The Word Project has an Uber-Backer!

(Hystercine: (adj) resembling or referring to a hedgehog) This was me last evening- but happy.


Last evening I heard the little "bip" that signals email come in. I checked it- aha! another kickstarter pledge! yippee! Then I opened the email and saw that someone had pledged at the highest level. I was stunned and then I burst into tears. When I was setting up the project I had stopped the incentives at the $600 level (poster, signed book and a piece of existing WP art.) Even then I felt I was overreaching. (But I was proved wrong here, too. Bless you CA.) A wonderful friend, Mark Monlux, was the one who suggested setting an uber-backer level (poster, signed book and a custom word/doll using a word of the backer's choice.) My first thought was- "oh yeah, like that'll happen." But I put it in anyway quite sure no one would spring for it. I am happily proved wrong. Thank you, Mark, I wouldn't have dared to dream that large on my own behalf.
The project is now 68% funded and has 76 days to go. I am so very grateful to everyone who has pledged at every level.

Words at rest and at play

I have been playing Scrabble® on the web with another illustrator, Mark Monlux, and having a grand time. He lives on the west coast, I on the east, but we got to know each other through serving on the Board of the Graphic Artists Guild for many, many, many years. We used to play Scrabble® during down times at the annual Board conventions. He is as positive and energetic as I tend to be a bit sour and withdrawn (hmmmm, maybe I still am a sullen teen in a middle-aged body...)so he is always like a breath of fresh Northwestern Ocean air. He is also the author of the Comic Critic, a very funny illustrated movie guide, and a fan of those torrid paperback covers from the 40's & 50's.
Our games are slow- no timers here. Usually a week or two for a game but who's counting? Ever since I came out The Word Project, no one here wants to play with me. I am at pains to remind them that words like many in the WP probably aren't in the Scrabble dictionary in the first place and much of the success in any game depends upon the luck of the draw of tiles. But that does not convince them, more's the pity.
So, hail to thee, blithe spirit, for flinging those virtual tiles back and forth across the ether with me.