New Year's Resolution

I know it isn't the new year yet (unless you happen to be reading this after January 1st, which will become increasingly likely as time progresses (hello future people!)) but I thought I'd just get my new year's resolution off my chest now while I'm feeling productive. I'm just started winter break now, and I feel I should get more work done with Twokinds than I have been. So, first things first...

• Starting soon, I will begin responding to all my backlogged emails. For those of you who don't know, I am extremely lazy most of the time when it comes to my email responding. In fact... as some of you who may have emailed me in the last few years might have come to realize... I rarely answer emails at all. >_>; This is not intentional! It's just that... well, I get overwhelmed very easily. I take a few days off from my emailing duties and suddenly I have hundreds piled up. And every day the pile increases, the more my desire to try and wade through them decreases. At the moment, I have 2,880 emails yet to receive a response. Some of these go back months. It is my secret shame that I have not been able to keep up with all these. I just get so many every day, it's difficult. I never knew starting out that emailing people would becoming such a large part of running a webcomic.

But no more! I swear that I shall get through every single email next year, no matter how long it takes, and no matter how old it happens to be. And in this case, please do not be surprised if you have emailed me more than once and suddenly receive several replies at the same time. The new gmail design thankfully makes it easier for me to sort through unread emails more quickly, so it shouldn't be quite as hard as it might have been before now.

Edit: Additionally, please don't send me notes here on Deviantart. I just recently realized that I have amassed 697 messages on here too. I didn't even realize for the longest time that I was receiving them, and I haven't even thought about when I'll be able to get around to responding. I apologize sincerely to anyone who sent me anything of a time-sensitive nature and did not receive a reply, either through dA Notes or emails. As I said, I've been really overwhelmed lately. It is nothing intentional, I assure you. I want nothing more than to be able to answer every single person individually, and I still have every intention to do so, but with the volumes I'm dealing with it's going to take time.

• Secondly, starting in January, I resolve to finally create a buffer for myself, so that I am never behind on my updates! This resolution is a lot more challenging than the first. A buffer, for those of you not familiar with the term, means comics made in advance. It's useful in the event of unforeseen disasters that would otherwise cause delays. The reason it is so challenging is because, like a lot of other webcomic artists, I am lazy. I draw my comics at the very last minute, and often times find myself running over my deadline. It seems easy enough just to do the comics as early as I possibly can, but it's quite a lot easier said than done. Working without a deadline is extremely difficult for me. However, I am going to do everything I can to keep up my self-discipline.

• Finally, book #2 of Twokinds will be released sometime next year. I don't know when, but I am determined to finish it and have it out sometime in the summer. It's taken far too long already, and I really want to get a start on #3 as soon as I can.

We'll see how these work out. I know that new years resolutions are made to be broken, but I'm determined to put all my effort into this. Wish me luck!