hellooooo newsletter folks!

surprise: despite not having updated this newsletter in like 4 months i'm not dead!

i've been a little bit in crunch mode for various projects, but i'm nearing the finish line & watching the little progress bar in my spreadsheet go steadily up. (91.4% done with inking this book, currently!) more on that later!

positive deviance book fair tomorrow!

if you're in the nyc area, you can come see me tomorrow at bronxlandia for the positive deviance author talk & vendor fair! it's free & masks are required (and provided if you need one). i'll be selling books, stickers, prints, buttons, zines, and my usual assortment of various haunted wares! more info on their eventbrite here!

alright, next up on the list of things i need to write about in this newsletter:

a little request for help.

i've been having a rough time financially for a bit, and normally this is where i'd open commissions or take on more freelance, but as mentioned i've been in crunch mode trying to finish inks on this book and i fear if i add anything more to my plate i may spontaneously combust. i am trying to be a little braver about asking my community when i need help despite being very embarrassed about it!!

this is both a request for help for my own sake and so i can finally finish getting the copies of haunts from my last kickstarter sent out (shipping prices have gone up quite a bit & i still have about 100 books to send out). i'm trying to prioritize getting the books sent, but i also (tragically) still need to do things like pay rent and buy food, so if you like the work i do and happen to have some spare change kicking around, i have a tip jar here to help out with both of those things. (i know there's a lot happening in the world right now that needs donations, though, so absolutely no judgement if you choose to put your money somewhere else!)

some other ways to support me: bonfire (cool shirts), itch (cool zines/pdfs), inprnt (cool prints - this one takes a lot longer for funds to get to me than the others, but you can still get some art for your walls)!

new art since we last spoke!

since last time i updated this newsletter, most of what i've been doing has been working on affairs of the haunt, which i'll share some from in a bit — but it was also hourly comics day, which i participated in for the.... 9th? i think 9th year in a row!

see these & all my past hourly comics on my website!

in affairs of the haunt news, i'm super close to being finished with the inks, so here are some contextless sneak peeks at those! i've been sharing more snippets of it semi-regularly on my bluesky in this thread.

(in case you need a refresher: affairs of the haunt is my upcoming graphic novel with writer jordan alsaqa, coming out in spring 2027, about a demon and a ghost who develop a relationship while working together to tear apart a young human couple who've just moved into a haunted house. it's got spooky paranormal stuff, explorations of grief and identity, enemies to lovers, and demonic art block.)

recommendations corner

• around the internet: 25 years of wikipedia, the ghosts of clipart

• music: nothing's about to happen to me by mitski (fave songs: dead women, where's my phone, if i leave)

  • as i tend to do when getting deep into a new piece of media i've also been making a bunch of character playlists, this time for batman characters. so if anyone wants those - here are playlists for jason todd, tim drake, dick grayson, & stephanie brown. (i feel very normal about the robins.)

    • side note: i deeply miss the days of 8tracks dot com and how easy that made it to share all my silly little fan playlists. rip. i'm in the process of moving my music library off spotify but for now all my playlists are still on there for easy sharing purposes.

• podcasts: american medieval, media club plus, super scary haunted homeschool (horror author grady hendrix's podcast - the new season is about haunted houses!!!)

• silly little daily internet games: enclose.horse, clues by sam, the daily spell, catfishing

that’s all i’ve got this time, i think. hopefully by next time i write to you i’ll be finished inking this book, and maybe even be slightly less stressed! who knows!

<3 - kaylee rowena