As you may have guessed from the deafening silence ... the baby has arrived! This is my little girl, and in my opinion she is ridiculously cute (you are not allowed to disagree). The birth went very well, and we're now all back home and getting used to the new routine.

So ... baby hiatus starts here, I'm afraid. It'll be a while before SK restarts - but hopefully not too long; I can't wait to get back to these guys! And if you're looking for something else to read in the meantime, I've updated the links page with some more comics - now's the time to have a browse.

Thanks for reading!

This piece of reader art was sent in by Rhan - who impressively sent in not one, but two different pics! The other one was of Sam from Kaspall, and has already gone up on the Kaspall website. I love the inventive layout for this one. She tells me it was intended as a colour pic, but I like the black and white inking ...

Rhan's blog is over here, for you to take a look at!

This weeks reader art is Darwin's reply to one I did for The Only Half Saga last Halloween - which you can still check out over here. It makes me very happy to see Cabal in full vampire get up ... even if he is royally pissed off ;)

Darwin creates two long-form comics - Gemutations: Plague and The Only Half Saga - which means this week you have a lot of reading to do. So you better get to it!

Love this - particularly the dead Garfield mug. I could fancy owning one of those. Though I still want this mug the most. Just throwing that out there.

Anyways, this was sent in by Chrispy, who creates the fun gag-a-day comic Precocious. If you haven't taken a look at it before, now is the time!

This awesome picture of Marion was sent in by Varethane, who creates the fantasy comic Chirault.



I wrote a quick description of it in the news post over here, when we were doing Spiderforest Comic of the Week. Or you could just read the comic. Because it is good.

As promised - the winner of the reader art competition!

This great piece was sent in by Aviv, who does a really rather cool wordless fantasy comic called Stupid Snake. I am of the opinion that you should check it out:



Thank you to everyone who sent something in - to be honest, they're all pretty awesome! It's a shame I couldn't send something out to everyone - but I guess that would kind of defeat the object of asking for art in the first place ...

I've decided I'll just keep posting them until the baby arrives, as it's roughly the right amount of updates (assuming it turns up on time, of course :P). It'd be nice to keep the Thursday updates going for as long as possible, even if they aren't actual comic pages.

Thank you for all your comments and well wishes last week! I'm looking forward and kind of terrified at the same time. It's an interesting feeling.

Wish I'd had a bit more time to spend on the colouring for this picture, but never mind. Do not ask me what is going on in it, because I'm not entirely clear myself. Feel free to make something up ...

You should see a new form for the 'end of hiatus' mailing list at the top of the page, so please go ahead with that if you'd like to get an email when I start posting properly again. I guarantee you will get only one email from signing up to this one, if you're concerned about me bothering you regular updates or anything.

Next week, I'll start posting the reader art, with the competition winner!

Well ..... that's that.

Spare Keys is on indefinite hiatus from now on. Feeling pretty sad, to be honest - I've really enjoyed making these stories, and I'm going to miss Toby and Marion. :( Feel like I should make a speech or something, but can't think of anything to say, other than I'll be doing my best to get back to this comic as soon as possible ...

Next week, I will be putting up a new mailing list link - this will be a guaranteed-one-email-only list, which will let you know when SK is starting up again. If you have already signed up to the weekly or completed story mailing lists, you'll be getting one of those automatically.

I'll also be putting up a random SK image which I haven't drawn yet, so I don't know what it is. I would start putting up the reader art, but I did say you'd have until the end of Jan to get something in - so I'll be putting up the winner the week after.

This story is scripted by my sister Amy, who also writes the rather awesome fictional blog Contact.

Reader Art Competition
Send in a piece of Spare Keys or Kaspall based reader art between now and the end of January, and you'll be in with a chance to win an A4 watercolour and ink pic by me of the SK or Kaspall character of your choice. I'm running this to provide a little extra content for when the baby-hiatus starts, and will be happy to link your own website when your piece goes up.
The email address for entries is:

This story is scripted by my sister Amy, who also writes the rather awesome fictional blog Contact.

Reader Art Competition
Send in a piece of Spare Keys or Kaspall based reader art between now and the end of January, and you'll be in with a chance to win an A4 watercolour and ink pic by me of the SK or Kaspall character of your choice. I'm running this to provide a little extra content for when the baby-hiatus starts, and will be happy to link your own website when your piece goes up.
The email address for entries is:

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a good break - I certainly did. There was a whoooooole load of sleeping, it was The Best.

I haven't had many entries for the reader art competition yet, so if you're thinking about maybe sending something in before the end of Jan, you've got a statistically excellent chance of winning, is all I'm saying ...

Reader Art Competition
Send in a piece of Spare Keys or Kaspall based reader art between now and the end of January, and you'll be in with a chance to win an A4 watercolour and ink pic by me of the SK or Kaspall character of your choice. I'm running this to provide a little extra content for when the baby-hiatus starts, and will be happy to link your own website when your piece goes up.
The email address for entries is: