☆ ursachaotic's January Newsletter!

Preorder updates, launching a mailing club, I FINISHED A NEW NOVEL CHAPTER YAY, and future projects! ☆

Author

Mason Stark
January 22, 2026

IT’S THAT TIME AGAINNNNNN 🥰 (I’m gonna try to seriously keep up with a monthly newsletter, wish me luck lmao)

I have some announcements regarding the preorders from my most recent shop update as well as some new projects I’m working on! 🫡 

Table of Contents

Preorder Update (Potential delays! Now shipping out by mid-February) 💫 

As of writing (which is the 22nd of January), I am still waiting on the charms to arrive so I can start shipping them out. There were a number of issues that I was dealing with with my manufacturer, so it made the preorder process take MUCH longer than anticipated 😵‍💫 

For transparency, I received samples where the colors were off and tried to get the manufacturer to remedy these issues, as I didn’t want to reorder the charms and have the same issues. I did have to reorder the charms, but I checked with the manufacturer profusely before I approved the items, to prevent the same issues as last time. I’ve never had an issue with this manufacturer, so it was really frustrating. Thankfully, the new charms are on their way now, so I will check them when I receive them and then begin shipping them out. (I may post the charms with the off colors as “B grade” charms on my shop if there’s interest?)

A potential issue that may come up is there’s a big winter storm coming!! 😬 Yay!! So this may affect when I can ship the orders out and when orders will arrive, but I’m going to update the ship by dates on all of the orders to make sure I have a 3 - 4 week buffer in case there’s any issues. Regardless, preorders will begin shipping out next week at the earliest and by mid-February at the latest! I will keep you guys updated on things as necessary!

Shop Updates (posting preorder leftovers + shop hiatus) 👁️ 

After all of the charms are shipped out, I will post the leftovers on my shop! I will post a newsletter update about this, so keep an eye out! My goal is to have them up on the shop by the end of February. 

Going forward for my shop, I am kind of burnt out from doing the preorder launch system, and I want to shift to another system for future launches, so you guys get your orders more quickly. For the time being, though, I’m taking a break from running my shop, or at least not launching any new products for a bit. I’m hoping to come back with new products by the end of the year, but we’ll see? I realized that I can’t do more than 2 big projects at once, and running a shop update is a VERY big project, so gonna take a break from it for a bit and try to come back with new merch later this year 🫡 

However, I’m still definitely making merch, which brings me to one of my new projects…

I’m starting a mailing club on my Patreon! 🌟 

This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I’m really proud of myself for finally doing it! Every month for at least the next year, I will be creating a new illustration and chibi sticker design with the goal of completing 12 illustrations by the end of the year. All of the prints will be themed to the major arcana tarot cards and will feature characters from my novel, BENEATH THE WOODS! 

The first month’s print and sticker set features Max, who’s the main character of my novel, and his card is The Star! 🌟 

The Star represents hope, faith, and renewal, signifying strength to continue pressing on ahead with your journey. Max faces these feelings as he proceeds down his path, but, due to the watchful (and even eager) eyes gazing upon the boy, it could be assumed that the hope in question isn’t necessarily for him. That Max’s desire to find answers was the spark that brought the light back to someone else.

New chapter of Beneath the Woods is live! 🌌 

Chapter 3 is (FINALLY) done!! I’ve been working on this since July last year, and I’m so glad that it’s done omg 😵‍💫 It was a doozy to edit haha. I’m taking a break from working on the novel right now, but chapter 4 will be a lot shorter and I’m aiming to have it up sometime in March.

Chapter 3 is currently available to any Patrons in the $5+ tiers until I complete chapter 4! After chapter 4 is posted, it will be available for all members of my Patreon, including the free members! This is the release cycle I’m aiming to do going forward.

You can read the new chapter over here! And here’s a little preview of one of my favorite parts : )

Cold air slithered across his bare arms. A shuddering exhale escaped his tense lips. He pulled his comforter tighter around him, a sad attempt to bat away the cold; it did nothing to save him.

The air grew thicker, twisting around Max’s throat. His breath became sharper, shallower. He pawed at his neck.

At the edge of his ears came whispers. As if someone held a hand to his ear, humming foreign phrases into his mind. Their voice became crackled, building into a chorus of incomprehensible words that contorted from airy to sharp static.

Something desperately wanted his attention. Something that was willing to chill him to the bone. To strangle him in his sleep.

Max, uncertain as to how, pressed a sleepy eye, a slight chance to gaze out into the world.

Something with cold, gaunt fingers held his face. Thousands of empty white eyes stared him down. They smiled at him.

“Found you.”

With wide eyes, he lurched.

Illustrated novel project 🌲 

Lastly, I’m working on a kind of complex project that I’m still trying to figure out the scope of lmao.

Beneath the Woods started out as a webcomic series, but it became too much for me to work on, so I opted to release it as a novel with illustrations instead. However, art is still a vital part of the story, even if it’s predominantly in a text format now, and I want to do something more that scratches my creative / artistic itch.

I’ve always wanted this project to be similar to Gravity Falls, particularly by having codes and an ARG of some kind. I love sneaking codes into the background of my illustrations and seeing if people can find them, but I also REALLY love ARGs and have wanted to do one for a very long time.

The next project that I want to do is will ideally have both of those things, if not more. I want to create something that involves music and animation and voice acting and make something really, REALLY cool. The way I’m aiming to do that is by turning Beneath the Woods into an interactive, illustrated novel project.

Again, I’m still trying to figure this out, but I want this to be big and REALLY cool, like have animatics that show a scene playing out in the story or have voiced clips for people to find by solving a code or finding some secret I’ve hidden in an illustration. I’m planning on reformatting the novel itself and including illustrations and comics, along with the aforementioned codes, recorded lines, and animatics. It will be in a webtoon-esque format (like scrolling format) and look like a regular ebook at first before the text becomes affected by the magic and horrors in the story.

This is a lot, but my hope is that it’s going to turn out really cool!! Once I’m back on track with releasing updates, I’m aiming to release a test episode on Webtoon and Tapas in the near future, and I will send out an update once that’s ready! The success of the test episode will help me figure out if I want to proceed with this project and help me figure out the workload expectations as well.

In the future, I will be doing a call for voice actors and for someone to assist me in the ARG aspect of this project. However, in the meantime, if you have experience with planning and running an ARG and would be open to discussing how you ran your campaign, please reach out to me at [email protected]! I’ve been struggling a lot with the ARG aspect, and I would love to get some insight into running a campaign :’ )

And that’s it for this month! As always, thank you so much for being apart of my newsletter and supporting all of my projects! ♥️ 

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