The Wolves of Midwinter

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Charity Fantasy Calendar Kick-starter Project-One Day Remains

     




    Only one day remains for Lauren Zurchin's charity calendar project, which goes by the name Beyond Words: A Year of Daydreams. Essentially, the calendar features fourteen noteworthy, famous fantasy writers, including  Brandon Mull, Christopher Paolini, Gregory Maguire, Brandon Sanderson, Tad Williams, Patrick Rothfuss, Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Lauren Kate, Lauren Oliver, Maggie Stiefvater, Gail Carriger, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff. Proceeds for the calendar and individual author photographs, autographed by these featured authors, go to both First Book and World Builders: both these charities are substantive and well worth researching about.

    Anyways, I've looked at some of the preview scans of what the aesthetics of the calendar will look like on the project's calendars, and I was pretty impressed with attention to detail and the use of varied colors. If you consider yourself even a minor fantasy fan, I still highly recommend this page! Both her own website and  the Kickstarter project website feature both these pictures and more details about this project.

   Also, Lauren kindly offered to do this interview to give readers of this blog even more information about this exciting project!

Interview with Lauren about the project:Interview Questions:
1.What inspired this idea of making a calendar that features some of the most popular writers within the fantasy/scifi genre?

 Lauren: I was feeling bored with the types of photos I'd been taking, and decided that I wanted to do some fun fantasy themed photos to get some creativity back into my photo life. Initially I was going to use my friends, but because of my job at lytherus (I'm the managing book editor), I had fantasy authors on the brain one day and it sorta popped into my head: what it you used fantasy authors as the subjects? And it sorta grew from there! I thought a calendar was a fun and easy way to get the photos out into the world.

2. Thus far, How successful has the project been; was there any specific types of challenges that had the possibility of hindering the success of this?
Lauren: The project's been great! I hit my Kickstarter goal about three weeks in, and now it's slowly working towards a stretch goal. It was stressful launching, because I had to take the project I had planned and send it out into the world and hope that people would love it as much as I did, enough to want to support it. I'd say the only real challenge was knowing that a lot of the success was in my hands, in regards to promo. I emailed 20-30 different blogs every single day, hoping to spread the word. That took a lot of time, but it seemed to pay off!

3. Why did you choose Kickstarter, as the platform to launch this ambitious, but very creative project?Lauren: I love what Kickstarter stands for. They are there to support artists and get art into the world. And it allows people to support new projects and get personally involved. I think it's a great site. 

4. Are there any other future projects right now on your radar?
Lauren:
:
Ha! Well, this calendar will consume my life this year (in a good way!). I'm thinking about doing a calendar for the following year with all different authors, but I want to see how this one goes first. But who knows? :)

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