I’ve had a Patreon account for Crimson Glass for a while. I put up a support page last year about it, but I was never super happy about what I was offering as a benefit.

So a few reasons why I’ve put up a Patreon page. The hosting service I currently use for the website runs on a virtual private server, which allows me to use WordPress and the mailing list and use up a ton of resources with unlimited space and data. It’s a great plan but it costs $25 a month. Domain costs are about $10-13 a year depending on whether I renew during a sale.

Right now, I work two part-time jobs and attend graduate school. My budget has slim margins, and there are definitely months when $25 represents a big portion of my gross pay. I love this site, and I pay it, but it would be nice to feel less pressure.  Last year, I was a student teacher who couldn’t even really work the two jobs which is why I opened the Patreon page.

I’ve updated the Patreon page with new benefits and goals. I’ve created three levels of benefits. If you donate $1, you get access to a synopsis for any story not yet posted. Why does that matter? If you notice a description of my stories, they tend to be one or two sentences with just a brief glimpse of the story. A synopsis introduces the world and the main plot and runs 4-7 paragraphs.  Several of these synopses are already available, the rest being added tomorrow.

If you donate $5, you get access to beta drafts of all my stories. This means when I stop writing and send my work to my beta, I will also post the draft at Patreon where you can get access to the entire draft months before everyone else and even have a say in revisions and changes. Right now, the complete Book 1 for Mad World is already available and I’ll be adding the remaining chapters of Bittersweet tomorrow.

You’ll not only get the beta draft for Book 1, you’ll get all future beta drafts including Book 2, Damaged Season 3, and whatever project I get for NaNoWriMo. This is probably the best tier because for a low cost, you get 20 weeks of content at once without waiting for my updates.

If you donate $10, you can tell me a plot or story idea and I will write it for you. I think that’s kind of a cool benefit — if there’s something you’ve always wanted to see, I can find a way to make it happen.

You can donate just once, get everything posted for your tier at Patreon, and then not renew if you want. You get charged on the first of every month.

I set a few goals that I’d love to hit. The first two are the ones I really want to focus on — $25 to take care of my webhosting costs, and $35 to take care of hosting plus renewing my domains.

The third goal is just a, hey, this is a thing I’d love to have. I mentioned that I’m planning to invest in entire years of GH for the years I tend to write about the most with a focus on 2006-08 since most of my upcoming plans are for that period. Each year costs $225, two years is $400 and three years is $600. I set a goal for $225 just for fun. I do not expect to get anywhere close to that. Investing in full years is really great because my current couple DVDs don’t tend to include all of that character’s stories.

Anyway, this is just a long explanation to let you know how you can support Crimson Glass. I think what I offer here is kind of unique — I am a solo GH author who has more than 20 novels and over a hundred short stories written over a period of 18 years. I have content planned and already written that will take us at least halfway through 2019, so you wouldn’t be supporting me without anything to show for it. Plus, I think the new benefits are kind of cool.

You can support me at Patreon 🙂 Let me know if you have any other ideas for benefits. I would love to keep adding things to make it worth your while.

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