Author of Craving Control

Saw this at Curvage: www.curvage.org/forum/index.ph…

"Hi ... it's me, the author of Craving Control. It's been about five weeks since I closed down my gallery on Deviant Art.

It's amazing to see people still discussing the comic, wondering about my motivations for leaving, and all that. Honestly I never meant to create drama. I stopped doing the comic for personal reasons and I maintain that it was always my call to make ... it seems like a lot of people understand that the comic was always free, and offered "as is" with no promise of frequent updates or even continuing. Even so, I don't enjoy creating disappointment for people who enjoyed it.

Even as I departed I knew the goodwill of my readership was important to maintain. And looking back, I probably botched my exit. I should have left the gallery up for a week after posting my goodbye notice, so people could collect the art work and not have that feeling of a door slammed in their faces. At the time, I thought it would be better to just do it and hope people would understand, because I thought a "goodbye window" would just give time for the less understanding people to start flame wars. And in fact, after posting my goodbye, I closed everything down faster than expected for that exact reason: there was negativity brewing in the comments. Most people were understanding, but there were enough people kind of going "well F this guy, then" that I wanted to just shut it down.

So, I apologize to readers who felt that was unnecessarily abrupt. I could have handled it better.

If you google "craving control" right now, my drawings are all over the search results. At least there are fewer than before, when the gallery was open. It's true that I had become uncomfortable with how relatively high-profile those drawings had become. And no, I don't want the comic re-published in an online gallery so they get back into search results and all of that.

But, I don't mind people sharing zipped archives for their private collections. Hell, I put these things out there, it would be crazy to ask people to throw away their collections. Can you imagine if I asked readers to please consider throwing away any jpegs they may have saved from my gallery? That's private and I have no business making such a request.

That's another thing I regret, giving the impression that I expected people to forget all about my comic, or pretend it never existed or something. If you have a private collection, that's awesome, I'm glad you like the comic enough to hold onto it. If you want to share it with friends in a zipped archive or something under-the-radar like that, more power to you. If you've done fan art or work inspired by mine, that's awesome, I hope to see it on your gallery. All these things show that you enjoyed my work and I have only appreciation for that.

I guess I'm just saying, sorry for any unnecessary drama I created. I'm not trying to be mysterious, and I have continuing gratitude to everyone who appreciated Craving Control. I do still feel that closing the gallery was the right thing for me to do. Wish I could have done it more gracefully.

Please feel free to copy this letter to other forums or groups that may have an interest.

Respect and thanks,
Arthur"

Thoughts?