To quote Professor Farnsworth: “Good news, everyone! Bad news!”

We will not be producing a Schlock Mercenary Monthly Calendar for 2016. The 2015 calendar sold well enough with other merchandise to not be an outright loss, but the books and slipcases were what carried last year for us.

This year we’re looking at the Planet Mercenary production schedule, and we simply cannot justify taking time out to make a calendar when the project for which we’ve accepted money in advance is not yet complete.

We’re also delaying our print run of Schlock Mercenary: Force Multiplication until after we’ve got Planet Mercenary queued up for print. This hurts a bit more, because not having a new book out in time for Christmas shoppers is the very definition of “leaving money on the table,” but again, having accepted money in advance for a thing that is not yet finished, I cannot in good conscience spend time on other projects—not even profitable ones.

There’s an update over on the Planet Mercenary Kickstarter page if you’d like more details on how that project is going. The salient point? It’s keeping me busy enough that the only other business activity I can justify is the daily updates on the comic. The movie reviews? Okay, I can’t really justify those, except to say that going out to see a show helps refill the well on the other stuff, and I might as well tell you how the show went.

This morning was spent on Mayhem cards for Planet Mercenary. This afternoon I have a week of comics to pencil and ink. This blog post is happening in the cracks, and the crack is swiftly closing…