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539 – A Knife In The Dark (END OF EPISODE 22)
Posted on December 25, 2024 by Dawn

Happy Holidays, all! That's a wrap (heh) for Episode 22 just in time for a Christmas cliffhanger! Hope we don't twist the knife too much...

See y'all in 2025 when Zombie Ranch continues!

Looking forwards…

Posted on December 11, 2024 by Clint
I’m not a “five year plan” kind of guy, for the most part. I guess Zombie Ranch might be an exception just based on it existing for 14 years and counting. We’ve slowed down considerably but haven’t stopped, which is more than I can say for most of our peers back when we started. We’ve put out over 20 print issues and 2 volume collections, and what do we have to show for it? Well, at some point Dawn and I decided not to rate our success in fame or dollar signs. Against all odds we retain a core audience of people wanting to read the story being told, some of whom are so enthusiastic about it I occasionally feel guilty about not living up to their wishes for more content. And yet we’re not getting any younger and we’re not making a lot of money off of this, so we err on the side of health and sanity. We still want to put together a Volume 3, but the landscape is so changed from 2019 that when people come by and ask at conventions I just have to dissemble. We have one more episode/issue to stuff in after this one to close out this current arc and at our current pace that may take most of the year, and the last thing you want to do is start a crowdfunding campaign late in the year because it makes for gnarly tax complications. Also, regardless of your political alignment I don’t think most people would disagree a lot of changes are in store after Trump gets sworn back in, particularly if he goes through with his promised tariffs. We’ve always gotten our printing done inside the U.S. but who knows what the knock-on effects would be if those printers depend on any imports? And that’s presuming the companies we’ve done business with before are still intact, though thankfully that’s so far been the case. There’s a lot of uncertainty out there, and a hike of even a few cents in postal rates can become a big deal if you’re trying to ship rewards out to hundreds of backers. So maybe it’s a blessing that we’re not even at the point where I’d try a 2025 Kickstarter (assuming we even go Kickstarter again, because who knows?) and instead I’m looking to 2026 for that. It’s slow and I’m sure is disappointing to some of our fans that have been “waiting for the trade” but I also figure by then things will have settled some, for better or worse, and we can look at the cost estimates with clear eyes. Crowdfunding lives and dies by realistic goals and I want the goalposts to settle down before going for another punt.