Hello!
I apologize that the massive updating came to a bit of a halt.
I got an ENORMOUS project on my plate, and the due date is this Monday. I had a lot of work to get done in a very short span of time.

SO, after Monday, updates will continue as they had before, until Book One is completed, then I will announce the update schedule for Book Two!

Thanks for reading, and keep smiling!!!

So, this weekend I did some lettering, and we've decided I'll keep doing it. I had wanted to get away from needing to do _anything_ that might slow down the progress of strips, but, it takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to letter the average strip. I've just done through strip 21, and before the night's over, I plan on getting at least through 23. So, over the next week, I should be able to letter all the strips in book one. This will make things interesting... and I hope, manageable.

Yeah, Ginny claims the site's in good working order. Don't believe her for a second.

It's story time. About 4 months ago (1 month into our hiatus, or there abouts) the server that hosted our subversion repository for the site went down. Hard drive issues. Missed a single strip, and about 30 hours of code changes to the site. I didn't care enough to fix them.

Then, the server we were on decided to explode. Or at the very least spontaneously kill everything our site needed to run. So, it went down, randomly coming up for a few hours/days. Then, a week or so ago, I fixed that.

However, there's a problem. We no longer have admin access to our server. So, how I was doing things needs to change. And there's the 30+ hours of code changes to the site that were missing. And, I don't have 30+ hours to work on the site in any given week. I've got maybe 5. So, that's 6 weeks to duplicate those changes, IF I can remember what they were. Screw that, boys and girls.

Instead, the site's getting an overhaul. It'll take somewhere between 6 months and eternity... but screw it. You can deal with a crappy site.

So say we all.

Brace yourselves. Tomorrow comes the end.

I'll really miss Chris' inks, but I was able to bang out an entire page in the course of an afternoon this way.
Tomorrow it goes up.

The site seems to be in pretty good order now. Chris is taking good care of it. :)

Updates will come as I finish them basically until the end of Book One. This is so I can just get the bloody thing finished.
We've got lots of new surprises in store for Book Two, including more refreshing artwork, so hold on to your bums!

I find this pretty unfortunate to say, especially this late into the game. However, the months of no updates are my fault. I just can't spend 10 to 12 hours inking a strip. It doesn't work.

So, Ginny will be inking the rest of this book. She will be handling things from here on out. I will still be a co-author, but no longer a co-artist. When I get a chance, I'll update the site to reflect this change in my status.

Oh, also. If she doesn't make a news post by Friday, she's sleeping on the sofa. You have my word.

Okay, don't know how many of you still check back here, but I'm sticking this here anyhow. I'll be putting notices up about this on FB and dA and all those other marvelous places you found us on...

WE ARE COMING BACK. And we are coming back to stay.
Since I have oodles more time than my computer-boy, I've decided that I'm going to start 'stealing' some of his inking burdens. He will still do things like his trademark eyes, and what-have-you, since I certainly can't, but this will all ensure that you get to read the comic, and we can get it done without killing ourselves in the process! I'm planning on having Book One (33 pages), DONE and PRINTED in time for the Lubbock Expo II on August 9th, as I will be selling copies there.
These books will also be available to order online, straight from us. :)
More details on that as the book reaches completion.

For those of you still with us, many thanks for your eternal devotion. The next page should be up by the end of the week, and we shall also fix any load errors we may be having.

Also! I just finished holding an art contest on GaiaOnline, and got TONS of lovely work featuring the characters of Athenaeum. In the days to come, I will start uploading them into the new "Fan Art" gallery!
Keep a sharp eye for them!!!

Lots of love,
-Ginny.

No, we haven't updated in Lord knows how long.
And, yes, we feel really cruddy about it.
We're so, so, so sorry. I could easily go into a rant that explains how busy we've been, between work and preparing for various things and event coming up.

SO! Here's what our plan is.
We're going to update at a faster rate, until we've caught up to our original schedule. It'll be a little sporadic, but we'll all get comics quicker that way.
We want to get this story told, and we're NOT going to abandon it. :D
Stay tuned. And we still love you. <3

Check out the navbar! We now have a Forums link! Check it out, register, and have fun on the boards! Feel free to comment about the current Story Arc, and all that Jazz!

Well, both Ginny and I have been battling a stomach bug that's been going around, so there's been some delay. Almost a weeks worth. However, We've revised the schedule so that The current strip airs tomorrow, the next one Monday, and the one after that is on time! This should actually be pretty easy, since I'm inking the strip that should go up tomorrow as if it was... so we should have everything on time. However, given our schedules, we'll be missing our Friday mark quite a lot. Once things get a bit settled, then we should be able to make it more often then not. Sorry guys, it's been a bit rough.

Yet another delay, but only by 24 hours. Strip will be up Saturday. I'll edit to explain why later.

Well, Chris is amazing, and made up a status watcher for everyone. So, you can see just how close we are to finishing the page, and getting it to you! Now, the darkness has been lifted. ;)

In other news, for any Facebook members, we have started a group for Athenaeum! It's completely open, and Global. So, if you do a search for Athenaeum in Groups, you should find it fine. :)
It'll serve a good purpose for more, and better updates. Plus, we have a way to let you know if the site is down.
ALSO! It gives all of YOU a chance to shout out and tell us what you think!!!

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Update:

As you can see from above, we now have the ability to put formatting in news posts, and in comments. Also, links work.

Aside from that, I also added a 'Progress Meter' for the next comic. This way, you can tell what we're still working on, and why it's not up yet. All the sketches for Book 1 are done, so that will always be at 100%, however, the inking is my task, and the coloring and lettering are hers; so if ink's not at 100%, blame me. If it's anything else, blame her. Feel free to give me some feedback about the new progress meter (specifically on location.. I thought that worked the best, but you might have a better idea.)

Well, strip's up. Enjoy.
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Well, I've decided a few things. First, to tell you (While I'm at work, mind you)that the strip is inked. I get off in about an hour, and as the strip is not up yet, it means that Ginny hasn't finished coloring it. yet. It will be up before we go to bed, that is a PROMISE. But, it looks like no one will see it till tuesday. Ah, well.

Something else I decided. I'm going to write and make a 'Next Comic' App for the side. Perhaps give the site a sidebar. We'll see. Oh, and perhaps user logins will show up soon.

Prayers and hopes indeed.
The strip will be up today, and we WILL be keeping Friday updates now.
There are some nice things in the future for us, too, though, like a Comic con that's coming up in May. Wooo!

Thanks guys for your patience. Again. :)

It can't be helped; there've been a few personal crisis, and work has me working 8+ hour shifts till Monday; which is only a 6 hour shift. However, I'm going to sacrifice some sleep tonight to get another panel inked, and then tomorrow night I'm going to be working after my 10 hour shift on finishing it, and having it go up around 1 or 2 am. (Provided Ginny can speed color it.)

Wish me luck, and feel free to send thoughts/prayers our way; things are kinda tense, atm.

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Edit:

Fridays. We will be updating Fridays. Virginia will post more details 'soon'.

On a happy note, We finally located all the missing strips, so strips 8 and 9 are no longer broken. w00t!

On a sad note, I've lost a huge source of income. But it was a huge source of frustration, and a ginat time sink. Thankfully, I won't have to work on THAT anymore (which means more time for Athenaeum.)
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...since Ginny and I have recently acquired jobs, our free time is very limited. Until we can get on a reasonable schedule, we simply don't have the time to do twice a week updates. We've been falling behind schedule, and we've not had a chance to build up a buffer. So, we have to do the unfortunate.

We are moving to once a week updates. We still need to decide which day of the week it will be. However, once we decide that, the site will be updated to reflect that.

Now, I need to stress, this change is only for the remainder of Book 1. (We are about 2 strips away from the middle of the book: 32 pages). There will be some in between book filler, as we take two weeks rest, and then the next book will start, and right now, the plan is for that to update twice a week.

If you really need your Athenaeum 'fix', then I suggest you donate. If we receive $150/week, that will be enough for us to cut back on hours spent working our jobs, and take time to update more frequently. Should we ever get to the $500/week range, we both would quit our jobs, and work Athenaeum full time, updating three or four times a week. As, you know, and FYI.

Hey, all!
You may notice that some of the pages (I think 8&9) are not quite right. They're either non-existent, or are a veeery large pencil sketch. I'm working on re-uploading those messed up files now, and they'll be better soon.

But, hey! The new page is up! Let's all rejoice! Huzzah!!!

I just moved athenaeum over to a new server. It's shiny. And Fast. If you were getting 404, 503, 504, or 505 errors, they should be gone as soon as the dns propagates. (In layman's terms, just be patient, it will heal.)

In other news, My job(s) (yes, denote the plural) are sucking my time like a... Well, insert your own creative euphemism here.

Edit: Oh, and you might notice some images are missing from the gallery and the strips... yeah. About that... Some things were not as well backed up as they should be. We'll be restoring those as soon as the files are locate (and in the case of the gallery images, as soon as the thumbnails are made). We apologize for this inconvenience... but hell, you read this for free anyway.

Hello, fond and faithful Athenaeum-readers!
As you may have noticed, we've been lagging with the recent pages. We've learned that getting two pages that each take, collectively, about 12 hours each, done each week is not a light task.
We are going to keep this up as much as we can, but please, if there is only one update during the week, understand that we are going to find a way to compensate, and are NOT abandoning this. This project is our pride and our joy, and we are as devoted to it as we are to each other...

Thanks again, guys. Next update forthcoming. <3

Guess what? I felt so bad about not getting the inks done on time, I decided to do some (quick) site work. So guess what? We now have a wonderful new archive page! That's right! It's _very_ shiny. Have a look, you know you want to.

Oh, some of you may notice it looks familiar... well, I saw things close to it on some webcomics, and decided it would be simple enough to do, and ripped them off. Yes, I'm shameless.

I need to apologize for the brief outages the site has had. Twice this week, the site has been 'white' with no images. This is because the images (and the file that tells the site what color to make everything) are hosted on a different server, and I had to do work on that server for a rather large project I was working on. However, now things are working, so I won't have to do that again.

Also, I'm sorry for the filler; It's in part my fault, because I've not gotten Ginny the inks on time. So, the blame falls on me.

Wow. Work swallowed everything whole...
Sooo, we're late. We'll be picking up normal schedule, and normal pace come Monday. That way, we'll also have buffer so this doesn't happen again.
Thanks for the patience, and the faithfulness so early on in the game!!!

EDIT!!! Okay! It's up! And still not technically late.
I promise, I'll do better. I just need my inks a little sooner. ;)

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Original News Post by Chris
~~~~~~
Well, it looks like the comic will be going up later tonight. Between work, and some *other* issues, we weren't able to get it done last night.

Expect it before midnight tonight. (so I guess it's technically not late then, eh?)

-Chris

Look out! As we pump out more updates on the comic itself, the gallery is also filling up!
Lots of traditional drawings right now, ooh fun!

Forthcoming, however, is a series of 'cosplay' pics of our five main characters. *One is yet to be revealed. o.o*
We hope to get at least one out a month.

Here's a sampling of some of the themes you'll be seeing:

Star Wars
Babylon 5
Firefly
Harry Potter
Anime
Anthro
Lord of the Rings

AND MANY MORE!!!

YAY ART!!!

Since our release, the site has seen over 100 visits, about half of them repeat. I consider this amazing, since we've not even been up a week yet. Thanks, guys!

Now, because of this, Ginny and I have decided to make things even more wonderful for you. We're going to be updating twice a week. Now, we're going to try to do this as a permanent thing, however it'll eat our buffer up like there's no tomorrow. I've spent the last few days inking as many comics as possible; I've finished two in as many days. I plan on finishing another one today, but right now we don't know if we'll be able to keep up with this pace. We'll be posting more news as things change.

In the spirit of this, I've added a nice bit of text to the upper right of the comic page. It tells you our update schedule, and the date of the next strip to be released. This date will always give you the date of the next strip in queue, and if there are none in the queue, it will display the date of the last strip. Simple, eh?

Warning: The following contains geeky info.
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So, yeah, I just installed Google Analytics on the site. What does this mean? It means... *drum roll* ...We're watching yooooooou! You see, this lets us know how many visitors we're getting, how popular the site is, and what part of the world people are coming from. We can even get your credit card numbers, and force you to donate! (No, not really. They're still working on _that_ feature.)

What does all this mean for our readers? It means that we'll know how well any advertising is going, and put our limited funds to better use. It also means that we can talk to our host, convincing them to give us more attention and love. Which means faster viewing to you.

In other geek news, I fixed a few bugs on the site today, and last night. First I fixed a bug with strips not showing up on the day they should, and then I fixed a bug keeping you guys from seeing strips in the release queue. (Just cause we have 3 more strips done doesn't mean you get to see them! It's called a 'buffer' for a reason. :-P )

Well, that's about all the geek news for now. I'm going to be working with Ginny on getting the admin section fixed up, and then I'm going to rewrite the user code so that once we have enough users, we'll allow you to make your own login, bookmark pages, and even comment on gallery images! (Don't rejoice, that's going to be 6 months or more before I finish that... unless we get some hefty donations. Like several thousand dollars in donations. The comic's not _that_ good.)

Hope you enjoy the site!

Happy Christmas everyone, and welcome to Athenaeum!!!

Months of preparation are finally coming to fruition. Chris and I launched this little idea last summer,and immediately set to work. Initially, it was a serious trial, getting used to doing work for an inker. Especially one who didn't really have an artistic background. :D

But, here we are. We've got some great results, a great site, and hopefully a great web comic!!

I am so psyched, I can hardly even find words to express it!

You are in for a treat, my friends. Oh, and should you have any questions, or comments, we'd LOVE to hear them! Chris' and my e-mail addresses are in the 'About' section. Feel free to contact either of us!

And keep your eyes peeled! We've got five pages up at the get-go, a little Christmas present, and weekly updates from here on.
Also, look out for MANY gallery updates in the very near future, including some exclusive wallpapers.

Stay tuned for next Monday. It'll only get more awesome-tastic from here!!!