Hello, everyone!

You read that right -- we are $54 away from goal! This is amazing, we're so close to funding! 

I ordered the stickers, the fourth bookmark, and the foil prints today. I'll post pictures as soon as I have them! 

I'm feeling sappy with the proximity to the goal and I wanted to talk a little bit about the book series. It took a lot to get this project to the point of crowdfunding. Stick with me, this may get a bit heavy, but I want you all to know what this series means to me and where it came from. 

My best friend Auden and I started this series together, and we wrote through the events of Lemon Balm, Aloe, Lavender, and a fourth book out of a planned five. We weren't going to publish originally -- just writing for fun, when both of us were dealing with some life stuff.

For those that are sensitive to medical talk -- skip this next paragraph!! We wrote most of this series during some of the darkest time of my life. In late 2023/early 2024, two things happened almost simultaneously -- I had a falling out with a friend group and stopped streaming entirely because of it. Also, my little brother was diagnosed with a terminal cancer. He had complications, it was not pretty, I'll spare you the details. For a while, he was in experimental treatments that looked promising, but he ultimately fell into a coma in September. He woke up a few days later and went steadily downhill after that. He lost his fight and passed away in October 2024. It took me quite a while to bounce back from that; I didn't work most of that year and spent all of the last quarter of 2024 grieving.

From February 2024 to early 2025 I wasn't sleeping much and we wrote a lot. We finished writing most of the series by that point and decided to polish up Lemon Balm, the first book, to publish. I set up our first BackerKit and we funded! I was blown away that we were able to fund our debut with a very small audience. I did heavy edits and we needed to rework the story before we published. I did an extensive rewrite in a a little over a week. The books went out in October. I made the release for Halloween because it was my little brother's favorite holiday, and it was something positive to lift my spirits during the month. 

The series looks really different than it originally did. It's three books instead of five. The prose is much, much better, and the books are professionally edited and refined (thanks to you all helping to fund it!) Auden is no longer working on the project since the rewrites -- they're going through their own tough times. But these characters and these books mean so, so much to me, and I'm so happy that people see something in them too. 

So yeah. Maybe I'm jumping the gun talking about this because we're not quite funded yet, but 42 of you have pledged and there's still three weeks left. Many of you grabbed both books, which means you're new here. And that means everything to me. My gratitude is endless. Thanks, y'all.

And now, on a lighter note, let's talk about some fun facts about the world! 

- The story is heavily in NY, PA, and WI.
- All of the magic is based on life force aspects. 
- Acanthus is 765 years old. 
- Lemon Balm and Aloe are both set in 2023. 
- There are four different factions of vampires, with different levels of light sensitivity, physical strength, and magical ability.
- The magic of Witches are all based on the elements -- earth, wind, water, fire, light, and shadow. Each element can manipulate their elements, but also have added abilities on top of it. 
    - Earth magic can also be used for healing as well as draining life.
    - Water magic can influence the weather. Skilled water witches can also manipulate blood and use this to help heal or harm.
     - Wind witches can combine their powers with other witches to create compound attacks, and 'borrow' abilities from other elements if they can figure out how to mimic them. They are also great diviners.
     - Fire Witches are the only witches that can conjure their element from nothing.
     -  Light witches (AKA chaos witches) can cast illusions and glamors, as well as manipulate emotions. When they work with water witches, the water witch can divine better.
     - Shadow witches focus on intent. They read the truth in someone's actions and words, and know when people are lying. They also manipulate emotions but only in such ways that reveal the truth; and can manipulate memory and implant false memories.

Let me know if you want more trivia about the series! I can post things throughout the course of the campaign.

Have a great night, y'all! Let's see where we're at tomorrow! And, y'all are awesome. Never forget that.

With Love and Brightness,
Artemis