This is a story the meshes the history of our 1760 farm in Maine with the life of Earnest the pig and Mrs. Studley, a rat [she has secrets you eill learn about].
It is illustrated.
One day, Bucket is freed after a Nor'easter blows through the farm. Earnest the pig meets him and a friendship begins. Bucket begins his story of how one day the only boy he knew tossed him aside. Earnest helps him see he still has purpose. In time, we learn about the boy and the friends then set out to help him. Mrs. Studley and her digging expertise come in very handy.
If you are in mid coast MAine on Thursday, stop over to my first pop up! I'm not sure who my animal guest will be, but have a pretty good idea.
I also have the Lovey Hut set up as a little gallery with my higher end paintings on wood.
I really am not sure anyone will show up but we shall see! I did a pretty soft sell on it as I just want to feel my way around it all. No stress on Mrs. Dunn is the motto.
I have decided to come back to the blog and will be shuttering Patreon with the next month [it takes a month].
I had started a Patreon last December. To be honest, it never felt quite right to me. I never liked the layout and there were glitches on my end.
But mainly, what I realized was I started because I was feeling my blog was done, over, noone was reading it [which isn't exactly true, its more that people weren't commenting or interacting becasue of so many social media platforms]. I thought the Patreon would expand my readers, instead it made it smaller and there were long time readers that felt they just didn't want to pay even a small fee a month. I understand.
So what felt wierd to me was knowing my stories were being read by even fewer people and I couldn't share them publicly with some of the readers that really wanted to read them-for free. I experimented with ways to bring more people in, but really, I think Patreon is much more geared for video, and SHORT things like comics.
It can take years to build a wider audience on Patreon-they do nothing to help promote you, believe me. It wasn't the money, the 30 members I had were helping with $300 total a month which is about 2/3 of my online web fees. And I don't scoff at that. But I never did it to make money, I just thought it would bring out people who really wanted to read my work, and were willing to support it.
The other thing I realized is-my stories have also supported the farm. People read the heartfelt stories, and it engages them with me, and my work with the non profit. They might not buy a book, but they donate to the farm. That in and of itself is a gift for me.
So, I am revitalizing my home here at my first home-the blog. I felt guilty leaving it, and put much thought into it. I also like I can keep tabs on animals histories and such here.
There will be audio stories here as well which I've just started experimenting with over on Patreon.
And now, instead of subscribing monthly, I simply have a link you can go to in each post, in which you have the choice to pay something, or nothing. All content will be public. I could have done monthly subscribers again, but this way people can pay once and move on, or just keep paying whatever they read. There is no long term commitment. And everyone can read and share the posts, which is important to me.
So chalk it up to a learning curve. And to all those first 30 members-I thank you. I just posted the Pig & Bucket story to you and in time it will be made available for purchase, but those first and last Patrons get to see it now.
You can now send support for individual posts at this link, if you choose >
