First things first, if you’re just interested in the comic, click on the cover below. What comes next is a bit of history that’s both business and creative, and how I turned an obstacle into an opportunity.
Now here’s the history of this comic. Back when I started Bloomin’ Faeries! in 2010, I didn’t have much of an audience, but I had some disposable income and I wasn’t afraid to spend it on advertisement (which was still a thing back then). I quickly discovered a website called Project Wonderful, which at the time was an ad auction system. You’d put bids on ads you were interested in for certain targeted websites. (I won’t get into the details of this, it doesn’t matter much.) I really wanted to advertise my website through Project Wonderful, but they had ONE rule: you had to have at least 30 posts in order to qualify. If I kept posting a weekly comic and nothing else, it’d take THIRTY weeks before I’d be able to advertise, and I didn’t have that kind of patience. So I decided to expand my Bloomin’ Faeries! universe by pretend that I, the author, was living with a faerie. I’d post once a day (maybe more) and write about how she was messing with me, and I’d get to the thirty posts in no time (less than a month!). So that’s what I did. Thus was born Jaycee and his mischievous faerie companion, Attitude.
After the mandatory thirty posts, I was able to start an aggressive advertisement campaign on Project Wonderful and was gaining about 1000 new readers a month. That went on for about a year, then Project Wonderful contacted me because my content was adult and it went against the ToS of their company. (Because they were Canadians, they were incredibly nice about kicking me out. I was later able to rejoin once they adapted their website to handle adult content safely.) All through that year, however, my readers had been enjoying the content of Jaycee’s Blog and I couldn’t seem to stop adding content and storylines to it. The whole thing went on for YEARS, with some hiatus when I was too busy to write new entries.
When I moved my membership system to Patreon, I made more blog entries for the higher tiers. That was easy content to make, and my audience seemed to enjoy it, so why not? But as time passed, I realized what I enjoyed doing most was writing comics, not erotica, so about two years ago, I decided to turn the world of Jaycee’s Blog into a comic. But because I didn’t want this to be a long evolution from the nerd that Jaycee was in the beginning into someone more assertive, I wrote this first 8-page chapter kind of summarizing the “story so far.” I wanted to start Jaycee where he was after about ten years of living with faeries (yes, there’s more than one, but that’s a story for another time). I wanted him to be a bit more knowledgeable and even competent about dealing with the extraordinary world around him. So I decided to call the comic Jaycee’s BADASS Blog, which is what you’re now holding in your grubby lil’ (virtual) hands.
Honestly, that blog was never intended to be anything more than a workaround to bypass an obstacle put up (legitimately) by Project Wonderful. But it’s something my readers have enjoyed and I’m happy that it lives on through this comic. Now if you haven’t read it already, go check it out. I think it’s some of my better writing (and if you know me, that’s not something I say without effort). It’s now in its 4th chapter and going strong.
See you over there, I hope!
–Jaycee Knight