New bonus comic! (And why they're rare now)

Bonus Bernie! I've uploaded it as a vote incentive to TWC, so now there's new content there AND a blurb explaining why bonuses are rarer now (for those who click without being up to date on news posts). Please do go vote for Precocious here to see it, as traffic from being higher up on TWC always helps, but I will also edit it into the commentary and background tidbit blog post for the Weekend at Bernie's/I Survived the Weekend epic story when I do my next update.  (If you haven't checked it in a while, or ever, there's so much extra insight, plus links to various continuity references, so please go look!)

There are two more updates to make to that blog, I believe. One for the "epilogue" week, and (maybe) a final summary of my summer epic. Yes, "SUMMER!" I started it four weeks later than planned because I wanted to be sure my health would allow me to draw the whole thing without interruption, so, length-wise, it only ran two weeks long - and one was this bonus week I felt like adding. My planning was excellent, if not for that whole cowardice delay thing.

So what's the deal with much-rarer bonus work? Health. Same as it's been all year. Things went seriously downhill in March, and it's been slow going to improve things since. (There's hope, but in a "probably won't see notable improvement for five more months" form.) It's not like I'm avoiding doing extra work by CHOICE. 1)I ENJOY doing that work. 2)These things help with reader involvement and gaining positive word of mouth, which is vital for expansion. 3)If I don't put out my books, I DON'T HAVE AN INCOME. That last one is especially important!

I have the ability to keep daily updates going, but the key difference is I rarely have energy left over after to do all the other work I'm accustomed to doing. (Even writing updates like this one is VERY difficult, because working on the computer - especially with writing - hurts me.) That's why I can't reassure every curious person over and over, even though I miss being social and chatty, so please know I've got a plan, I'm doing the right things to keep me intact, and it's just a time thing to see if/when it works.

If I have energy left over after daily comic work and house/personal/doctor obligation time, the first priority is owed work - nearly all from periods when I was doing well, and no one had any clue things would be bottoming out. I haven't forgotten anyone, and I chip away when I can - but I can't chip until I know Precocious is safe, so I gotta build a buffer first. Once those are covered, I must focus on money. Since I can't do things like talk or leave the house without painsplosions, cartooning is ALL I CAN DO with any hope of earning enough to survive, so I MUST put out new books. Ideally, a Patreon-ish program will begin at some point, but I want to be confident about it. I know it's supposed to be about "Keep doing what you're doing" and not "I am buying exclusive services" but I want to be able to do some nice things! So, yeah... save up? For now, however, I'd be happy with word of mouth boosts and, if the impossible dream can be made manifest, getting a group to take on the Precocious Wiki, so it's not so sadly outdated.

Day-Late Birthday Bonus?

I've been in an unfun flare-up state since Friday, so I was kinda too sick to revel in my own birthday yesterday. So, uh, it happened. Please mark your calendars for proper and timely gift giving next year, and gift hard enough to erase all memories of this year's birthday failures. (Is this current birthday story proving more allegorical than intended?)

Anyway, the day was marked by a gift to the backers of the book 3 Kickstarter. (Many of whom probably ignored the email and missed that it contained good stuff. This post is your reminder!) As I close out final the loose ends of the campaign, I released a PDF featuring Awards to Inspire and its bonus side-story, "Gus." Enjoy this extra boost of continuity! (I expect the book 4 preorder to launch sometime in May, so if you don't want to miss out on these extras anymore, start saving now!)

New Bonus Scene! 12/29/14

So where *is* that 7th copy, anyway?  I set up the scene to add a little mystery... Was there one covering the exit?  Are these Ms. Timid's sisters, letting her stay home and safe? Did Quincy kidnap one? I suppose this is as good an answer as any!  Vote here to see it!

By the way, can you figure out which copy is which?  Also, a Tiffany hunt is a great way to thin out the herd! ("The six Vengeneers assumed it would be a simple mission... None survived.") Nah, I'm not that dark.  Unless Carl draws that one comic he keeps threatening to draw. Then it's ON.

EDIT:  I'm putting the deleted scenes from this story here in this post, since it's already on the front page with a snazzy picture! These three bonuses are all *maybe* canon, so they're here for fun jokes, even if they don't get immortalized as official plot points.

2106, part two:

2115, part two:

2122, with bonus ending:

New Bonus Scene! 12/22

Since this story hasn't had enough Autumn-taunting yet, extra bonus comics were needed! Vote here to see it! (I hope TWC is displaying this one properly. If not, check back in the morning.) Turns out that trying to sell out classmates doesn't win hearts and minds as well as bribery and 'Stand and Deliver' motivation.

A reminder: Bonus/Deleted scenes do not go in the online archive. They're bonuses made for active supporters who help bring new readers to Precocious via voting - and, later, those who invest in me by purchasing the books, which contain these extra comics, along with piles of other bonus material. (Also suggested methods of support: Word of mouth, disabling ad block and buying books for people!) I'm not sure if these extra comics for this story will make a book, though, so I'll probably put them on the front page for the January 1st news post.

New Bonus Comic! 12/13/14

Now that TWC has de-glitched and is displaying the bonus, I can make this post! And you can vote here to see me being silly!

So here's a brief recap of the origin of the Gingers: Cartoonists put little in-jokes into their work all the time, and in this case Carl from Ginger's Bread and I ended up with some sort of character trade thing, with him taking Autumn. They are not meant as direct ports from one universe to the other, as those universes aren't connected. We each have control over our borrowed character and do whatever we want with them. (Within reason, and it's always proper to run it by the other first.)

I sent Carl and email previewing the story when I made the joke that became this bonus comic. Proper Ginger has a last name that makes things awkward, as it's MINE TOO.  I sidestepped it, with extra-cleverness, for this Precocious story - but I wanted to make a quick nod to the name thing anyway. And thus a bonus comic was born!

Back to the character trade thing: Carl went and wrote a story for Autumn and put her into continuity. As for me?  Meh. I started by being reckless and threw Ginger's iconic hair in as filler on whims - and so the myth of multi-Ginger began.  Is it all coming together now?

New Deleted Scene! 10/9/14

So what happened with Johnny? That's a question... nobody seems to be asking. Well, too bad, you get to find out anyway.

Originally today's comic was to be a triple-sized one, giving everyone a little wrap-up, but I decided to play with Johnny's panel and extend it a bit. You can see extra Johnny (you know you want to) by voting on TWC here!

If you missed a deleted scene, you'll have to wait until that story appears in the books - which are 3 years behind the comic run. (See? It pays off to read the news section regularly, and to vote even MORE regularly.) Well, this one probably won't make the book due to size issues, so I'll make it viewable somewhere when its time has passed.

One last thing. I think I put in a workaround for The Precocious Store messing up with emails. Life is easier now!

New deleted scene! 10/5/14!

I've been trying to do the #Inktober challenge over on Tumblr/Twitter, in which I ink an extra piece of art for every day in October. My challenge is do lots of little comic fanart pieces, usually based on what I was reading five minutes before I started drawing. Well, I already blew it. I had a planned piece, but the black hole that is DC sports managed to suck my evening drawing time away to the point where I didn't get home until after midnight. I must atone for my sin, so I decided to draw a bonus comic! Vote here to see it!

My scripting files have lots of little extra tidbits in the notes that don't make it into final comics - stuff that isn't essential to the story, or weird little jokes I make to amuse myself. For example, in today's comic, rather than waste time by explaining why the director chose who to ditch at the lodge I just make Jacob put a "that's the term he used" emphasis on the word 'worst.' Readers figured it out on their own anyway. (Mat saw one counselor who was actively yelling about rioting, and one ringleader camper with two presumed main henchmen.) I hope extras like this extended phone talk comic will enhance your reading experience, but the story is fine without it.

New Deleted Scene! 9/23/14

I hope you enjoyed today's realistic portrayal of brain trauma! For a followup to this fateful event, vote here to see a deleted scene!

When I cleaned up my story outline, this comic ended up being cut since it doesn't actually add anything new. And I felt bad for Darcy again getting the short end of the jousting stick. (Aka: Big Angry Q-tip?) Well, hey, I suppose I have venue for cut scenes, don't I? Enjoy this look into the girl's duel!

(Would a 16-year-old like Colleen know about Cobra Kai? Maybe, but I can bet a certain 30-something dude giving her orders would.)

Oh, and Kickstarter backers - especially those who ordered cupcakes - should take a look at the latest campaign update! Things are moving again! If a book is coming in late, I will be putting in *something* extra. (It varies, but it should all be excellent!)

New Bonus scene! 9/13/14!

(First off, DC-area people should look for me (and my books) at tables E10 and E11 this weekend at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD!)

Once again, I went to bed last night before the update happened - and once again doing so meant not being around to do comic work when it was needed! There is a bonus companion joke to today's comic, and you can see it by voting for Precocious on Top Webcomics!

This started out as a the alt text joke, but mirroring Bud's speech is part of the humor, so I had half of this comic already done! Why not go ahead and finish it? The master recruiter would have wanted it that way.

Copper Road + Lots of News!

Quick rundown, for those with low attention spans:

-Vote here to see the new Copper Road comic!
-The epic Precocious/Curtailed crossover reached an amazing end! Go read it!
-I'll be at SPX in DC, Sept 13-14, at the SpiderForest tables, E10 and E11!
-Oh yeah, I reached 2000 comics. And I updated comic 1000 into a cast poster!

EXPANDED NEWSING: It's the first of the month, so a new Copper Road is here for your enjoyment! Vote here to see it! Also, since it's the first, that means the Copper Road archive was updated with last month's comics, starting here. (The bonus Precocious comics from last month can be found here and here.)

The new comic is another one taken right from my life. Read it, then imagine me answering the door and finding the woman brought her young daughter with her.

I hope you've been reading along with Curtailed! Every week, Mandy and Fox have surprised me with a new epic Precocious crossover! I cannot thank her enough for this incredibly experience. If you want to re-live the glory, start here. (And if you click the "previous" link on that page, you see the guest strip I made for Curtailed!)

So, I hit my 2000th comic a couple days back, and that's kinda a HUGE DEAL - but I had to spend the day in bed after re-aggravating the injury that took my August away. (You know, it turns out you need your hip to do JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING IN LIFE. This has really sucked!) So here I am celebrating it now! Wanna rock strip 2000? How about celebrating it with strip.... 1000?  I reworked that fancy comic with the post-1000 characters for an 11x17" poster! Don't like that? Look around the store for art cards, charms and the Precocious books!  (Yes, I know there's already a banner on the front page for this, but I have a LOT of doctor bills piling up, since I'm super broken at the moment.)

New bonus comic + more Curtailed invasion!

UPDATE: Oh, look, the Precocious invasion of Curtailed is continuing! (This has been a wonderful surprise for me every week! I love it!)

I promise a deleted scene on Sunday, and I am (sorta) a man of my word. As the week went on, I realized the comic I was going to use for a deleted scene had juuuuust enough plot relevance that I really should put it into the main story instead. (You'll see it Monday.)

So now I needed a new deleted scene - vote here to see what I came up with! In my scripting notes, I had a dumb joke about Cole that would happen around, oh, the comic for Sunday.  Sure, why not? The joke also had the opening for copy/paste art - and even though it helped the effect this time, I do get worried if I have to do that in an official comic.  This will probably go on the silly, not-making-the-book pile, along with my "Give a Canadian a gun" indulgence, but I hope you enjoy it!

Bonus comic + I drew a Curtailed!

First the links, then the backstory: Vote here to see a bonus Precocious scene, featuring everyone's favorite camp director. And click here to read a guest comic I drew for Curtailed!

It's a happy coincidence they both popped up at the same time, since they were born of the same idea.

One of the high-end tiers for the book 3 Kickstarter was to influence the design of a Precocious character. This tier was tied to the current camp story, and certain important character slots in the arc were kept open just in case. Once the campaign ended, I went forward with the characters *I* had ready to fill the roles - except for one.

The default story had the counselor (which became Cody) taking on most authority roles, with the camp director as a secondary, off-panel entity. BUT, I decided I'd go ahead and do the Kickstarter thing anyway, giving the character part of the reward to one of my comic buddies. And that's when I discovered my friends have a bunch of kid-hating, non-viable characters. Well, if it wasn't reasonable to bring THEM into MY story, what if I put MY characters into THEIR comic?

And that's why I drew a Curtailed - and why it has the theme it does!  Creating it was a comedy of errors - my favorite drawing pen isn't marker-safe, making Curtailed-style illustration a mess - but two 11x17" pages of mishaps later I ended up with a strip-sized comic!  Thanks to Mandy for tolerating my scribbles! (She was not aware of my plans until it arrived in her inbox, along with some manic, it-made-sense-at-3am rambling.)

The reason why the Kickstarter tier was so expensive is that, aside from the originals and extra art stuff, the character was far more than a cameo. The role was collaborative, and would become part of Precocious continuity, with a chance to recur. That's big for a control freak like me! With outright character-stealing off the table, I turned to stealing MY FRIENDS. I had just returned from Anthrocon, where Mat (of Badly Drawn Kitties fame) was, once again, my highly-excellent table assistant.  I asked him if it would be OK to work a Precocious version of him into the story, and he said yes.

The director's role was very open at this point, so we had a small discussion about it. I asked him how someone like Precocious Mat would end up as camp director, and he replied that something must have gone horribly wrong in his life. That was all the prompting I needed! Now, as the reward tier intended, Mat gets to play a solid role in the camp story, he's tied with Precocious history AND that also means the character lives in the area, so he may be called upon again! (If you like this reward, start saving now! There will be an opportunity to grab it next year!)

As for this specific bonus scene, I'm going ahead and calling NON-CANON on it. It's too over the top, but the idea of giving a polite Canadian a gun was too tempting to pass up! (That means that, unlike most deleted scenes, this one probably won't end up in a book.)

Vote to see a deleted scene!

Since there's a good chance the camp story will end up running long, I'm making some of the comics into deleted scenes! For today's bonus, have two extra Colleen-centric offerings stuck together into one update (because doing rapid-fire updating for vote incentives is silly)!

The rule with deleted scene stuff is that they exist as a vote incentive - so vote here to see it - until the next incentive rolls in - likely August 1st in this case - and once they're gone they do not get posted to the website. They usually don't show up again until the books.

Bonus deleted scene!

I had this scripted, and a bout of mental illness made me draw it instead of working on next week's comics! And now I have to draw another Copper Road in a week to cycle this out when it stops being timely. WHAT HAVE I DONE!?!?!

Anyway, vote here to see the bonus comic for the Green Thumb/Black Thumb story!

New deleted scene! 2/2/14

As the latest story, The Bad Apple, comes to an end, I though you'd like an extra tidbit to tie up one loose end, and potentially tear open new holes. Vote here to see the bonus comic!

I had my fun writing this arc, as I ended up weaving two story ideas (bad apple + alert colors) into one, which made both notably crazier.  And, now that I'm running low on new rules to share I still have a great deal of alert colors I can taunt you all with!

The Copper Road story from January is now in the archive too! I decided to keep them all together as one big story update. You lose some of the alt text, but it keeps everything nice and clean!  Since my obligation to post five Copper Roads a month, earned through your generous pledging in book two's preorder, expired with the new year, we are now back to "when the mood strikes me" for Copper Roads and deleted scene updates.  I hope to put up book three's preorder around the end of this month (depends on my health, as 2014 has been excessively brutal to me so far) so you'll get your shot to earn regular updates again soon!

This week I shared my 2014 convention schedule with you, so I hope you all can find a way to come visit me. I have some hopes of going through the site and doing some maintenance, but, again, that all depends on health and free time. I have more updates coming soon for the FAQ page - which you should check out if you haven't yet, as it's very useful - and I should update, tweak and clarify small things across other internal pages.  The cast page is one thing I cannot make a priority, alas, because it's a massive amount of work. I have a lot of medical bills to pay off, so I must focus on my paid work first. (Maybe I'll do a promotion in the future that will use audience participation to make the cast page something proper.) Sorry, everyone. I hope to be more functional soon, but even then I have a long backlog of bonus, just-for-fun and not-essential-but-I-should work to tackle.

New Deleted Scene! 12/12/13

So it turns out I wrote nine scripts for seven days, and that means a deleted scene! (Just the one. I hinted at the other in Monday's alt text, though.) Vote here to see the deleted scene! Consider it comic 1741b.

Like all deleted scenes, once this rotates out as the vote incentive it won't be in any online archive. See it now, or wait for the book. (I suggest doing both, actually.)

(Edit: away it goes!)

Deleted Scene + FurFright + Contest Funtime!

Lots of stuff for this update! As I am heading north to table at FurFright this weekend, there's no time for me to spread things out! Connecticut peeps: Come see me!  I'll be in the back corner, waiting for you - and crying if you don't come.

This should have gone up for Friday, but I won't be near my computer on Friday. Vote to see a deleted scene now!  Due to the nature of the costume contest, I did a lot of playing around with my scripting. The original comics for the weekend ended up being scrapped. Those comics featured the kids arguing and rules and timing, which is so very them - but came out too wordy.  So, of course, I compressed THOSE comics into one script, just so I could make this strip to show you (some of) what might have been.

Speaking of the contest. The soft deadline has passed, and I've locked in most of the script.  Odds are new suggestions won't make it into the comic, but I still encourage art, so I can show it off later on!  Thanks to all who have submitted! I ended up using more costume ideas than I thought I would, so look forward to all the reveals! The first reader-inspired costume pops up on Sunday.  (Contest winners won't be revealed until the end of the story, by the way.)

Vote to see ANOTHER deleted scene!

Yes, yes, I should probably be drawing some Copper Roads, but I had a lot of extra jokes to use! This is a cheapie, but how could I *not* go there? The imagination is a powerful thing when wielded properly! (And it's super fun when wielded IMPROPERLY!)

Vote on TWC to see the deleted scene! Like other deleted scenes, this comic won't appear on the website after it rotates out. It will likely end up as a book bonus when it's time for these stories to go to print.

There is *some* Copper Road news. It was two days later, but I remembered to update the archive page with Copper Roads from last month. Go read and enjoy!

Vote to see a deleted scene!

It's a new month, which means the TopWebComics counter has reset and it's time to get your vote and boost Precocious!

Normally I start the month with a new Copper Road, but I've been bad at counting recently and I keep ending up with extra Precocious scripts. (Which is why this latest story officially started mid-week instead of on a Monday.) I thought I had everything worked out to get me on track, then new jokes popped into my head. I've already delayed the back to school story once, so I gotta edit the new thoughts into oblivion or turn them into vote incentives. And so now we enjoy extra time with everyone's favorite imaginary friend, Aloysius!

And if you haven't caught up in the comments, that's a real name that real people have, and it looks weird when written down (hence the comic about it). It's pronounced al-oh-wish-us, and that should help. (And, no, the My Little Pony owl's spelling is not how it *should* be spelled. C'mon now.)

These deleted scene comics will not go into any online archive page once they rotate out, so get your reading on now! (They are intended to be book bonuses down the line.)

Another bonus comic!

I'm still going for it! Here's another bit of extra fun for the last story! I waited until today because it's the first and that means TWC resets and it's time to VOTE HARD! So, yeah, vote right here and get the bonus!

Also, the first of the month means the Copper Road archive gets updated! Head over to the archive page and enjoy June's Copper Roads all over again.

This is a simple news post, as it won't be on top long. I HAVE MORE ANTHROCON PROMOTION TO DO!