Exciting news! I just finished packing the final pledges and paid for shipping. Canada Post will pick it up tomorrow, and then they are on their way to you!
There are still a few failed payments, so if you want to get your derpies, please check your pledges.
Thank you so much for supporting my art! It means the world to me.
If you need to contact me about pledges, please email me at [email protected]- I don't always get notifications for comments here.
And if you want to keep up with Derpy news and more art, be sure to follow my Patreon!
Due to an unexpected staffing gap that I myself will be filling temporarily, the novellas are delayed until approximately May 28th.
This means you can expect to see your Backerkit surveys arrive near the end of April, perhaps at the very start of May.
We've got fun art to share...see below.
IN DETAIL
A goal I have for Brackenbury Books is to get us to a place where I can hire employees, but for now we have volunteers - who receive honorariums - that sometimes can have to step back suddenly when the rest of their life makes big demands of them. That's what's happened recently with both our layout person and a publishing assistant I was training as a backup - nobody said publishing would be easy!
The good thing is that all the actual material for the books is safely with us, I'm taking the layout into my own hands, and our printer for this project is located in the same state as our fulfillment warehouse. It would take a metaphorical elephant landing on our heads to cause any further significant delay. Should there be an elephant, we'll let you know.
Meanwhile, thanks to the record-breaking success of New Edge Sword & Sorcery 2026, we were able to upgrade the cover for Audrey Stolling's 'zine from this...
Art by Daniel Vega
...to a full wraparound illustration!
Probably not crossing the Delaware...
After some final touches to the layout, we'll be sending the 'zine you unlocked to a different, Chicago-based printer that will be able to get us the finished product pretty quickly. Thus we hope to show you some preview pics of the finished 'zine before fulfillment begins.
BUT THAT'S NOT THE ONLY STRETCH GOAL YOU UNLOCKED LAST FALL!
Art by Caster Jones
This is just one of four maps we've commissioned, one for each novella. The setting of Myrial will be found in Steve Hugh Westenra's The Barbarian at Star's End.
Caster Jones has done each of the four maps in a different style. For this novella I asked them to riff on one of the sources of inspiration swirling around in Steve's and my earliest discussions of Barbarian, Lin Carter's Gondwane novels.
Art by Lin Carter himself
Alright, we don't want to give everything away in advance so I'll stop here. A brief update will go up when, or very soon after, we safely have everything off to the printer. Thank you for your patience, and...
Keep your swords sharp and your sorcery numinous,
P.S. Don't forget you can listen to a reading of the first two chapters of Barbarian, and the other three novellas, on our Youtube channel.
I can't believe how gorgeous they are. You are going to love them.
I spent the morning unboxing books and signing books and repacking with awards and other goodies. My goal this week is to have everything packed up and ready to ship. Then hopefully next week, I will start shipping!!
Admire them with me!
If you didn't get the omnibus and you want to add it on, there's still time. I've left the link open a little longer. You can get one here!
Sorry for the delay, I am working on finalizing the zine and I've just had a bit of a rough start to my Spring which has led me to fail reaching my personal deadline for finishing my comic. So, I've made the decision to pull my comic from the anthology.
I am probably a third of the way done with the comic and I have not had much energy to work on it between other obligations, so to avoid further delays in production, I am going to finish up formatting for the zine without including it and I'll plan to release my comic digitally for backers once it's complete.
Currently, I estimate having the zine sent to the printer by next week, one last proof check, and then on to print! I'll update again when I have a better estimate of when I expect books to be in hand. :)
Leif & Thorn Volume 8 reward packages are arriving for backers. If you're one of them, sharing photos and tagging me is encouraged! (Replying to this post with a link also works.)
Less than a dozen physical rewards left to get in the mail. The latest Trump-induced price hike doesn't hit until April 26, so I should have no trouble (knock wood) shipping everything before then.
This might be my last update on BackerKit for a while. Follow the Leif & Thorn website and/or Tumblr for more comic-specific news. Check me out on Mastodon and/or Bluesky for more general posts.
Normally this is when I would say "see you next time for Volume 9" -- but I'm almost out of Volume 3, and running low on Volume 4. So the next campaign might have to be a double reprint!
See you again in...whatever it is I end up funding next.
