Postcard Poll, Pairing Logic, & Catherynne M. Valente Reveal
almost 3 years ago
– Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 04:48:25 PM
Hello lovely backers!
We are now officially into week two, and how amazing is it to see over 6,600 folks supporting our little deck! Woot! Thank you all so much for joining in his mad caper!
As we edge up to unlocking our next stretch goal (some very swanky postcards!), we’re setting up polls so you can vote on the cards you want. The first poll is doing on RIGHT NOW, and there are a few more hours left to cast your vote on which of these lovely cards you fancy!
Next up, as always, I have some fun press updates, including a GREAT article in Sci-Fi Wire:
“An incredible …. pairing [of] legendary stories from throughout literature with stunning art and guidebook entries from some of the best writers in comics, prose, and beyond.” — SYFY WIRE
Also, if you missed it:
- Podcast by UNDERCOVER CAPES where Dani didn’t realize it would be video and keeps sunglasses on the whole time (bad Dani)…
TAROT CARD REVEALS
Wow, you all were incredibly good at the Tarot Guessing Game last time! Spot on for The Great Gatsby (paired by Erin Morgenstern) and A Midsummer’s Night Dream (paired by Ellen Azevedo). There was not a single incorrect guess in the comments (well done!).
But fair warning: this week is gonna be harder…
Aren’t these babies lovely? For those of you who CANNOT wait until the next update to know what pairing each beautiful card brings to life, check out that Sci-Fi Wire article! It’s got all the secrets.
GETTING THE WORD OUT
Of course, we have now entered the dreaded middle phase of Kickstarter, where—like Odysseus’s crew battling those sirens—we will all move carefully toward our goal, trying to escape rocky obstacles. For anyone excited enough to jump into the crow’s nest and help navigate, please keep sharing this lovely project with your lit and tarot lovers!
We’re very excited about some of our high-level stretch goals (which include so many of the things you’ve been clamoring for in the comments), and goodness, we so want to get to those magical shores!
For those inclined to help (THANK YOU), please tweet out this URL and explain why you are excited to back Literary Tarot on Twitter (it's a special link so we can track the action (woot math brain activated!)):
- https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brinklit/the-literary-tarot?ref=bt45yn
Don’t forget to tag @LiteraryTarot!
PAIRING LOGIC!
You’ve been wondering why Cups are Light and how Pentacles became Parchment, and we are HERE TO TELL YA! Let’s take a look at the pairing logic that took Sam and I months to work out, including hours of chatting with witchy folks and tarot readers from around the global (and one epic argument with my D&D group):
You’ll note how all of our suits need one another in order to actualize. To create beautiful stories (both literally and metaphorically) you need to nurture your intuition and imagination (light), translate it into language and logic (ink), conjure it into existence through action (quills), and then commit the damn thing to the material world (parchment).
PAIRING REVEAL!
And that’s it for us, my dear backers! Please have the loveliest of days and I hope to pop back soon to announce some unlocked stretch goals!
Cheers,
Dani, Helen, and all the Brinkeroos
Sparkly Boxes, Guessing Games, and Brian Michael Bendis Reveal...
almost 3 years ago
– Tue, Jun 08, 2021 at 12:48:40 AM
Hello again!
Wow, what a week, eh? We blasted through our first THREE stretch goals (woot woot!), broke 6,000 backers, and created such a little social media storm that my face hurts from smiling! And all of this is down to all of you.
THANK YOU.
Honestly, you’re gonna get sick of us saying it, but the love you all have shown for this zany project is incredible. I hope you all know what a huge impact you’re having on our nonprofit work (and our hearts).
Right, enough gushing, let’s get down to the cool stuff!
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how we create the pairings and art, and I got to GUSH about the authors and artists in the following interview with COMICS BEAT. You’ll want to check this out, especially since I reveal the logic behind Celeste Ng’s Hangman pairing.
ART GUESSING GAME
Check out these beauties, dear friends, and take a stab at their pairings. Lots of people have been asking me about the one on the left (as it’s been revealed on the KS page but not labeled) and the press got their hands on the one on the right (so if you NEED to cheat, you can find the answer in the exclusive art reveal that VOL 1. BROOKLYN snagged).
PEEK INSIDE THE ART PROCESS
Speaking of beautiful art, if you're curious about JUST HOW LONG it took Sam (our major arcana artist) and me to figure out the colors and style for this deck, check out this video (it condenses 2 weeks of work into 58 seconds). Tells us which rejected WIP you love the most...to, you know, validate all those hours of failure.
STRETCH GOALS, BABY!
Last week, we upgraded our cards to be thicker and gilded with gold, AND over the weekend, we unlocked our gold book boxes! Since you all are so awesome (and crying for it in the comments), we're gonna break our one-goal-at-a-time rule, and show off the next two...
If we unlock this baby, we're gonna create a system so you all can vote on the cards you'd most like to be turned into these swanky postcards. If you wanna take part in that, please follow @LiteraryTarot on Twitter!
And next up...
PAIRING REVEALS
I also know that a lot of you are dying to know what some of your favorite authors are pairing. So we are going to reveal one right now...
HAPPY THINGS FROM SOCIAL
You know how I said my face was tired from smiling? Well, here are some of the top contenders for cheek-aching joy:
I know this isn’t a pun on F(r)iction...but I’m gonna pretend it is:
How great is it to see our contributors backing the project?
Thank you all again for being so darn amazing. Your kindness and enthusiasm are infectious and we’re so moved by your support. From the entire Brink team: THANK YOU!
Cheers,
Dani, Helen, and the Brinkeroos!
Stretch Goals, Interviews, Card Backs, oh my!
almost 3 years ago
– Fri, Jun 04, 2021 at 01:40:16 AM
Hello our dear backers!
We weren’t planning to come back to you all until Friday, but goodness me, the momentum just has NOT slowed down. For that, we have to thank you. So many of you have been sharing the project on social, reaching out to give us your stretch goal ideas, and tagging your friends in our project posts!
Thank you SO MUCH. Honestly, it means the world to us.
Speaking of incredible support, the Eisner-Award-winning WOMEN WRITE ABOUT COMICS, interviewed Dani. Here’s a taste of the very nice things they said about us:
“If there was ever a tarot deck that was designed for avid readers, the Literary Tarot is it. This deck, which is being published by the Brink Literacy Project, aims to seamlessly marry classic and modern literature in an innovative way. Each of the traditional 78 tarot cards represents a piece of classic literature which shares themes with the meaning of the card—and in a beautiful marriage of the old and the new, each of those selections was made by a beloved modern author. And when I say beloved, we’re talking about a star-studded cast of characters here! ”— WOMEN WRITE ABOUT COMICS
Read the whole thing here.
Card Pairing Reveals
Speaking of how smart and awesome you all are, I was blown away by how many of you guessed the cards from yesterday correctly! Here are the full card descriptions:
“The Monkey Paw” as the Three of Quills
Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indians) gives us a taste of ironic, bitter consequences by pairing the Three of Quills, a card all about heartbreak, grief, and loss with the classic short story, “The Monkey’s Paw.” The paw, through which wishes borne from the heart go horribly, terribly wrong for Mr. and Mrs. White, takes center stage as one of the deck’s most iconic minor arcana cards.
“The Pillow Book” as the Nine of Parchment
Sei Shōnagon’s musings on imperial Japan, written more than 1,000 years ago, arrive as a bounty in the Nine of Parchment. Damian Rogers (An Alphabet for Joanna; Dear Leader) links The Pillow Book with the minor arcana card focused on achievement and independence. Just as Sei Shōnagon benefited from the material gifts of the Heian Empire, she gifted the world an unparalleled work covering the high culture, fashion, and poetry of one of history’s great dynasties.
Now to Stretch Goals!
Because we already BLEW PAST those gilded edges (woot woot!), we are on to something that so many of you have messaged us about. That card stock, baby, it’s going UP!
Random Fun Stuff
Here’s some tweets about the campaign that especially tickled us. And not just because Margaret Atwood keeps tweeting about us, damn near making our hearts explode (like, friends, she typed my name the other day. WITH THE SAME FINGERS THAT WROTE THE HANDMAID’S TALE). So, yeah, I’m dying happy…
https://twitter.com/MargaretAtwood/status/1400170925555867648
https://twitter.com/bardic_lady/status/1399782068754673664
https://twitter.com/BillieBook/status/1400164394110054401
https://twitter.com/clairewillett/status/1399930145985630215
Card Backs & Feedback
Also, we have absolutely LOVED getting feedback and ideas from you. Thank you all for your messages, tweets, and owl-delivered letters (okay, fine, we made that last one up!). First up: we hear you on the symmetrical backs. I’ll be sitting down with my art team next week and having a wee think about how to rejigger that middle book on the card backs. More soon!
And finally, we began building out our FAQ section on our campaign page today, and we’ll keep updating it with all the most common queries as the campaign continues.
More soon, dear backers. Thank you again for being so darn wonderful.
Cheers,
Dani, Helen, and all the Brinkeroos!
WHAT a first day!
almost 3 years ago
– Fri, Jun 04, 2021 at 12:47:47 AM
AHHHHHHHHH!
Imagine the sound of 50+ teachers, editors, artists, and nonprofit staffers (plus our entire team of artists and AMAZING celebrity authors) all squealing in unison. Because that has absolutely been the last 24 hours (yes, we are claiming we ALSO squealed in our sleep).
We are all shocked and awed and humbled by this deluge of incredible support. More than 3,600 of you came out to support not only this beautiful deck, but also the good work our nonprofit will be able to do with the profit from the sales of the Literary Tarot.
Thank you. THANK YOU.
And not only are all of you warming our hearts, the press (what, yes, the press! We feel weird even typing that) also took a fancy. Here’s a few choice features, including an interview where I do some deep dives into the process:
If you’re so inclined, it would be incredibly helpful if you could spread the word and share these stories on social media. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow #LiteraryTwitter and the official @LiteraryTarot account.
NEXT STEPS
Now that we are funded, we can start cranking out all the rad stretch goals we have planned and start revealing more of these gorgeous cards! It’s hard to tell which we are more excited about!
But, hell, given that I personally art direct this madness, let’s start with the cards. Stephanie Perkins has this game where you try to guess the literary pairing before you read about it, so if you wanna do that, here’s the art alone…
I’ll be back in the next update to give you the official pairing spiel, but for now, let’s test that literary canon…
The art team is drawing up a storm each and every day, so we’ll be revealing cards ALL MONTH LONG. I will be sharing the art as we go both through the @LiteraryTarot Twitter account and on my Instagram. Warning: I’m still learning how IG works—because I’m much more comfortable teaching in max-security prison than using social media—but I promised all my artists that I’d try. So…bear with me…
On the upside, I just put up some thumbnails for the Carmilla’s card, and they are so amazing I can’t even focus on this update! WEEEE!
STRETCH GOALS
We have a library of fun stretch goals planned, but like reading a great book, we’re going to take them one page at a time. Spoiler: we are planning something that lots of people are clamoring for on social media. If you have ideas for stretch goals, please respond to this update or head to Twitter and be sure to tag @LiteraryTarot!
KEEP IN TOUCH!
In addition to @LiteraryTarot, you can also learn more about F(r)iction’s issues and our nonprofit work by following these accounts.
Thank you all again for joining us on this crazy little adventure. We are all in joyous shock that so many people are excited about this idea, and we are so pumped to share the creation of each and every card with you all!
Cheers,
Dani, Helen, and all the Brinkeroos!
