As of right now, we have met our minimum goal at Patreon to print issue #10! Yay and huzzah! Thank you to all of our patrons, some of which are very generous, for making sure that LONTAR ends not with a whimper, but with a bang!

That said, we still want to be able to print the issue’s illustration by Sonny Liew and comic by Drewscape in full colour, which can only be achieved with our stretch goal of $4,000. And to that end, I am extending the pledge deadline one more week, to midnight SGT on 3 April 2018.

So if you’ve been unable to pledge until now, you have just over a week to make your money count. Most of the special $75 reward tiers have been snapped up, but two slots in the Irreal Level (where you can get a copy of the now-out-of-print first edition of my collection Red Dot Irreal) remain.

Please make your pledge by midnight SGT on 3 April 2018 to ensure that our contents are presented in their full glory!

LONTAR needs your help one last time.

Just as with issue #9, the National Arts Council has declined to financially support issue #10 with a publication grant, meaning that we are on our own once more to raise the funds to even get the issue to print.

Y’all came through for us before, and I’ll need to ask for your generosity again.

L10 is our double-sized final issue, with around 80,000 words of original fiction and poetry, as well as a brand new comic story from Eisner-nominated artist Drewscape and a full-page illustration by internationally celebrated graphic novelist Sonny Liew.

Because of the increase in content, we will need to raise at least $2,500 USD to cover our costs for the issue (with $4,000 USD needed to use full-colour printing for the artwork).

The deadline is at midnight SGT on 27 March 2018. This gives us two weeks.

Go to our Patreon page today and pledge to become one of our patrons; if you’re a patron already, please spread the word. Some of the special reward tiers—in particular the Sorcerer, Salamanca and Irreal levels—are still up for grabs.

Note: because of the way Patreon is structured, any pledges received after the deadline will not be counted, and your support will also not be noted within the journal itself, so please pledge before midnight SGT on 27 March 2018 to have your contribution matter.

Here’s what you’ll get in issue #10:

• the exciting conclusion of Dean Francis Alfar’s award-winning novel Salamanca
• sightings of a strange astronaut in an infinite library by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, illustrated by Eisner winner Sonny Liew;
• the meeting between weretigers and Sang Nila Utama by Manish Melwani;
• the enlightenment of a politician’s wife by Cyril Wong;
• a Pygmalion-esque tragic romance by comic artist Drewscape;
• weaponised merlions in WWII-era Singapore by Kevin Martens Wong;
• an unexpected offer of omniscient immortality by Eliza Victoria;
• gods and mango tree spirits united in song by Vida Cruz;
• post-apocalyptic satay cookery in Marina Bay Sands by Wayne Rée;
• domestic strife and changeling tigers by Natalie Wang;
• the magic of folding origami cranes by Topaz Winters;
• a panadería that guarantees pregnancy by Gabriela Lee;
• surrogate speaking to the dead by Patricia Karunungan;
• a dating app for interdimensional monstrosities by Marylyn Tan & Graeme Ford;
• and speculative poetry by Kevin Minh Allen, Davian Aw, F. Jordan Carnice, Genevieve DeGuzman, May Chong, Lawdenmarc Decamora, Joses Ho, Judith Huang, Sithuraj Ponraj, Bronwyn Sharman, Lakan Umali and Natalie Wang.

You have the power to help us meet these goals, and ensure that LONTAR can go out with a bang. Become our patron before midnight SGT on 27 March 2018.

Thank you!

Our patrons at the LONTAR Patreon have now been charged for issue #9, and I want to very publicly thank each and every one of them for coming to our aid in our time of need. They heeded the call for help after the funding rug was ripped out from underneath us, and I can’t put into words how much their financial generosity means to LONTAR and to me personally.

Because we had to send the print edition of L9 to press before all of the Patreon pledges were in, anyone who pledged in this last month may notice their name missing from the acknowledgements page. And even though it will be listed in the ebook edition (soon also available at Weightless Books), I want to recognise all of our wonderful patrons right here. Thank you for being such awesome human beings.

Many thanks to all of our new and existing supporters at Patreon for their generosity: we are now 65% to our goal of $1,250 USD for funding issue #9!

As I mentioned in the previous post, we are having to make up the financial shortfall to publish L9 after NAC turned down our grant (along with many others). The print edition has come back from the printers and will be available in bookshops soon (although you can order it direct from Epigram Books right now), so the money to pay for the print run has already been spent by the publisher, but we still need to pay that money back.

Patron levels start at $3 USD, but if you’re unable to pledge to the Patreon directly, please do me a huge favour and spread the word about this online. We only have $430 USD left to go in order to fully fund the issue, and only one week left to raise it.

Thank you!

Issue #9 has been proofread and sent to the printers, and will be coming out near the end of October. I’ll be revealing the cover art here soon, although our Patreon patrons have already gotten a sneak peek. Which leads me to the following.

The National Arts Council of Singapore rejected our grant application for L9, despite their history of supporting us since L3. This was extraordinarily disappointing, not least of all because it threatened an early cancellation of the journal; we came *this* close to disappearing altogether. However, Epigram Books will still be publishing the issue, thanks in part to our Patreon funding.

That said, we currently have a $1,300 SGD shortfall (~$950 USD), which I will have to pay out of my own pocket if further funding does not appear.

So please, do me a huge favour and become a Patreon patron (and spread the word) to help us make up this gap. There are many patronage tiers depending on your comfort level and financial situation, starting at $3 USD. And at the $75 level, you have the choice between signed copies of Here Be Dragons by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, Salamanca by Dean Francis Alfar, or Red Dot Irreal by your humble founding editor.

I will be charging our patrons for issue #9 on 30 October 2017, so if you can help us out (and also be listed in the issue for your support), make sure to pledge by this date. Thanks in advance!

The print version of issue #7 should be appearing in bookstores in Singapore this week (if it hasn’t already); the ebook version was released to our Patreon patrons yesterday, and I woke up to the news this morning that it was already up at Weightless Books along with an interview with L7 contributor Zen Cho!

So! Look over the contents for L7 on our website, and read Zen Cho’s story “七星鼓 (Seven Star Drum)” and the interview with her for free. If you’re in Singapore, stalk your favourite bookshops for the issue (if it’s not there, please ask them to order it!) or order it directly from Epigram Books. If you dig ebooks, nab it now from Weightless Books. Once you’ve read it, please rate and review it over at Goodreads.

And do consider becoming our patron, to ensure that we continue to bring you such dynamite issues!

The contents for issue #8 have now been finalised and the authors contacted, so if you’re waiting to hear from us, it means that your piece is still under consideration. We appreciate your continued patience.

Onward!

Issue #7 arrived from the printers yesterday, and will be making its way to Singaporean bookshops within the next couple of weeks. However, you can order it right now directly from Epigram Books!

Next week, I will be distributing the ebook to our Patreon patrons, as well as getting ready to mail the print edition to our Galaxy Level funders. So, if you want to get your name in the ebook edition of L7 (and for both versions in forthcoming issues), pledge before 12noon Singapore time on Saturday the 15th to begin your patronage with this issue!

Patreon has just processed patron payments for June, which means that everyone who pledged by the 27th has received both the epub and mobi files for the LONTAR issue #6 ebook, meaning that you can read it on virtually any e-reader in the world. Yay technology!

The Galaxy Level supporters ($25+ per issue) will also receive the print edition of L6 in the mail very soon. And you’re not going to believe how awesome it is until you hold it in your hands. 🙂

If you pledge anytime between 28th June and mid-October, you’ll be able to receive our seventh issue, which is another doozy. I’ll be releasing the table of contents and cover art soon, so be sure to pledge ASAP so that you can enjoy our patron-only content.

To become a LONTAR patron starting with issue #6, you must pledge by midnight EST on 27 June. More on this below.

LONTAR issue #6 has now been out for a couple of months (and is already a bestseller at Weightless Books, yay!), and after much back-and-forth with the folks at Patreon, I think I finally have a handle on how things will work for us there. Here’s how it’ll go:

On 28 June, I will put up a Paid Post that will give all current patrons immediate access to the ebook version of L6, in addition to any other rewards they get based on the tier at which they’ve pledged. Therefore, if you want to become a LONTAR patron starting with issue #6, you will need to pledge by midnight EST on 27 June.

This is because Patreon does not charge you if you pledge after a Paid Post has already been made (and therefore, you will not have access to that post), so if you pledge after midnight EST on 27 June, then your patronage will start with issue #7 in October.

Much of my confusion came with how and when patrons were charged (I’d thought that it was automatically at the end of the month after they pledged, but nope), as well as how patrons could access the ebook version of the journal. Patreon has very firm rules on both of these matters, but only for creators who charge based on content released; for creators with monthly patronage, things are much easier.

This is all a learning experience, and so I hope you’ll forgive the little hiccups like these that may arise. I want to be fair to our patrons, and also make sure that we get paid for what is being pledged.

So one more time: if you want to become a LONTAR patron starting with issue #6, you will need to pledge by midnight EST on 27 June.

Thanks!