I want to take a research trip to New England.

Actually, I have for years, but I've put it off for various reasons. For one, I just haven't had the money to go or enough contacts in that area to justify the trip. I've also been shuffling my feet on really getting to work on the project for which I want to do the trip: Saving Halloween.

(You can read my first draft of the first chapter of the story online here, but the re-written one will be so much cooler, I cannot even tell you.)

I've now gotten over most of the reasons why I haven't done this thing. I have friends in the area, and there's this newfangled convention called New England Webcomics Weekend, which happens to fall in the same time of year I'd want to be visiting that part of the country, anyway. I've also been working as much as I could on the new version of Saving Halloween since the beginning of 2010, and I feel that I'm prepared mentally to take in this new information.

So my last hurdle, as always, is money. I'm doing a fund-raising thing on my Girlbot website right now, hoping that the people who've been so great and supportive in the past will throw me a few bucks -- in exchange for merchandise and original art, of course -- to let me make this trip a reality. I'm strapped for cash enough that I honestly can't afford to do it without help. I'm not trying to sound pathetic; that's just the way it is. I'm a poor cartoonist in her 20s. It happens.

I don't think it's unreasonable to request some patronage, since I put a lot of effort into creating this weird little comic for people to read for free, you know? I guess time will tell if I'm wrong about that, though. I'm giving myself until the end of August to raise enough to be able to swing the trip. All fingers are crossed. (I'm typing with my toes right now.)

So what would a research trip entail? Well, I can guarantee that it wouldn't just be a vacation. Fun as hell, sure, but I'd be spending my days, well, doing research in the Massachusetts valley -- Boston and the surrounding, smaller cities -- taking copious amounts of notes, sketches, and photographs. I'd be going to museums, checking out landmarks, investigating the lay of the land, and just talking to people.

You see, Saving Halloween is set in New England, in a made-up town on the Massachusetts coast, but I've never ACTUALLY been to New England. I'm afraid that without some first-hand knowledge of the area, the environment I create for my story will feel very unremarkable and disingenuous. At the very least, it's going to seem like I pulled it out of my ass because that'll pretty much be the truth.

I really hope I can make this work. Not only for the sake of this trip and the project it represents, but also what it would mean, to me, as someone trying to build herself up as an independent creator. Besides, in a year's time, I'll be looking to get preorders for the first Girlbot graphic novel collection, and it'll be nice to have set a precedent.

But no matter what, the readers I have, though you may not be many, are have been terrific to me. I promise not to make a fuss if I can't make the trip. Worse things have happened. Girlbot will continue, rain or shine.