Updates

Hello everyone! $324 CAD has been donated to UNRWA -- I put it off for a bit for a number of reasons, but February is also a slow month for donations overall so I'm a little glad I did. Plus, a lot of resources right now are going towards Minneapolis, which is far from a bad thing, but does mean that Gaza and Palestine as a whole are seeing fewer donations, so our funds are coming at what I suspect is a very good time. 

Surveys are going well with a 77% completion rate. If you are one of the 17 people who has NOT yet filled out your survey, please do so! It gives me crucial information such as shipping address, confirming your add-ons and offering a few additional bonus items. I want to have them all done before the end of the month and I will start hounding you personally in a week or two.

Thanks all! Stay safe, and I'll keep you updated as we roll into production. 

Hello folks! Smoke tests for the survey have been sent out -- please double check your email inboxes (including spam) to check if you're one of the lucky few to have gotten yours. Once the smoke test is done, I'll be able to send out all the surveys and get that taken care of.

Where we're at: Edits for the Revenant's Hymn special edition are almost done, as are the ones for the Singularity. Carrion City will be getting a small update, as will Post-Traumatic Anatomy; the essay for GULA is almost done and I'm just finishing up citations.

I'm also trying to get my SubscribeStar set up this month! So if you're interested in seeing my work on an ongoing basis, I post my essays, reviews, and other articles early here for subscribers, and on my website for everyone.

Some schedule updates: Publication date is now moving to mid-March, with preorders opening for everyone outside of the campaign on Feb 15th. Please keep that in mind and fill out your surveys promptly once you receive them!

Happy New Year everyone! Sorry about the radio silence -- everything hit the ground running this year except my body which went splat. If you're in the US, especially Minnesota, please stay safe. 

Surveys will be going out soon! The result of the poll was that a chunk of the fully-raised amount will be donated to UNRWA (rather than per-tier) and I'll be doing that in the next few days.

I'm also doing some fundraising efforts for the lovely Juniper @coffinfairy on Bsky. Juniper fundraises on a rolling basis to keep her heat and water on, her rent paid and her kids fed; it's tough right now for a single mom and anybody who donates more than $5 gets an e-book of GULA. Obviously you folks are all set on that front - but if there's anyone who missed out and maybe wants to do some good, let them know!

Thank you so much everybody! The Book Bazaar has come to an EXTREMELY triumphant close -- all of us, all 22 projects, have FULLY FUNDED!!

Thank you so much for your support, everybody. Pledge fulfillment and surveys won't be til after the holidays, for the shared reasons of "everybody is busy for the holidays and has plenty to worry about", "don't ever ship something during the holidays if you want it to arrive in one piece", and "I will be briefly out of the country". (Bizarre, that. I'm a homebody normally.)

A reminder as well to vote in the poll (attached below this update!) I need to know for sure where the extra money is going before anything else can get nailed down. So far we're seesawing between two options.

I'll be putting out a call for ARC readers some time in January -- if you have friends who wanted to pledge but couldn't for financial reasons, please let them know! I'll only have physical ARCs available for Canadian readers, sadly, but digital/ebook ARCs will be for anybody. 

Finally, a heads up that while all campaign-related updates will still be coming through BackerKit, I also have a website (elliottdunstan.com) and a SubscribeStar If you're curious about other projects and work, those are both the places to be. 

Cheers! 

Hello everyone! I'm astonished that I get to make this post, but GULA is FULLY FUNDED! Of course, this comes with some caveats. Cancellations and whatnot happen, so please do keep pledging if you haven't already; at the time that I'm posting this, we're only $6 above the goal, which is a VERY slim margin. But it's still a great feeling, and we've got a little while longer to go!

Before I get into the administrative stuff, I also want to acknowledge that I hit this goal last night and in the last few hours of World AIDS Day -- the 37th day this has been commemorated and, for the first time, with genuine hope of a cure and vaccine in the near future. GULA covers a lot of ground, and it's impossible to capture all of it without just essentially long-forming the poem over again, but the AIDS crisis is one of those historical moments that's very close to my heart. Certainly after living through (and continuing to live through) another neglected pandemic, all of the essays and notes from the AIDS crisis hit that much harder. It's an honor and a privilege, and a testament to the hard work of thousands and thousands of queers and allies around the world, that I and my comrades can live and thrive and do the work today. In particular, I and so many other avant-garde, surrealist, club-kid queers would not be who and what we are without the oft-unsung work of Klaus Nomi, one of the earliest losses to the AIDS crisis. May his memory, forever and always, be a blessing.

Onto some admin notes. A few things--

1) Stretch goal! At 3,000$ (CAD, as all my stuff is) GULA is possible to do in color. Now, I don't expect this to happen in less than 24 hours.... but the option is on the table! It's incentive to keep it going (and to give me the aforementioned cushion). Even within that goal, though, more money means more room for quality control, nicer materials, printing upgrades, etc. [Why is it double the amount? The type of color-work I want to do not only costs more because color, it a) expands the pages needed, and b) makes the creation of an accessible version a bit more of an involved process.)

2) UNRWA! While final numbers will be crunched after everything is said and done, preliminary data gives us $231.40! (Why are there decimal points after you rounded everything, Elliott, you ask? I had some $1 tiers I forgot to account for, but it's all good.) However -- please see my new poll at the bottom (for backers only) asking about a fundamental thing I overlooked! When I was figuring out UNRWA donations I forgot to account for add-ons and donations. So I'm asking you, friends, how best to handle it!

3) The Book Bazaar! At the moment, there is still one project unfunded. Obviously this simply won't do -- so please check out The Primal Rift! We're hoping for a 100% funded Bazaar, and we're SO CLOSE to getting it! The Primal Rift is the third in The Chaos Portal, a trilogy of YA dark fantasy books.

That's all for now! Thank you SO MUCH for getting us this far -- now onwards!!