I’m having trouble with my tablet stylus! I ordered a new one, but it won’t be here for a bit, so I’m out of commission till then. On top of that, I have a busy weekend coming up, so I’m going to play it safe and say the next update will be on 11/26/19. Looks like the stylus will arrive in time for me to ink and color everything by the 19th, so that’s when the next update will be! See you then, and thank you as always for your patience and understanding!

All right, I’ve been putting this off for a while, but there’s no denying it anymore: my current production schedule just isn’t working for me lately. I think this is a temporary thing. The production schedule I’ve come up with should really be compatible with a busy day job work schedule. The problem is, for this chapter in particular, there hasn’t been enough prep work.

Basically, BSF arcs tend to fall into two distinct categories, which I’m going to call High Momentum and Low Momentum. High momentum arcs are sets of chapters where the simple act of drawing carries me through the entire thing. I don’t need to plan ahead much, because I’m stringing together plot points quickly and each page is basically guaranteed to get me there. If the comic were a meal, this would be the carbs. It’s delicious! Everyone loves it! You and I can digest it quickly! As a result, getting through it is easy for me as an author. High action stuff is like this a lot. There’s also stuff with say, the Slime King, who I have much easier time writing in general. Lina and Seb are like this, too. So, a lot of the comic is like this, meaning I don’t need to do a whole lot of planning ahead and can just wing it, more or less. Which is great, because it’s compatible with my relatively busy schedule.

On the other hand, we have low momentum arcs. These are fewer and further between, but they still exist. In keeping with the meal analogy, this is the protein. It’s good, but it takes more effort to make it good. You can’t just throw it on some heat and expect it to come out delicious. You need to marinate it or season it, then keep an eye on it the entire time, and make sure you stop preparing it before it gets overdone. Once you’re sure it’s perfect, it’s just as enjoyable as the carbs, but it takes longer to digest. On top of that, it’s the main reason the meal even exists. If you mess it up, the entire thing might as well go in the trash, or at least be eaten as you miserably mumble to yourself about not wasting food while you’re already fantasizing about how much better dinner is going to be tomorrow night. In other words, this is big deal story stuff. It has to be as good as it possibly can be to carry the rest of the comic.

As you may have guessed, the current chapter, Saga Fantasy, is basically 100% low momentum stuff. It is pure protein. Everything has to be just so; I can’t just wing it between plot points because everything needs to be reached at the right pace to deliver the proper impact. It’s setting up so much stuff, you have no idea. Stuff introduced in this chapter is going to be relevant clear to the end of the entire story. I’m not even kidding. If it ends up being the midway point of BSF, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. As such, it’s getting nearly impossible to produce this chapter with my current schedule that largely relies on playing it by ear at two pages per week. I can’t keep doing that to this arc.

As such, I’m going to need to take some time off from updating to give this story meat the time it deserves. To set myself up for success, I’m going to give myself about a month; updates will resume on August 12th, 2019.

During the hiatus, I’m going to be doing the following:

1) Write the remainder of the chapter. This means the entirety of Paracelsus’s flashback.
2) Thumbnail all of it.

That’s the most important thing. If I have a planned out story, I can make it work no problem.
However, if I have more time during the next month-or-so, I’ll also…

3) Start inking. Coloring is the easiest part, so I’m just going to ink.
4) Color if I have time. If I don’t, then I’ll start coloring in preparation for the 12th.

… and that’s it. I think that once I get this chapter done, it’s going to be a lot easier to pick the momentum back up. Life will still get in the way occasionally, but it should, ideally, go back to the way it was say, last year or the year before.

So that’s it. I’m sorry for dropping this on everyone, but hey, sometimes you need to wait before you take a great comic out of the oven. Or something like that, anyway. I’ll keep updating BSF’s social media; if you follow the comic there, you may not actually notice anything, since I’m way behind on updates and need to resume posting those regularly. So I’ll just be playing catch-up on Facebook and Twitter amid writing and thumbing out the entire chapter.

Thank you, as always, for your continued understanding and patience. It means a lot to me that you not only read BSF but also understand that life happens and put up with delays like this. I’ll see you all back here on the 12th.

So, as you know, last weekend was very busy for me and I couldn’t work on the comic. Things were looking good for this weekend, though, until I got sick. I think it was stomach flu or food poisoning. Anyway, it was bad, and I’m still getting over it.

I hate delaying the comic like this, but I really don’t want to put out low quality work. Right now I’ve mostly recovered, but my energy levels aren’t quite there yet. I should be good in another week, so come hell or high water, regular updates will resume on March 12th. Juggling this comic with a full time job and all the usual life obligations is tough, but I’m not going anywhere till it’s done. Thank you, as always, for your continued understanding and patience.