Happy New Year 2017!

2016 has been a very tough year for me because I underestimated the time required to finish my second book and the financial stress affected my health greatly. I am glad the book was done and conventions were over, so I have some vitamin M to feel less stressed and improve my health. I also finally cleared the debt I took to self-publish my first book 3 years ago and resumed taking in commission work again. Therefore I am very sorry that I don't have time to do the colorful weekly comic strips and kept on uploading the black and white ones...

I am now planning for the 3rd book: Eva, Kopi and Matcha 2, which is a compilation of the comparison comic strips with more countries: US, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia. I was debating if I should do a kickstarter because the current arrangment with my publisher is to contra my rotalties (in depreicating Malaysian ringgit) and use it to buy back books at a discount to sell by myself in Singapore. It's quite troublesome with more and more books to lug around and I don't have a car nor partner to help me (uber, grab, gogovan and lalamove all costs money). I do sell online but orders were bleh because of the high postage cost and I cannot list below the bookstore retail price. The returns don't quite justify the 7-8 months of hardwork, though I did use the books to get a few commercial deals.

I am not sure if you noticed, but I'm running out of comparisons. After all, I have been drawing this topic for 4 years and no longer living in Japan. So I am also stopping this series after I finish 3-4 more strips for the book. I'm currently uncertain what will continue, it could be daily life, yoga , artist life or about business setting (cross cultural communication). I am always inspired by Peanuts (Snoopy and Charlie Brown) and Dilbert, so the new comic strips could be along this line, or trial and error on a wide range of topics to see which one is more popular. I was even thinking of doing a non-fiction book about my cursed publishing experience, and see if it will do better than my comic books (because many bookstores don't support comic books that are not their own brand).

Anyway whatever happen, I am very thankful to you who are still sticking around and to fans who bought my books and supporting me on Patreon!

Last but not least, wishing everyone "pecked" with good luck, wealth, love and good heath (very important) in the year of the rooster 2017!!!

*Patreons can login to download the wallpapers for desktop and mobile.