Where Has July Gone?

I’d really like to get more consistent with, well, everything! But, definitely this newsletter. And while I’ve made some huge progress in certain areas of my creative life, I’ve fallen behind on others. As it turns out, Summer is incredibly busy with vacations and everyone being home. See, my current work-from-home solution is the glorious kitchen table (which, TBF, offers a wonderful view of the canal). I don’t know that I’ll have the basement WFH ready until near the end of the year (if not early next year). What this means, is that if the rest of the family doesn’t have anything planned for the day that I’m WFH, my free time from the day gig is now filled with family fun!

Anyways, I do have some fun updates about certain things, so let’s get to it!

Merch

Now, I’ve been talking about merch for quite a bit. And while the full scope of what I’d like to do with STARBIRD TEES (a division of STARBIRD MEDIA, LLC) still is in the process of happening, I have launched an Etsy store for some of the stock that I either have on hand still or that I work with a printing partner to create. You can check it out here, but let’s talk about some of my favorite products currently in the store.

Mugs

As a coffee drinker, I was pretty ecstatic when I saw our printing partner offered mugs! I instantly had to get one with our logo on it:

While the Starbird Media mug is available in our Etsy store, I do realize it’s there mainly for me (and I’ll likely get a full set of 4 once my basement studio is ready to go). I do have five other mugs in the store. Some are just fun designs, while others are to help raise money for various causes.

The two highlights for me are Death Before Decaf and A Woman’s Body, but the others are great for their own reasons too.

T-Shirts

I’m not sure that all my t-shirts will end up in the Etsy store, but this is where I’m putting the ones that I currently have extra stock of so that there’s a chance for them to sell (versus just sitting on a shelf). I’d say 99.9% of the shirts that will be sold will be made by me (though, we will be working with artists, podcasters, etc. to bring their IP to life on a shirt), but every now and then, I may have something that’s just silly enough it’s better to just work with a printing partner. Case in point, these political satire shirts that just went live today:

The GOP response of “Thoughts and Prayers” and change nothing when a mass shooting happens is getting old. It’s 2022 and it’s pretty clear that thoughts and prayers aren’t the answer to gun violence.

Oh, and it’s not just the GOP with their bullshit. The dems to it too. As a liberal, one of the most frustrating things, when something horrendous happens, is that democrats will tell us to go out and vote. For real? Didn’t we just do that—didn’t we get you the house, the senate, and the executive branch? Yet we’re still losing rights. Yet kids are still getting killed in mass shootings. Yet all the other things I haven’t mentioned.

Anyway, proceeds from the VOTE and THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS shirts will go to various organizations that are actually trying to make things better (The Trevor Project, Trans Lifeline, Everytown, Abortion Funds, and more).

While I do have some minor updates about some other things, the talk about merch went on much longer than I had anticipated! A quick note about Walking with Writers before I wrap things up—it turns out editing a video podcast is a different skill set from both editing audio podcasts and editing video projects! I’m moving the launch date to next Wednesday, with episode 0 dropping this Friday. I can’t promise 0 will get to you guys before the general public, but I’ll get episode 1 posted for you guys Monday.

I also want to start something that I’m borrowing from Mike over at Tellest—an art contest! For now, we’re going to be doing this every other month (starting now, but really August 1st). There will be a theme, prize, and an opportunity to continue to earn money for the use of your art on our merchandise! So, with that, August Art Contest Details:

Theme: With San Diego Comic Con just passing, lets kick off our first art contest with a broad theme—pop-culture!

Prize: $25 Gift Card—while Amazon would be the easiest, I’d also love to help support your favorite brick & morter Local Comic Book Store, Local Game Store, or Local Art Store. If you win, let us know your favorite local book, comic book, game, or art store, and we’ll do our best to get you a gift card there—if we can’t get one easily, then we’ll send you an Amazon gift card.

You said merch? Yes! Normally, we’d be looking for original art to put on t-shirts, but this is a pop-culture contest! What that means is that there is certain criteria that has to be met for us to be able to use the art in this way. In short, winning this month’s contest won’t guarantee that we can offer to put your design on shirts or other pieces of merch. But, if we can put it on a shirt, our artist payouts start at $4 per shirt sold!

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