It's also available on our Patron stream as a high-res, watermark-free file. 
  
• The proof has been ordered for Shroud of the Avatar: New Beginnings! Assuming it comes back with no errors or changes required, we should have that available for sale by the end of March.
• We're putting the final touches on our new form anthology comic, as yet untitled. Stay tuned for more information there!

As always, thank you for your support and your interest! - Indi

February Wrap-up - and how not to record a Hangout video

Well, the second part of that title is easy. How not to record a Hangout video: Accidentally choose "Hangout" instead of "Hangout on Air." For some reason, I've found the Hangout apps notoriously difficult to navigate. I have some sort of strange block in that area. Anyhow, my apologies - I shared the link and we started well before I realized that I'd never clicked "On Air," (or go live, or whatever it's called) because it didn't exist.

So, here's a synopsis of what we discussed on the video, which is essentially a wrap-up of the month of February and a look forward to what's coming next.

• Gina Harwood Book Three

•  I know I've let slip the working title for this book, which is "Into Dreams," but while I'm 90% sure this will be the final title, I continue to mostly refer to it as GH3 for ease of reference. It's sitting at a hefty 425 pages at the moment with about 100 pages of rough story to get through, but have no fear. I will be making my best efforts to edit it down as far as I possibly can - I know it will be larger than the previous two, but I'm hoping to distill it down to around 400 pages for the final. February saw a massive jump on the page total, though our house was down with the plague for two weeks, so the first draft should be finished up around mid-March.
• I'm not yet to the point where I feel comfortable providing a solid release date, but my estimation looking at the current state is late April to early May for the first proofs. I'll be releasing it to my beta readers for feedback following the first major edit, which I'm hoping to have complete by the end of March.

• GoCache News

• Will has written up a 6 card expansion that will be released at GeoWoodstock. We're super excited about this and will make it available to our online customers briefly, but it will be a limited release that won't be reprinted after this year's GW, so watch for it and be ready to place your order! In addition, we're expecting to have a special bonus card for those of you at GeoWoodstock that will be a giveaway with purchase, so if you've been on the fence about attending the largest geocaching festival in the world, get off the fence! It's going to be an awesome weekend!
• In addition, one of my art goals for 2015 was to do some model shoots for painting reference, which dovetailed nicely with my goal to have four geocaching pinup paintings ready by GeoWoodstock. I'm ecstatic to say that I had my first shoot yesterday with a lovely 19-year-old woman named Kylee - she was inexperienced, but patient and had a great feel for her angles and limbs, so a lot of the shots turned out really well. The camera loved her and so did I, and I'd love to work with her again in the future. I'm excited to get started on those pinups soon!

• Other Assorted News

• Convention season starts in earnest in March, and we're busily getting prepared for this year's shows. Besides the table placement having to be rethought to showcase GoCache and our new comics (news on that in a moment), I'm also working on completing several new fan art prints for our returning convention customers. Already completed are "Four" (Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor), and "Xena, Warrior Princess" (which is self-explanatory). I'm likely to complete "Seven" (Sylvester McCoy as the seventh Doctor) this week, and I believe I have Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones (played by the fabulous Peter Dinklage) slated next.
• We're changing the format of our existing comics slightly, and will be releasing a 2015 anthology comic that will collect several of our stories together and present them alongside new material. This is best for everyone - not only will you be able to follow all of our in-house stories in one place (our licensed titles will continue to be their own separate books), but it gives us a centralized product to include things like standalone art and short stories with our comics. We both are excited about this change and think it'll allow us to focus on putting out the highest quality stories. 

That's it! You're caught up! Thank you for following us, and please check out our Patreon page - I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank each of our patrons for their support. Having the Patreon has actually really lit a fire under me to multitask better - we started the Patreon just as my professional focus necessarily shifted to writing, but usually my art suffers from a few months to a half-year of inactivity when that happens, and I really wanted to avoid that by maintaining less-deadline-y art projects in my "afterhours" time. Having the patron-stream is a lovely reminder, and hearing feedback on my works in progress or what the patrons would like to see more of is really nice and keeps me feeling more connected to those who are viewing our works. So, thank you - you're not just giving us a few bucks a month, you're also keeping me creatively on fire. :)

Join us! www.patreon.com/tortoiseharecreations 

Morel - Chapter One: Sacrifice, Page 3

I had to channel back a few years to when I attended a few douchey bro parties, but I remember hearing someone say, "Bitches love vodka!" It also apparently is a popular hashtag on Instagram.

We also came up with our own brand of vodka for the "Morelverse", Spudnik! Someone needs to make this vodka! -Will

New Speedpaint Video - Xena, Part Three

Part Three of my Xena speedpaint series - this covers all of the armor. Elapsed time is about 3.5 hours (video is 13 minutes).