Meet Our New Employee: Amy

Hi everyone! We have a new full-time employee! Her name is Amy and she is married to *checks notes* me, you know her from the amazing designs of all of our books and from keeping me alive. 

Amy is going to be helping me ramp things up here, giving me the bandwidth to tackle new and overdue projects while she handles book and merch production, Kickstarter fulfillment and all the other important stuff that I am very bad at.

I'll let Amy explain:

For the past few years Jon and I have had a conundrum. My corporate career in design and communications was increasingly time-consuming, and while I enjoy the work, the ever-increasing hours and pressure has affected my sense of wellness and the amount of time I can be present with our family. Home life can be stressful. 

On the other side of the equation, there’s Jon. There are never enough hours for him to dedicate to the list of projects he wants to work on. Add on three kids (one with special needs) and a wife with a demanding corporate job and it's amazing he's been able to keep up with a semi-regular publishing schedule through the years. 

It often feels like only one of us can succeed. Because my job was more lucrative and our health insurance was tied to my employment, Jon has sacrificed a lot of his potential so I could focus on my career. Even so, with rising healthcare costs and cost of living we seem to always be chasing financial peace of mind and questioning the cost of this sacrifice.

Over the years, Jon and I have often daydreamed about what it would be like for me to join forces with him, managing the business side of SFAM/Goats, designing more books and orchestrating and delivering more Patreon bonus gifts.

We feel it’s the right time make this leap so that Jon can make more comics and put other new types of content (Dungeon Divers animated short, anyone?) out into the world. Jon’s audience has grown and broadened beyond our beloved diehard geek core. More and more people write in during these tumultuous times to say that Jon’s comic made a difference in their day, gave them a little levity, made them feel not quite so alone in the utter scary craziness. He always reads those emails to me.

We know this venture comes with risk. We don’t know how quickly it will take to make up the gap my loss of income will create. But neither of us is afraid of hard work and we would love to see what both of us putting our energy and minds together can build. We are bubbling with excitement to see where this turbo boost can take all of us, audience and artist, together. 

To Jon’s existing Patreon patrons: thank you so much for all of your support through the years. Will you help us take this next step by bumping up to the next tier? And to those who have been considering becoming patrons, or may not even know about becoming one? Now is the time to jump in. Be a part of our next adventure and start getting exclusive bonus content from the moment you make your first pledge.

So there you have it! We're going to be kicking quite a bit of ass, and hopefully you have our backs and will let us make more and more good stuff for you. I'm not going to set any stretch goals or targets or any of that. We need to double or triple what we're earning here to make this work. But we're taking the jump now because we're confident we can do this together and that we can make it worth your while to invest in us. 

Anyway, thank you as always for all your support, past and future.