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Update #8: There's More Than One Way to Write a Book!
First, I'm am so very grateful for each person who pledged towards the completion of this project. You are awesome! I'm also greatly encouraged by everyone I had a chance to speak with about the project who expressed interest and enthusiasm for seeing the finished project. You have reinforced the notion that this book will not only be a fun, rewarding task for me to complete but actually wanted and useful once it's in print.
Second, this isn't over yet! Sure, the Kickstarter side of things is, but that's okay. What to Feed Your Raiding Party will happen, by bits and pieces and as it can and I hope you'll check out it's new home over on
http://www.whattofeedyourraidingparty.com
I'll be posting (at least) weekly updates starting in January and doing various bits of fund raising as necessary to help defray the costs involved with putting the book together. Rather than one big push it'll be a bunch of little ones and, I think, will work better in the long run.
Happy New Year!
Update #7: Podcast Updates and Down to the Wire!
I had the great pleasure to chat with that gang over at All Games Considered and they had some fabulous questions about the book. It's definitely worth a listen (as is the rest of the podcast--great fun!)
http://www.agcpodcast.info/2009/12/agc-120-december-15th-2009-feeding-your.html
And a few weeks ago I was also on RPG Circus and I apparently forgot to link to them from here. Many apologies to the ringmasters over there!
It was a blast to get to talk to folks about the book and find out what people thought about the concept and what I'm trying to accomplish with it.
# # #
So, 14 days left to take pledges and we're still quite a ways from goal. Nonetheless, I've had so much positive feedback about this project that even if we don't reach this particular goal on this particular time-line (but it'd be really nice if we did!), What to Feed Your Raiding Party will happen--I'm even more excited about it than when it was just a glimmer of an idea or a series of talks at the dinner table! Depending on the final outcome, 2 weeks from now, I'll have something to announce one way or another. Until then, spread the word to anyone you know who would be interested in this project (and that group is a lot broader than I originally thought, let me tell ya!) and have a happy holiday season!
Update #6: We're at 25%: Meet Woody!
For backers only,
Posted on December 8, 2009
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Update #5: Budget Breakdown
I was thinking the other day that, well, if someone were asking me to pledge to a project I might be curious to know how the money is going to be spent. In the interest of transparency, here's how I came up with the funding goal for What to Feed Your Raiding Party:
1750.00 Funding Goal
725.00 Printing and shipping of books to me, based on 152 pages, perfect bound
150.00 ISBN number and barcode*
50.00 Nutritional Software**
75.00 Art supplies
175.00 Amazon & Kickstarter fees (roughly 10% of goal)
======
1175.00 Subtotal of fixed expenses
* I know that there are free bar code generators out there but even they admit that it's not 100% guaranteed to be accurate. I think it's worth the additional $25 to make sure the bar code actually works.
**I've got 3 I want to try out and they range in price with $50 being the average. To test them I'll run 2 or 3 recipes through the program and then compare them with my manual figures using the USDA charts and see which one is the most accurate and user-friendly.
Which leaves:
$575.00 Wiggle room/R&D
This goes towards potential printing cost changes due to material cost increases (things can change in the 5 or 6 months between quoting and actual printing), having to increase the page count (a very real possibility) or freight increases from them to me as well as the production of recipe postcards (negligible, but still not free) and mailing of rewards (postcards, books and art). Aside from that, there's the R&D which is testing recipes. If you think about that amount spread over the 3 months I'm allotting for the production of the book (I really want it out in March!) it's not very much but it will keep this project from negatively impacting my normal household budget, at least not too much.
So there it is: how the money will be spent. If you have any questions about any of it, please ask! I'm an open book!
Update #4: Interviews and the Next Backer-Only Update
I had the pleasure of talking to the Happy Jacks RPG Podcast about What to Feed Your Raiding Party last night and the episode is available now:
I'll also be hopping into the RPG Circus podcast later this week as well as with All Games Considered in early December. It's a lot of fun chatting with others about the project and letting more people know about it and about Kickstarter in general.
* * *
The next backer-only update (including art! early sketches of our 3 main characters!) will be shared once funding reaches 25% so let's keep those pledges coming in! Spread the word because a fully-funded project means this will see reality sooner rather than some unknown future date when I can scrape up the resources on my own!
Update #3: A Good Question
So, while at an event last night that I co-catered, What to Feed Your Raiding Party came up and a question was posed:
Q. Will I get to have input into the recipe that's named after me?
And I had to pause for a second or three because I didn't automatically know the answer. It's a good question and it makes total sense to wonder about so here's what I came up with:
A. I will do my best to accommodate reasonable requests as to the TYPE of recipe that bears your name.
Which is to say that I certainly wouldn't want to assign a carnivore's delight-style recipe to a vegan backer but I also have to keep the end-goal of the book in mind when choose recipes for each section and the scope of the book overall. Does that make sense?
I also got a lot of "will this be in the book" type of questions about some of the foods that were offered last night. The short answer is, I don't know yet. Things like my chicken salad and, yes, the lemon bars that were so gooey-good, those are good contenders because they meet a few of my recipe requirements but I am far from set on my list of recipes so, again with the requests, if you want to see a certain type of recipe in the book, let me know. It might be something I haven't thought of yet or considered and I can keep it in mind for future brainstorming sessions.
After all, I'm the one writing and testing the recipes that will go into the book, but you will be the ones using it so input is totally welcome at this stage!
Update #2: 10% update!
For backers only,
Posted on November 6, 2009
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Update #1: We've passed $100 in pledges!
For backers only,
Posted on November 5, 2009
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28
Backers
$1,082
pledged of $1,750 goal
0
seconds to go
Funding Unsuccessful
This project reached the deadline without achieving its funding goal on December 31, 2009.
Pledge $2 or more
COCKTAILS Behind-the-scenes progress reports, sneak peeks of the art and a recipe postcard mailed to you.
Pledge $7 or more
AMUSE BOUCHE Behind-the-scenes progress reports, sneak peeks of the art, a recipe postcard mailed to you AND a pdf copy of the book once it's complete.
Pledge $12 or more
APPETIZER Behind-the-scenes progress reports, sneak peeks of the art, a recipe postcard mailed to you AND a signed copy of the printed book.
Pledge $22 or more
SOUP or SALAD Behind-the-scenes progress reports, sneak peeks of the art, a recipe postcard mailed to you and a signed and SKETCHED copy of the book.
Pledge $30 or more
THE ENTREE Behind-the-scenes progress reports, sneak peeks of the art, a recipe postcard mailed to you, a signed and sketched copy of the book AND a recipe named after you (given name will be credited at the bottom of each recipe, Junior League-style but the recipe name can include your nickname or the name of one of your characters, if you want--we can talk about it).
Pledge $50 or more
THE CHEESE PLATE Behind-the-scenes progress reports, sneak peeks of the art, a recipe postcard mailed to you, a signed and sketched copy of the book, a recipe named after you AND a piece of original art from the book.
Pledge $100 or more
DESSERT Behind-the-scenes progress reports, sneak peeks of the art, a recipe postcard mailed to you, a signed and sketched copy of the book, a recipe named after you or one of your characters, an original page of art from the book AND a character based on you in one of the five story arcs.
Pledge $500 or more
SOUP to NUTS Behind-the-scenes progress reports, sneak peeks of the art, a recipe postcard mailed to you, a signed and sketched copy of the book, a special thank you on the dedication page, a piece of original art from the book AND DINNER FOR 4, made by me. This means you've either got to be in Tallahassee for the meal or within, say, a 5-6 hour drive from my place so I can travel, cook, and then crash at a hotel for the night before heading home. Boundaries by major cities would be New Orleans to the west, Birmingham to the northwest, the greater Atlanta area to the north, Savannah/Jacksonville/Daytona Beach along the east coast, Orlando area to the south around to Tampa on the Gulf Coast and pretty much anywhere within that arc. If I'm driving to cook, you've got to have a kitchen available for me to prepare the meal in, I'll bring everything else.
Project By
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I wear many hats--okay, I don't wear hats that often, I prefer shoes, but you get the idea. I have a Culinary Arts degree but no longer work in the hospitality industry with the exception of my food and cocktail blogging. Instead, I have a day-job as a Bookkeeper with the same company I've been at for the last 15 years. I like what I do, it pays the bills and it's predictable. Unfortunately, as I told my boss one day, creative accounting gets you 10 to 20...
Enter the off hours. Some people call it free time, I'm not sure I really embody that. Almost every spare moment is spent working on my comics (I have 2, they're both on the web, check 'em out at the links below), writing or creating in some way or another. For the last 2.5 years (give or take a month) I was the Art (& Crafts) Expert for eHow.com so I did a lot of writing for them, creating projects to photograph step-by-step and sharing my creativity. With that program finished, it was time to move on to something else, freeing me up to do more of my own projects instead of someone else's.
I throw fabulous parties, still love to cook, just got my BAC (BarSmarts Advanced Certification) to beef up my cocktail knowledge, knit, scrapbook, sew, make jewelry, take photographs and get the greatest joy from sparking a smile or laugh from one of my comics. I prefer useful art and functional fun stuff to dust-catchers and collect monkey-stuff.
