Kickstarter update: Thanks to my first contributor, a total stranger named Sonja Randerson from Kona, Hawaii! Just kidding, she’s my mom 🙂
It has been a slow start, but I went on today and added some pictures to my campaign story. Hopefully, things will pick up quickly. This is so stressful! *Deep breath* And exciting!
I wrote in my last post about how difficult it is to ask for financial support for a project fairly soon after an environmental disaster, referring to the Sonoma County fires last October. The same day of the post (last Friday), the Carr fire was going strong in Redding California, and 2 separate fires broke out around the border of Mendocino and Lake Counties about 90 minutes north of me.
By lunchtime Saturday, my daughter and her boyfriend were evacuating from Bachelor Valley to my house. They have a car, their phones and computers, 2 rats, a snake, and a lizard. That’s all that would fit in their vehicle.
We had a fun sleepover weekend until last night when I realized that in all likelihood their house is going to burn down. I couldn’t get to sleep, and have kept the live fire tracker open all day, kind of obsessed with the destruction that is going on up there. Mother Nature is not playing around. The fire keeps getting closer to her house (it’s maybe 2 miles away), while just obliterating everything in this once bucolic little valley.
This puts the Kickstarter in a whole different perspective for me. It is not a Go Fund Me in any way. In fact, I will not get any financial benefit from it beyond the ability to publish these 5 books. But when I was in need and had no money for illustrations, who came to my rescue? My daughter did. She has been absolutely lovely to work with during this process, even as I funnel more illustrations her way when I discover a photo isn’t realistically usable.
So this Kickstarter campaign is now for her, because getting this book set published is going to establish her as an illustrator and provide her with a reference to start her career. Given what it’s going to take for these two 21 year olds to rebuild their life together, it’s the very least I can do!
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