Hiiiiiiiiiii.

This is a sorely underused space, isn’t it? Actually, there’s an interesting and nonpermanent reason for that, dear reader–and more importantly, the lull is now over. But I’ll get into the fun details next time.

Meanwhile, I was about to brag about how we’ve been posting the actual comics with near-perfect punctuality the entire time regardless of being quiet about it, but this would be an awkward moment to do that. I regret to report that this week’s comic will post in the morning instead of…the morning. By which I mean, before lunch, instead of before I go to bed.

It’s well underway, though, and nearly done! So stay tuned, and thank you for your patience! :)

~ Rachel

Next-morning edit: It’s up! Hooray~

Okay! Hi everyone, and happy 2010!

The year is off to a splendid start, and both Michael and I are excited to move things along in the comic. Being new to this, we feel pretty happy about having been able to keep the updates going even despite some rocky times on this end. It’s been nutty over here, what with work, classes, holidays, extreme morning sickness…

Oh, yes! The writer is pregnant, and is fortunately now having a great time of it. Thank goodness for the middle trimester, and for Heath, my awesome husband. Meanwhile, fear not–when the little lad is born in spring, Michael will have a biiiiiiiig buffer of scripts to work from, so I don’t expect any impact on our updating schedule. Just, you know, everything else. X)

One thing I can’t decide, though, is what to do about this year’s Stumptown Comics Fest. Michael and I had the chance to attend a few years back, and we had a blast. From the very beginning, we’ve planned on trying to set up a table this spring to join in the fun from the other side. However, the timing turns out to be a little weird, mainly because the convention dates are only a week ahead of when I’m due to be having a baby. So whooooo knows what state I’ll be in.

If I’m feeling chipper and/or crazy enough, it’s possible we may still go. It’s also possible we’ll just send Michael, or we may chicken out of the whole thing. So just for my own curiosity, do we have any readers out there who plan on going? I do highly recommend it, if you can. :)

Anyway, it’s gonna be an excellent few months. Thanks for reading, everyone, and for all your comments. These characters make us happy, and we absolutely love being able to share them.

See you Saturday!

~ Rachel

I keep wanting to say something, but then I just end up sitting back and watching in wide-eyed amazement. I’ve wondered, will this really keep happening if I don’t draw anyone’s attention to it?

The answer is, apparently, yes. About a week and a half ago, Runewood Abbey hit the top ten at WebcomicZ.com, and it has continued to climb ever since. This morning we reached rank 8. We are in awe.

All of this has been without any recent push from me or Michael, and therefore all credit goes to the awesomeness of our incredibly kind and supportive readers. Thank you so much! :D This is so exciting!

Now that we’ve all got our eyeballs over there, I have to admit I’m extremely curious to see just how far we can climb. So if you haven’t voted today, please do! Remember, you can head back to both WebcomicZ and TopWebComics every single day to drop in a new vote–it’s easiest by way of the links on the right, which lead to voting pages here and here.

After that, if you register an account at these sites (and I’ve never gotten a lick of spam from either, by the way), you can list us as a favorite, which helps improve our standing even more! For that matter, you can favorite every comic you like, and vote for each one of us every day. It’s an enormously friendly system.

To help this along, and to thank you all for everything you’ve done so far, I’m gonna start posting incentives over at TWC again, starting tomorrow Thursday. I’m not sure yet what the posting schedule is going to be, or what format it’s going to take, but I’ll keep you posted here as I figure it out. :)

Oh, yes, and I have not forgotten my vow to do something spectacular when we reached the top ten. We have that underway now. Keep your eyes peeled!

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to focus most of our attention on the comic itself. If you lovely people out there like it enough to share it with your friends, then we thank you enormously, and we’ll try to have the best page we can make every week waiting for them when they show up. :)

Woo hoo! Thanks again, everyone!!

~ Rachel

Hi all!

Just a quick heads-up: tomorrow’s comic will not be posting in the middle of the night as usual, but rather in the mid- to late morning. We’re hoping to have it up by noon PST, so keep an eye on the RSS feed, and thanks for your patience.

Also, look for another more substantial journal post tomorrow! Topics of discussion will include website maintenance, an awesome and exciting link, and what the heck has been going on since our last entry!

See you then!

~ Rachel

Hello again! So, okay, here are the three scoops we promised yesterday:

Maintenance: It’s becoming crucially important for me to some back-end updating to the website, so I’m going to do that this coming week. If at any time between now and next Saturday the site starts looking reeeeeally bizarre, don’t panic! I promise I’ll have it fixed by the time the next page is due. Most of the changes will be invisible and include things like an improved spam filter, but I hope to put in a few frequently-requested features as well. These will include a more obvious link to our RSS feed, a less terrible archive system (with maybe a dropdown system?), and next/previous buttons that appear above the comic pages in the archive. The back-end stuff will be first, though. Anything else you’d like to see? Please let us know in the comments!

Awesome link: Okay, so here’s the best part of this post. Runewood Abbey has gotten its first review! Check it out right over here. We’re just beside ourselves with tickledness. It’s always awesome to see evidence of what this story looks like as it makes its way outside of our heads, so any kind of feedback is a thrill. There’s lots of blush-worthily positive stuff here, as well as some hints about things Michael and I think we could be doing better, so, best of both worlds. :) Thank you so much to our reviewer!

Incentives: So, geez, Rachel, what happened with that incentive thing you promised? Gah, I know. I’m sorry. And I’m gonna let that be a lesson to me to never again publicly promise anything I’m not 100% sure I can follow up on. It’s a good lesson to learn sooner than later, eh? I do have a few ideas for such a thing, but between the various other pressures of life (the end of school, the last two months of pregnancy, other stuff), it turned out to be surprisingly difficult just to stay on top of the regular comic. Fortunately, we managed to do so, and now I am wiser about my limits. So! I’m afraid I’m going to have to back out of any scheduled incentive posting, for now, but as a compromise, I will continue to twiddle at making that happen, and when it does happen I will post about it here.

Meanwhile, if you have any questions you’d like to see Brind and Vireh answer from the mailbag, feel free to send ‘em our way! I’m not sure that will continue to be the default format for incentives, but it couldn’t hurt. :)

Aaaanyway. Thank you again, all of you, for your support and your feedback and your awesome comments…and just for reading. :) This is a slightly scary but incredibly fun and rewarding hobby, and we love having you all along for the ride.

~ Rachel

Just to let everyone know, the new comic will be posted ’round noon tomorrow, instead of midnight.

On the plus side, finals week is over now. :3

~ Rachel

Hiii all,

So Michael and I are at our parents’ house this weekend, and the big news this morning is a virus chewing on the computer Michael has been using to get the new page assembled. Luckily, it’s not his normal computer, but it’s still causing lame and unforeseen problems.

Sorry for the delay — we’ll get the page up as fast as we can. Wish us luck.

~ Rachel

For anyone who’s seen this page going up and down and up and down as we’ve worked on the backend–we’re done for now, and everything should be stable. Woohoo! There will be more to do some time in the future, but it’s not crucial, so we’re leaving it alone for now. Meanwhile, let’s hear a round of applause for our brother Ben and our good friend J for helping us sort out the bugs! We couldn’t have done it without you!

Thanks again for your patience, and please let us know if anything on the site starts behaving weirdly! But also, expect responses to email to be slower than usual for a little while, because there’s a baby due any day now. :) Comics should keep going up pretty much as usual, though.

Hooray in general!

~ Rachel

Hello everyone! Long time to no blog!

That’s mostly because, as indicated in the previous entry, there has been a babying! My son, and Michael’s nephew was born at the end of April, and things have been super awesome and also super time consuming ever since. <3

Meanwhile, today there is good news and bad news: the good news is that this was Michael’s last week of school ever. Woohoo!! The bad news is that he had an avalanche of work to do because of that, so today’s comic will be quite late, but we’re still planning to have it up before midnight. Next week it will be summer again, and there will be much more time on our hands, so hopefully we can get back to midnight-Friday updates–and, perhaps, start thinking about a more frequent posting schedule. Perhaps!

Tonight’s page will be #52–that’s a full year of comics. Holy cow. Thank you, everyone, for reading, and for writing back to us. This is all so much more fun with you all around. My mind is blown.

See you tonight!

~ Rachel

Hi! Just so’s you’re all prepared, this weekend’s comic will be another of the late-in-the-day updates. But finals are now finished, and both Michael and my husband will be getting their diplomas tomorrow. :) Huzzah!

Also, while going through old boxes, our mother found a short comic book that Michael and I collaborated on 14 years ago, for a fourth-grade project I had to do about fractions. It is amazing, and I will be scanning it as soon as I get it from her. So look forward to that, too. XD

~ Rachel