👁 DISCLAIMER: while the following Backerkit campaign containscensoring of depicted artworks, the book it advertises contains explicit, NSFW sexual content and is intended for adult readers only. Please do not back this Backerkit if you are under 18, or are wildly overcome by the concept of angel-themed erotica. 👁
WELCOME TO THE BOOK OF SHADOWS SERIES, AND OUR SECOND INSTALLMENT: PARADISE LUST.
Conceptualized by Nero Villagallos O'Reilly and co-edited by Iris Jay and Hye Mardikian, Book of Shadows is a deluxe series of LGBTQIA+ erotica artbooks themed around occult subjects. Its demon-themed first volume, BUFFOMET, was successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2019 and fulfilled through the pandemic year of 2020.
At its core, the Book of Shadows series aims to provide a luxurious, LGBTQIA+-centric showcase for our creators to express their interpretations of "revelry in the divine, the delicious, and the decadent." Bound in a beautiful, soft-touch and spot UV hardback at an 8.5x10.5” size, this artbook is dedicated to showing off its heavenly host of illustration and prose pieces in a gallery-like format. Our first title, BUFFOMET, summoned sexy Baphomet-adjacent demons to celebrate diverse sexualities. Now that we've been through Hell, where do we go for book two?
For the sake of maintaining the status quo within our wider, cisheteronormative society, LGBTQ+ identities and sexualities continue to be marginalized. We are vilified for simply existing by our political and cultural leaders, as well as harangued with legislative attempts to silence and eradicate us. While in BUFFOMET we danced with demons and lived deliciously, who’s to say we aren't also allowed to feel a little holy as well?
That’s where PARADISE LUST comes in: a book chock-full of the most wildly horny angels one could ever receive visions of, all from our own, self-imagined heavens.
Digital Mockup: Final appearance subject to change
Made possible by a pun and tying perfectly into Book of Shadows' first subject, PARADISE LUST's nirvana certainly won’t be lost unto its blessed readers. With a 100+ page count, this high quality-stock artbook is filled with sexually explicit depictions of angels from across all religions, interpretations, and mythos.
Featuring grayscale illustrations with a brilliant crimson spot color of Pantone 57-16 C, our prompt for this book included angels and heavenly deities of all shapes and sizes.
Emojis for the internet only! | Art: Vesta Z | Digital Mockup: Final appearance subject to change
Alongside entries that compliment their artwork with prose, poems, and other written words, our heavenly host of angels inside PARADISE LUST include nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid, transgender, and other GNC/LGBTQIA+ bodies and beings, living up to the core of our intent with the Book of Shadows series: the celebration and embracing of queer sexuality, as rendered by our 40+ on-high contributors.
Our biggest costs not only include artist compensation and book production, but also fulfillment (especially now, with increased domestic international rates). Thankfully, BackerKit automatically charges for shipping based on your location once we’re ready to charge for pledges, which helps us immensely. We want to ensure that these big, sexy books get to you in the safest, most streamlined manner possible, and our partners at White Squirrel are helping make that possible!
The directory to Paradise itself! Hardback, printed on a sleek soft-touch matte, and topped off with a splash of Pantone 57-16 C, you'll find 100+ pages of righteousness in this 8.5x10.5" artbook.
Add an extra book onto your pledge for just $35! That's $5 off the second copy! Wow!
PDF copies will also be included with every physical tier as well as available for order separately! These are a perfect option for readers long on devotion but short on bookshelf space.
Artwork by JT Cole
Illustrated once again by contributor JT Cole, our endpapers portray just sumptuous a scene as those in BUFFOMET. We're also commemorating this vision of nirvana in an oversize 11x17" poster tucked into the book!
We're dying to show you the full scope of this artwork of an angel having reached their own nirvana (and what nirvana's next door neighbors have to think about this sight).
Artwork by editor Iris Jay
Show the world that you're a very, very passionate Book of Shadows follower with this stylish iron-on patch! Designed by co-editor Iris Jay, these patches are a whopping 4.5" inches in diameter, and are woven like a tapestry with shimmering golden thread. Add this patch onto your tier bonuses and festoon a favorite jacket, bag, hood, wimple or ceremonial robe with your DIVINE taste in art.
Design by editor Nero Villagallos O'Reilly
Standing at nearly 5" tall and blessing whatever space you rest it over, chief content editor Nero Villagallos O'Reilly brings you a manifestation of a most holy angelic vision, featuring Book of Shadows' mascot: Baphbino! Printed on wood and laser-carved, this devil-on-tour features an interlocking stand to compliment any shelf, desk, OR altar.
WE'VE HIT BASE FUNDING as of November 14th! The sky (and heaven, if that's where it's at) is the limit, so let's see how far these next few days can take us!
Being a collaborative book with 40+ contributors, the Book of Shadows editorial team is primarily prioritizing payment increases for our artists with our stretch goals. Our first, third, and all following stretch goals at $3,000 increments will net each contributor (or contributor team) a $10 bonus! That means more books for the public, and more money for the people who made this book possible. Increases will continue until the crowdfunding campaign is completed, so there's no ceiling as to how high the artist bonus could be!
$27,000 👁 FIRST ARTIST BONUS REACHED
$33,000 👁 SECOND ARTIST BONUS REACHED
$36,000 👁 THIRD ARTIST BONUS REACHED (included with a free large-sized sticker stretch goal!)
Our third stretch goal helps us add some extra flair to your lovely tome in question! At $30,000, we'll be able to add crimson page gilding to all hardcover copies of the books, as well as reinforce our hardcovers to be as sturdy and durable as possible against the elements.
As an extra way of saying thanks for getting us this far while we pay our artists, at $36,000 we'll be including a high quality, large-format sticker of the Book of Shadows series' mascot Baphbino for free with any physical order of PARADISE LUST! He'll be off to see for himself what the big hullabaloo is about these angels. Baphbino is guaranteed to enhance the cuteness factor AND smite resistance of any non-porous surface you affix him to!
To avoid previous campaign shipping woes as we wrangle the production side of things, we'll be partnering with the Washington-state based fulfillment company White Squirrel to handle getting books from us to you! This is a company that we've worked with in other various publishing settings, and they have our full confidence entrusting them with Fortuna Media's supporters. Please note the shipping charges listed with your pledge are estimated, and understand that shipping costs may change between the project and fulfillment times. Shipping is available worldwide!
Once fulfillment begins, BackerKit will calculate any shipping costs that may be required when you fill out your delivery address. You will not be billed for shipping until then-- you will only be charged for your pledge once the project's crowdfunding period ends. This aims to keep the cost of shipping down due to continual fluctuations in domestic and international shipping costs.
We don't expect any development delays (save for any possible prepress extensions and/or shipping impediments beyond our control), and we've exhaustively ensured our production cost estimates are accurate. We've been able to iron out some previous shipping import problems we've encountered for our international backers as well. Thanks to White Squirrel's nimble paws, we hope to begin deliveries by March/April 2024, and finish by the end of summer at the latest!
Nero Villagallos O'Reilly (he/him) is a Seattle-based indigenous Panamanian (Guna) and Mexican (Oaxaca) cartoonist with 10+ years in the erotic (web and print) comics scene. His fiction and non-fiction work has been published by Slipshine, Filthy Figments, Iron Circus Comics, Fortuna Media, The Nib, Real Change, and more.He is also one of the founders of The Cartoonist Cooperative, a labor rights organization that seeks to improve working conditions for cartoonists everywhere.His work can always be found at itsnero.com.
Iris Jay (she/xer) has been making comics and illustrations since 2005, and has previously served as a guest editor at Fortuna Media for TABULA IDEM and BOOK OF SHADOWS: BUFFOMET. However, xe is far more notorious for her questionable “celestial healing” techniques that made her a savior to some and a charlatan to many more. Xer last public “Golden Soul Convergence” ended abruptly when a nineteen year old “patient” with severe eczema grew a second mouth in the middle of his forehead that began singing an ear-piercingly shrill cantata, with lyrics that did not map to any known human language. Jay escaped in the ensuing bedlam; her whereabouts are still unknown, but irisjay.net may hold a clue...
Hye Mardikian (they/he) is a 30 year-old transmasc Armenian book designer, prepress manager, and worldbuilder by trade: hovering over the PNW's waters by night as the EIC of Fortuna Media. To perceive this entity and seek his audience anywhere besides explodinghye.com, offer the following placed at connecting points of an 8.5x10.5" InDesign frame drawn in red chalk: the leaves of your three most beloved teas, the kitschiest bong you can find, freshly-cut gardenias bundled with lavender, and whatever Borg-related Star Trek relic you find at your local thrift store.
To our contributors, to whom this book would not exist without: we thank you for going entirely whole hog on this prompt. It was a beautiful process watching this book come to life, thanks for enduring all the emails, and we're thrilled to finally be bringing it into print form.
From Hye, to Iris and Nero: thank you for all of our years together as friends beyond all meaning of the word, and I'm thankful that friendship is so blessed a book like this could emerge from.
To Artspace, from Iris and Nero: thank you for allowing us to devote time in our busy schedules to intensely niche projects like this.
Iris would like to send a very special thanks to Raven's Brew Coffee for being there for us in our darkest, tiredest hours. They didn't pay us to say this. It's good coffee.
To The Cartoonist Cooperative, from Nero: while this project isn't a graphic novel or a webtoon, our discussions of fair pay and equality helped inform how best to treat our collaborators. Thanks for keeping us from stagnating.
To Andrea and the entire team at White Squirrel: your services as a fulfillment crew are invaluable to busy little bees such as the editors. Thank you for making the lives of artists and bookmakers that much easier; you're the real angels here!
To Mika: our Editor's portrait illustrator! Thanks so much for drawing us; we're hashtag blessed to have you.
Iris would also like to send a very special thanks to Youtube user Dancing Bacons for uploading many, many hi-res videos of southeast Asian vending machines, novelty restaurants, and dollar store food items. You will never see this message; in fact, I hope you don't. I hope I never meet you or learn what your whole deal is. But I'm glad you found your passion, and decided to share it with the world.
To the coastal Salish and Duwamish peoples who have been here since time immemorial on the lands where this project was planned and made: we, as editors who live and exist here as a PNW-based micropress, recognize we are here without permission and colonialist invasion. A small part of this campaign's earnings will be given to the Duwamish Tribe, whose lands this project was made on (and to give yourself, please visit this site or research further indigenous Pacific Northwestern resources: https://www.duwamishtribe.org/donate)
