*Deep breath*
It’s time to go down to part-time and finish this book. It’s time to get Toymaker done. I’ve got the cover, I’ve got 2/3 bookmarks.
I AM SO CLOSE.
But I can’t do it alone. If you’ve been reading these chapters and you think Toymaker is a COOL THING please send some money my way. One dollar, five, fifteen, or twenty-five–anything helps. It really does.
The plan is to buckle down and write like crazy until the end of the summer art season, at which point I will hopefully have Toymaker completed and ready for its final editing.
So I am putting my box out and asking for help.
Several times each week during the summer art season here in Portland I go downtown and stand in the costume above, and give out paper hearts to people who pass by. Putting my box out is an exercise in faith–faith that repays itself in love and stories and moments and beauty and art, and yes, money.
Art becomes a currency that has only one set price: the certainty that when I hand you a heart it is because I love you. I love you even if you don’t pay, even when bills get tight. I love you because the art of loving and the art of asking are intrinsically entwined.
I love you, do you love me?
I see you, do you see me?
I need help, will you help me?
Last Saturday a homeless man approached Statue Me. He saw all the money in my box and asked if I could spare a dollar. I handed him one and he looked surprised, saying “Wow, really?”
Yesterday at the mid-week farmer’s market another artist–a potter–said that one of her customers bought a pot last year and every time she sees Statue Me she gets a heart and that she keeps all her hearts in that pot.
Last year a young gay man took one of my hearts at Pride, and tucked it into his volunteer binder at the beginning of the season. Many months later someone tried to give the same heart back to me from the same binder they had picked up by chance.
“Keep going, you’re spreading a better message.”
Yes, always yes.
And so the hearts and the help and the art circulates, becoming more than just a closed loop of commercial exchange, but a flexible community that trades in smiles and moments and memories.
Please help keep the love and the art going, so that I can finish this book and show it to the world. Please be a part of my life.
Even if all you do is subscribe until September and then cancel after that, that’s okay.
$1 until September = $4
$5 until September = $20
$15 until September = $60
$25 until September = $100
For the next 3 people who sign up for the $15 Patron reward tier on Patreon I will give you a FREE COPY of Toymaker. And if you keep your donation (of $15+ only) going beyond September I will do something extra special just for you.
Want me to send an entire package of red paper hearts to someone of your choosing?
Want me to add a name of your suggestion into this novel or the next one? (My discretion, it can’t be obscene or conflict with a name I already have, or by copyrighted like “Frodo”, for example.)
Want an interview for your youtube channel?
…
…
The long and the short of it is that I need some help right now to make this art, this book, happen.
I love you.
