A Function of Firepower: Schlock Mercenary Book 19

Bonus Story Progress and Charging Cards
4 months ago – Mon, Dec 01, 2025 at 07:45:46 AM

Greetings Backers,

Action Item: We will be locking orders and charging cards on December 10. Please double check your order to make sure you have added all the items you want. Click Here to check your order or use the survey link in your email. If you have a need for delay or managing when your card is charged, please reach out to [email protected] and I'll be happy to help.

TL;DR: We're charging cards on December 10. Howard continues to make steady progress on the bonus story. Sandra is about to be very busy shipping Structuring Life to Support Creativity.  Your next update will be the week of December 22-26. 

As a heads up, if you're planning on ordering holiday gifts from the Schlock Store, please make sure you place your orders by the following dates to ensure holiday arrival:

• November 30 --International Shipments
• December 15 -- United States Shipments

The Mossworks store is also an excellent place to shop for handmade dice trays and art trees.

If you want to jump on board for Structuring Life to Support Creativity, those books are arriving tomorrow and paperbacks will arrive in time for Christmas. Click Here to Order.

Details

Locking Orders and Charging Cards

After consulting with our accountant, she says that for tax reasons it is better for us to charge cards in December rather than January. This is why I consult my accountant at the end of each year. She has more than once told me moves to make to reduce the tax burden of our business that has exceedingly variable income. For most of you the only thing being charged is your shipping cost, but if you added on any items after funding closed, those will also be charged now. If you have a need for delay or managing when your card is charged, please reach out to [email protected] and I'll be happy to help. 

SLSC Shipping

The shipment of Structuring Life to Support Creativity books arrives tomorrow. Sandra has scheduled most of this week to get as many packages into the mail as fast as possible. She hopes to have almost all of them into the mail by Saturday and the remainder in the mail during the first half of next week. If you want all the details of that shipping, you can follow the project updates or you can place a Pre-order and get one of those books shipped to you!

FoF Bonus Story

Howard has been hard at work on the bonus story for A Function of Firepower. He's making excellent progress on a daily basis and keeping track of it on a spreadsheet page. 

Many more check boxes are green! This makes us very happy. The background and painting steps tend to take more time, but we're still hoping to finish this up by Christmas and then Howard can work his way through margin art.

Sorry for the short update this time. We'll do a quick update next time as well, and a longer update in early January. Holidays really impact brain space. 

Your next quick update will be the week of Dec 22-26. Your next detailed update will be in early January.

Thank you so much for backing our project!

Howard and Sandra Tayler

November Progress Update
5 months ago – Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 06:39:53 PM

Greetings Backers,

TL;DR: No action items (unless you still need to fill out your survey.) Howard is making steady progress on the bonus story. Your next update will be the week of December 1-6. 

As a heads up, if you're planning on ordering holiday gifts from the Schlock Store, please make sure you place your orders by the following dates to ensure holiday arrival:

• November 30 --International Shipments
• December 15 -- United States Shipments

The Mossworks store is also an excellent place to shop for handmade dice trays and art trees.

Details

SLSC Shipping

We've received word that the shipment of Structuring Life to Support Creativity books is due to arrive on December 3. This event will not impact Howard's schedule much, but it will make Sandra very busy for several weeks as she gets as many packages into the mail as fast as possible in the hope that backers can have their books for the holidays. If you want all the details of that shipping, you can follow the project updates or you can place a Pre-order and get one of those books shipped to you!

FoF Bonus Story

Howard has been hard at work on the bonus story for A Function of Firepower. He's making excellent progress on a daily basis and keeping track of it on a spreadsheet page. 

Howard reported on his progress in Bluesky:

November 8, 2025

One really cool thing about being the writer AND illustrator for a comic book is that the writer→illustrator feedback loop is fast and extremely efficient. The writer passes the script to the illustrator who begins laying out pages, which the writer can instantly see and have ideas about.

My "writer brain" just throws dialog and action into boxes. My "illustrator brain" arranges and reshapes those boxes as actual panels for telling the story, but when my writer brain sees those the story (or the telling) changes. New options open up. It's how I end up with layouts like this: 

In the original script the third row ended on a close-up panel of a character saying something dramatic (just before the page turn, because we write to the page turn). Now there's no close-up. It's a reveal of sorts, one that only makes sense in context of the dialog in that corner of the page.

Generally speaking you write to the page turn by putting reveals on the upper left of a page spread and by asking questions that lead to the next reveal in the lower right. That way the reader doesn't accidentally skip ahead to a lower-right reveal.

In this case the lower-right reveal won't stand out much without the context of the full row of dialog, and it is both a reveal AND an important question whose answer lies on the upper left corner of the next page.

In the script I only imagined room for the dialog to pose the question. I wasn't completely happy with it because there's a much BIGGER thing I wanted to do with the page turn. When Illustrator-Brain got ahold of the script and began carving rows into panels the new solution presented itself.

It has taken me roughly 10x as long to write about this process as the process itself actually took. If I were writing for another person to illustrate, that loop would still be 24 hours from the first iteration. (Granted, the final pictures would probably be better, but that's another matter.)

November 12, 2025

Yesterday I finished scripting the FUNCTION OF FIREPOWER bonus story, "Refulgence of Refuge," and laid all the dialog into panels. I'm calling it "script complete" and "layout complete" despite the fact that the final panel has a note in it, "write better," which is shorthand for "ideally this panel will have a pithy bit of dialog and a narrator bookend (the narrator opens the story, and can therefore close it) that ties this story's threads together while nodding to the contents of the rest of the book AND teasing what's coming in the next one."

That may sound like A) the script isn't actually finished, and B) that's a lot of heavy lifting for one panel of dialog and narration, and yes, that's the noise it makes. But that writing can go atop almost ANY picture, so for illustration purposes the script and layout are complete.

Also, I'm a long-form comics guy who has been refining his writing chops for 25 years now. Just because I didn't have the words for that panel last night doesn't mean I'll never have the words. This is something I've done before, so I'm trusting myself to figure out a way to do it again.

I had a bit of a "face-palm" moment. The title of the story, "Refulgence of Refuge," literally unpacks into "radiance, resplendence, or brilliance of the shelter or point/path of recourse for the distressed." The art and story should support the title in some way.

Well, I was devoting huge panels to the reason for running away, but crowded the "resplendent redoubt," the "shining safe-place" into just 1/3rd of a row. Ooops. I'm keeping the big destruction panels on the penultimate page, but the final page is getting new layout.

[End Howard Report]

The rate of progress here is encouraging. I'm hopeful that the bonus story will be close to done by the time we report again. 

Patreon

Howard has a lot of fun at our monthly Patreon Hangouts. November's Hangout happens next week (details here) on Nov 20 at 6pm Mountain Time. Sign up here if you want to come to the hangout.  

Sandra is also running some creative support and community co-working. You can find details on Sandra's Patreon. 

That's it! We've got plenty of work to do. We'll update you again in about three weeks. It may be a short update because Sandra will be much occupied with holiday shipping and shipping SLSC. You can expect your next update the week of December 1-6. 

Thank you so much for backing this project!

Howard and Sandra Tayler

Status Report on Deliverables
6 months ago – Wed, Oct 22, 2025 at 08:53:37 AM

Greetings Backers,

TL;DR: No action items (unless you still need to fill out your survey.) Mandatory Failure is fully delivered. Below is a detailed status report on all remaining work for Function of Firepower. Details on what we've been doing below. Your next update will be the week of November 10-14. 

It is time to refocus our full attention on this project and that starts with the list of deliverables and their status.

Deliverables

Core Items

• A Function of Firepower PDF - Will be delivered a few weeks after we send the book to print. 
• A Function of Firepower perfect-bound glossy soft-cover - Howard is working on the Bonus story now.
• A Function of Firepower sketch editions - We'll start these once we have books in hand.

Add-ons

• Full-color sketch cards - Howard will work on these once we've got the books and merchandise off to print.
• Limited Edition “Ancient Earth” Print - Ready for test print
• Coin: Not My Circus Not My Monkey - COMPLETE!
• Coin: Jumpstar Prime Lyceum - Waiting for design
• Tough's Logo Pin - COMPLETE!
• Limited Edition Mission Patch - COMPLETE!

Exclusives

• HESH Coin, Series 3 (for HESH pledge level backers) - Waiting for design
   

Digital Goodies

• Desktop + mobile wallpapers: FoF Cover Art, Ancient Earth, Illustrated Maxim 52.  COMPLETE!

Or we can show you in our project tracking spreadsheet.

Details

Bonus Story

Howard has been working on the bonus story for Function of Firepower. This week he has been pulling himself back into the work by refining some of the backdrop areas. It lets him create a visual design he's calling Giger-Seuss. 

Once he's got these fiddly bits out of the way he can start rolling on getting pages done. By our next update we should have check marks next to some of those bonus story pages in the big project spreadsheet. At that point we'll have a good estimate of how long the rest of the story will take to complete.

Mossworks

This isn't our project, except that it is run by our daughter and son-in-law. But we hope you'll take a look at these amazing dice trays and tree sculptures they have for sale. If you're looking for gifts, these are beautiful handmade options and you'll be supporting young artists trying to build up their business. CLICK HERE TO GO TO THEIR SHOP

The dice trays are solid hardwood with varnishes that can stand up to rolling dice.

The trees are made from up-cycled jewelry. Each item is unique, so if you see something you like, make sure to grab it before it is gone.

Warehouse Reorganization

The front room and side rooms are done! I now have functional inventory space and project space. 

I've posted a video tour of the space both before and after over on Patreon for our Insiders if you're interested. Warehouse Side Room Video Tour

Patreon

Howard has a lot of fun at our monthly Patreon Hangouts. Sandra is enjoying writing up insider posts. (example insider post available here!)  

Our Plan

We don't have any big events scheduled between now and the end of the year. This means a full five weeks of focused work between now and US Thanksgiving. Sandra will be distracted by holiday shipping starting mid November and then distracted by fulfillment on Structuring Life to Support Creativity in December, but Howard does not have anything else on his schedule between now and the end of the year. He's throwing all his available work cycles into getting this project done.

We'll update you on progress again in about three weeks. You can expect your next update the week of November 10-14. 

Thank you so much for backing this project!

Howard and Sandra Tayler

Update on Progress
6 months ago – Thu, Oct 02, 2025 at 01:58:53 PM

Greetings Backers!

TL;DR: No action items (unless you still need to fill out your survey.) Howard has been focusing on the final deliverables for Mandatory Failure, so work on Function of Firepower has been slow. Details on what we've been doing below. Your next update will be the week of October 20-24. 

Details

Shipping for Mandatory Failure

Howard has been drawing sketch cards. Sandra has been shipping packages. There are about 81 packages to go to complete shipping. There is still the technocane tutorial, but it will be nice to have shipping complete.

Retooling Our Patreon

We held our first Hangout where we discussed Tub of Happiness. It was really fun! We've scheduled October 16 at 6pm MDT to talk about The Teraport Wars. We also offered an interesting array of Insider posts during September and plan to do the same this month. (example insider post available here!) The Hangouts are fun for Howard. He just gets to show up and talk to people, so while those have to be budgeted for in energy, they are joyful. We're willing to spend energy on joy. 

Sandra's Patreon is also getting refurbished. She's building community around topics from Structuring Life to Support Creativity. This month's topic is Dreams and Priorities.

Structuring Life to Support Creativity

The announcement for this one is that I've got Mary Robinette Kowal narrating the audiobook!  You can read the full announcement here. 

Warehouse Reorganization

I've made progress! Here are some comparison photos. I'm planning on doing a detailed write up soon.

But what about Function of Firepower?

We've finished off the Writing Excuses recording. We don't have any travel or events scheduled until February of next year (and then only for Sandra). We are very much looking forward to focusing our efforts and prepping this book for print by the end of this year. We want to be running fewer projects in parallel and be fully focused on this one. 

So we've been very busy trying to finish off some other things so we can turn our attention toward getting Function of Firepower complete.  We'll have another update for you the week of October 20-24.

Thank you so much for being part of this project with us. 

Howard and Sandra Tayler

September Progress
7 months ago – Thu, Sep 11, 2025 at 10:24:48 AM

Greetings Backers!

TL;DR: No action items (unless you still need to fill out your survey.)Thank you to everyone who filled out your survey. Having accurate counts helps us with ordering. Howard has been focusing on the final deliverables for Mandatory Failure, so work on Function of Firepower has been slow. Details on what we've been doing below. Your next update will be the week of Sept 29- Oct 3. 

Details

Shipping for Mandatory Failure

Howard has been drawing sketch cards. Sandra has been shipping packages. There are about 170 packages to go and then we can close the book on shipping. There is still the technocane tutorial, but it will be nice to have shipping complete.

Retooling Our Patreon

In an effort to create stabilizing, monthly income streams rather than living from project to project, we're working to increase our Patreon offerings. We considered carefully how to add value and interesting content, but not add work to Howard's already overburdened schedule. His resources are limited, we have to spend them carefully. This is why the new Insider posts are often me collecting and collating things Howard has already done elsewhere. When he writes up a tutorial in the Discord or on Blusky, I will grab what he has done and expand it into a full-fledged Insider post. When he scribbles recipe information onto an index card in our kitchen, I will take that card and type it up into a full recipe for the Insiders. (example insider post available here!) The Hangouts are fun for Howard. He just gets to show up and talk to people, so while those have to be budgeted for in energy, they are joyful. We're willing to spend energy on joy. 

Sandra's individual Patreon is also getting refurbished. She's building community around topics from Structuring Life to Support Creativity. This month's topic is Creative Interference.

Structuring Life to Support Creativity

This book is off to print! The final push to do the copy edits and layout were pretty exhausting, but it is done. You can read the latest update here. This week I need to finish up the eBook formatting so that I can deliver that to those backers soon. 

Warehouse Reorganization

What I really want is to be able to show pictures of a beautifully organized space. We're not there yet. In fact right now some of the spaces are messier than they were because in order to organize we had to pull things out of corners and stack them in inconvenient places. I just need to make time to get over there and do the work to move shelves and then relocate all of the stuff to where it actually belongs. I've just been a bit busy. A lot busy. I'm hoping that by the next update I'll have organized photos to show off.

So we've been very busy trying to finish off some other things so we can turn our attention toward getting Function of Firepower complete.  We'll have another update for you the week of September 29- October 3.

Thank you so much for being part of this project with us. 

Howard and Sandra Tayler