Doodling as a Hobby

The Challenges of Survey Preparation
30 days ago – Thu, Aug 20, 2026 at 10:46:06 AM

Greetings Backers!

It is update time!

TL;DR: Action Item! If you have original strip art as part of your order we need you to be planning which strips you want to request. Details below. We're in the process of building surveys. Sandra is working on sorting art and making plans for pages. We built the schedule expecting a busy August, so everything is still within parameters. Your next update will be the week of Sept 14-18.

Details

The next big task for this project is sending out surveys. Usually our surveys fall into a familiar pattern, but this time Sandra introduced the original art strips and the $50 merchandise credits, both of which have logistical challenges around letting you select your strip and pick your merchandise. We’re confident we can make it happen, but there are likely to be extra steps involved.

Merchandise Bundle 

This $50 credit toward Schlock merch sounded like an easy add to the project, but is proving to be more complicated than expected because porting the entire contents of our store (minus apparel) into the Backerkit system is a Very Manual process. It would be easy for us to simply create a $50 gift credit in our existing store and give that to backers. On our end this would solve the problem nicely and allows people to spend the credit on apparel if they wish. It also simplifies shipping for us because the merch bundles would go through our regular store process and be sent out fast. 

However, it would also mean two packages and two separate shipping charges, which may be a problem for some of you. 

So I’m attaching a poll to get a general sense of what you all would prefer.  You can find it down below.  We’ll use the poll results as part of our decision making. I’m also reaching out to Backerkit staff to see if they have some solution I haven’t thought of yet.

Original Art Strips

We have a file cabinet full of over 7000 Schlock Mercenary comic strips. 434 of those strips will be re-homed to live with backers of this project. We want to give backers the opportunity to submit their top three choices for strips they get as part of their order. 

People with Original Art Strips in their order will need to fill out TWO surveys.  One via Backerkit to collect shipping costs and provide shipping address and a google form where you tell us which strips you want. 

Neither of these surveys is ready yet, but if you do your homework to identify which strips you want, then you’ll be ready when the surveys are ready.  

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:
If you have a strip as part of your order, dig into the online archive. Pick 3-5 strips for each comic you purchased, we'll ask for your top choices in this format: airdate of the strip in year-month-day format  +  a few keywords to help us make sure we have the right strip. 
Example: 2000-06-12  Sounds like my kind of fun.

Once we have original art surveys in hand, we will start going through the file cabinet and assigning strips. We expect to start shipping out strips by the end of September or early October before the book is even complete. All original strip art will get separate shipping to protect the art from being damaged by the books. This means you will get your art sooner and it means our shipping team can do the process of assigning and sending art in a careful methodical way instead of having to manage it alongside a big shipping project. 

Your next update will be the week of September 14-18. During that update I’ll have a full list of deliverables and that is likely when we’ll have surveys ready to go as well. I have a month to figure out all the logistics!

Next week Sandra and Howard leave for Worldcon and then the Writing Excuses Cruise where they both have busy schedules. They're sneaking in work on this project in the cracks. We’re back home on Sept 12 and will turn more attention to this project then.  

Thank you so much for backing this project and being patient with us while we're distracted. 

Howard and Sandra Tayler

In the Middle of Busy
2 months ago – Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 03:23:01 PM

Greetings Backers!

We're here to give you a quick update on our progress.

TL;DR: No action items for you! We were far busier than we expected in the past four weeks. The next weeks also look very busy. We built the schedule expecting busy, so everything is still within parameters. Your next update will be the week of August 17-21.

Details

Where did June go? And half of July?

Since our last update we failed to have a house fire (details here), Sandra took a trip to the Emergency Room (chest pains that turned out to be a new symptom of an existing condition rather than something serious), coordinated the acquisition of a driver's license (and car + car insurance) for one of our young adults, did extra grand-parenting for the grandkid who is getting a new sibling next month (very pregnant mom needs more rest), Sandra helped launch the Kickstarter for Locus Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology, and we scrambled together a store sale to help pay for all the expenses. 

Schlock fans showed up very enthusiastically and generously for the sale, thus relieving the immediate financial stress. (Seriously, thank you so much!) It is a good thing we have warehouse manager Aidan to handle fulfillment on all of the store orders because Howard is working to finish coin designs for A Function of Firepower and Sandra is frantically trying to launch fulfillment on FoF while also prepping for Gen Con departure in less than two weeks. 

Sometimes everything happens all at once. This is one of those times for the Taylers. So, Doodling as a Hobby has been sitting on the back burner. This is not what I wanted to be able to report, but it is where we are at. 

The good news is that when Sandra built the schedule for this project, she planned for July and August to be busy, so we're still on schedule for now. 

The next two tasks for this project are:

1.  Setting up the surveys / pre-order store
2. Organizing the archive of all things. 

Survey set-up only needs about four hours of uninterrupted attention. Hopefully Sandra will be able to find those hours between now and your next update. The archive organization might be something Sandra can work on during the road trip to and from Gen Con. (We'll pack it along and she'll try!)

If you are going to be at Gen Con, please make sure to stop by booth 1349 and say hello. Or you can come find us at one of our writer symposium panels:

THURSDAY

• SANDRA
• Coffee Klatch with Sandra Tayler  11:00 AM EDT Albany Bring your own beverage and converse with a small group of like minded fans, peers, and a guest of the Writers Symposium!
•  HOWARD
• A Conversation Without Chaperones  3:00 PM EDT Marriott Ballroom 4 A panel in which industry vets Howard Tayler and Maurice Broaddus riff and ramble for 50 minutes. Come for the laughs, stay for the lore drops, leave wanting a friendship like theirs.
• SANDRA
• Burning Both Ends of the Candle: Burnout  3:00 PM EDT Marriott Ballroom 2 How do you recognize it, recover from it, and, perhaps, return to what caused it in the first place? How to set boundaries, identifying priorities, and develop new habits. 

FRIDAY

• SANDRA
• The Creative Reset Workshop  10:00 AM EDT Atlanta  Join Author Sandra Tayler in a set of guided activities designed to help you reset, focus on the creative work you want to be doing, and make an action plan to take home with you.
• HOWARD
•  Writing Excuses Podcast Panel 2:00 PM EDT  Marriott Ballroom 4 Join the podcast hosts for a live panel Q&A with audience questions, followed by a 20-minute live episode of the podcast with a topic picked from your questions.

 SATURDAY

• HOWARD
• The Privilege of the Living: Humor in the Mundane  10:00 AM EDT  Marriott Ballroom 4 From Dungeon Meshi's monster meals to Arthur Dent's towel, join panelists as they discuss crafting humor out of the mundane in fantastical and otherworldly settings.
•  SANDRA
• Keeping Creativity Highly-Valued In Your Life, Even When the World Is On Fire  1:00 PM EDT Marriott Ballroom 2 With so much (validly) competing for our attention on a daily basis, and our nervous systems so overloaded, how do we carve out time and energy for creativity?

Thank you so much for your support of this project. We're excited to get it done.

Howard and Sandra Tayler

Starting Work After a Break
3 months ago – Thu, Jun 18, 2026 at 08:42:09 AM

Greetings Backers!

We're here to give you a quick update on our progress.

TL;DR: No action items for you! We've been taking a two week breather while setting up to get work done. Your next update will be the week of July 13-17.

Details

For the most part we've been catching up on other projects and taking a rest from this one. Howard has been plowing through writing bonus story scripts for Sergeant in Motion. Sandra has been prepping for A Year of Creativity, fielding admin details for the bulk shipment of A Function of Firepower, helping a client with a Kickstarter launch, and occasionally sitting in her garden listening to wind in the trees. 

We have the shiny new hard drive and Howard downloaded all his back up files onto it. So The Great Sorting has begun. Sandra has already unearthed some long-forgotten treasures. For example Landon making pancakes:

There is a treasure trove of art from streaming for Typecast RPG

And there are some streams and time lapses, but before I can show those to you, I'm going to have to figure out how to post them to YouTube since Kickstarter apparently no longer allows embeded video in updates. 

In two days both Howard and Sandra travel to Writing Excuses recording camp where they'll spend a week in the company of good friends recording many podcast episodes. Once we're back we'll get rolling on this project for the month of July getting as much done as possible before traveling in August.

Thank you so much for your support of this project. We're excited to get it done.

Howard and Sandra Tayler

Project Complete! Thank You!
4 months ago – Thu, Jun 04, 2026 at 11:04:49 AM

Greetings Backers!

Thanks to you we get to make this book! We're grateful and excited to get started!

Thanks to you we unlocked an 80 page book in full color, a new cover, and a special Q&A session. This book is going to be amazing.

What's next?

Sandra has already placed an order for a hard drive so she can copy every file that Howard has in his back ups. Then she'll begin to sort through all of it to find lost treasures to include in the book. 

The pace of updates is going to slow down and we'll start being more detailed about the logistics of the project. If you've backed one of our prior projects, you already know what that looks like. Each update will have a TL;DR: section at the top for those who just want quick info, and a more detailed report further down for people who like all the details. You'll get your first update in this new format the week of June 15-19. 

Deliverables

Here is the list of things we owe as part of this project. We don't have full production time estimates yet. That's one of the things we'll try to nail down in the next few weeks.

Core Items

• DaH PDF Rough Draft Version:  The one you get to see before the Q&A Zoom
• DaH PDF final version: Delivered just after we send the book to print
• DaH Print version: The main project! (And includes the new cover art)
• Timelapse of cover art: Probably delivered around the same time as we send the book off to print.
• Q&A Zoom session: We'll send out a poll about the exact timing of this when we're closer to being ready to run it.

Add On Items

• Desktop Mega pack: Delivery on this will depend on how quickly Sandra is able to sort.
• Surprise Print Bundle: This will deliver along with books when they ship.
• Schlock Merch Bundle: You'll be able to select your merchandise when surveys are sent out.
• 19 Book Schlock Bundle: Delivers before the end of June.
• Honest Death and Other Stories: Delivers before the end of June.
• Resident Mad Scientist PDF: Delivers before the end of June.
• Resident Mad Scientist Paperback: Will ship with your other items when your entire package is ready.
• 1st Edition The Blackness Between: Will ship with your other items when your entire package is ready.
• 1st Edition Under New Management: Will ship with your other items when your entire package is ready.
• Signed Seventy Maxims: Will ship with your other items when your entire package is ready.
• Triple Signed X-treme Dungeon Mastery: Will ship with your other items when your entire package is ready.
• Original Strip art (1, 2, & 3 row): There are a lot of logistics around letting each of you select the strip you want and us getting them to you. I'll write more about the challenges of this in a future update. 

If I missed listing a deliverable, please comment here. I use this deliverable list to hold us accountable throughout the project and want to make sure I have everything.

Thank you so much! We're going to take a bit of a breather and then get right to work.

Howard and Sandra

UNLOCKED! Ask Howard Questions
4 months ago – Wed, Jun 03, 2026 at 10:27:58 AM

Greetings Backers!

You all just unlocked Ask Howard Questions!

This will be a special Q&A zoom meeting where all of you get to read the PDF and then ask questions about it. We'll hold this meeting before the book goes to print so that if something really cool comes up, we can add it to the book.

ONLY 24 HOURS LEFT!

And we have one final stretch goal. Please keep spreading the word so we can make the book bigger.

Thank you so much for backing this project!

Howard and Sandra Tayler