Thea van Diepen is creating
a storied universe
Zombies in fairy-tale Iceland. The search to cure an insane unicorn. Surreal short story anthologies. An 11-year-old hero in the mountains of B.C. Books, soundtracks, constructed languages, concept art, and heart. Lots of heart.
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Milestone Goals
I’ll Share My First-Ever Published Story
It was grade one. I was six. The story was about a moose and a skunk, and it was published in that year’s school district anthology. It’s still cute as heck. Help me reach this and I’ll photocopy it for you to read. That way, you’ll also get to see six-year-old me’s adorably large handwriting where I fixed a typo.
Sneak Peek Short Stories!
Currently, I have one anthology out, Dreaming of Her and Other Stories, and another in the works called These Other Doors. In celebration of reaching this amazing goal, I’ll release some stories from each anthology to all patrons - even before These Other Doors is published! Short stories are some of my most bizarrely beautiful work, and each is crafted with love, care, and not a little bit of imagination. I can’t wait to share them with you.
Guaranteed Novel a Year
Reaching this milestone will be aMAZing. This level of financial stability will make sure that I’ll have enough each year to pay the cover artists, editors, and proofreaders that make my novels look and read as good as they do. Money is currently the biggest factor keeping me from publishing high-quality works on a regular basis, including all the art and music that will go with it. So let’s get this happening!
Audiobooks: As Read by the Author
Hearing an author read their own books is such a special experience. It always gives me chills. This goal will enable me to purchase and upgrade the software and equipment necessary to record audiobooks of all my stories. The first stories to be recorded will be all the short stories already available to patrons as ebooks, and these audiobooks will also be given to all patrons as a thank you for all your help.
Guaranteed Multiple Works a Year
This is the goal that’s closest to my heart. In addition to series, I have a large number of ideas for standalone works, and I want to keep series going without any need to interrupt for standalones. Help me reach this and, along with an instalment in a book series, I’ll also be able to publish a standalone story each year and/or a video game. Because I have lots of ideas for those, too. :)
Travel and More Conventions
Conventions are a fantastic place for us to meet our favourite creators. My current convention reach is limited, which is an utter shame. Reaching this milestone will allow me to travel further afield and attend more conventions - the ones you go to. We’ll be able to meet irl (crazy, I know!), you’ll get signed whatever of my work you have, as well as a big, big thank you from me for all your amazing help in making the stories you love possible.
About
Thea van Diepen hails from the snowy land of Canada and that fairest of cities, Edmonton, Alberta. She is, of course, completely unbiased (being a psychology major) and is also obsessed with Doctor Who, Orphan Black, and the inner workings of the mind.
When Thea was eight years old, she took a test in school that required her to write a story. This prospect excited her greatly, and she decided to write an epic fantasy adventure. Upon opening the test, she discovered that she had to incorporate a girl going on a hike with her family. Thinking fast, she opened the story with said hike, dropped the girl through a hole into a magical world, thereby ditching the family on the mountainside, and happily wrote whatever she wanted until the end of the test.
If she were ever to grow up, Thea wants to be boring so as to provide an example as to why growing up is a terrible career choice.
When Thea was eight years old, she took a test in school that required her to write a story. This prospect excited her greatly, and she decided to write an epic fantasy adventure. Upon opening the test, she discovered that she had to incorporate a girl going on a hike with her family. Thinking fast, she opened the story with said hike, dropped the girl through a hole into a magical world, thereby ditching the family on the mountainside, and happily wrote whatever she wanted until the end of the test.
If she were ever to grow up, Thea wants to be boring so as to provide an example as to why growing up is a terrible career choice.
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Art is the lens through which we discover a newly beautiful world. It takes us on a journey, whether in an instant or after hours of enjoyment, and we are better for having walked with it. Story is especially powerful, showing us people we have never known, places we have never seen, and ways of being we have never experienced. And yet, the most curious ability of story is not that it can show us what is unfamiliar but that, through that showing, we grow to cherish it both within the story and without.
My name is Thea van Diepen, and I create storied universes. These have their cores in books, short stories, and comics at the moment, but are already set to expand into video games, art, and music. Some of them connect, some of them don’t and, in supporting them, you support the creation of a cosmos to explore and delight in, full of mysteries, secrets, and dark corners as much as it is full of beauty, humour, and wonder.
This is what I loved as a child: to open a book and enter a new landscape, full of people I knew I would come to love and who would show me that I mattered. As an adult, I have not lost that, and it is with that very joy that I imbue my own stories. From worlds with both magic and automobiles to those with portals and wooden swords, from characters who don’t know how to trust to those who can make everything epic, from tales with gentleness and humour to those with drama and awe, come join me on this journey.
Together, let’s build something we can love without reservation, both in what we imagine and what we live.
Where the funds go:
A healthy root grows a healthy tree, and the root of all I create is literature. Most of your support goes towards more novels and short stories, covering editing, formatting, cover art, and illustrations. It also covers the expenses that keep my websites running and ad-free, which keeps the webcomic Kara the Brave (and any subsequent comics I create) online for all to read. These stories, in turn, create fruit: artwork, music (especially in the form of book or series soundtracks), graphic novels, video games, and special online events like the annualish Offbeat Dialogues author chat.
Even more than that, your support creates bridges, pathways you can journey along into strange and beautiful worlds that will cause you to see our own in entirely new ways. And the best part is that, once built, these pathways and bridges don’t fall. In helping to build them, you help not only yourself, but others to travel them, discovering stories that show us that we matter, that what we do makes a difference, and that, even in the darkest times, there is always, always hope.
My name is Thea van Diepen, and I create storied universes. These have their cores in books, short stories, and comics at the moment, but are already set to expand into video games, art, and music. Some of them connect, some of them don’t and, in supporting them, you support the creation of a cosmos to explore and delight in, full of mysteries, secrets, and dark corners as much as it is full of beauty, humour, and wonder.
This is what I loved as a child: to open a book and enter a new landscape, full of people I knew I would come to love and who would show me that I mattered. As an adult, I have not lost that, and it is with that very joy that I imbue my own stories. From worlds with both magic and automobiles to those with portals and wooden swords, from characters who don’t know how to trust to those who can make everything epic, from tales with gentleness and humour to those with drama and awe, come join me on this journey.
Together, let’s build something we can love without reservation, both in what we imagine and what we live.
Where the funds go:
A healthy root grows a healthy tree, and the root of all I create is literature. Most of your support goes towards more novels and short stories, covering editing, formatting, cover art, and illustrations. It also covers the expenses that keep my websites running and ad-free, which keeps the webcomic Kara the Brave (and any subsequent comics I create) online for all to read. These stories, in turn, create fruit: artwork, music (especially in the form of book or series soundtracks), graphic novels, video games, and special online events like the annualish Offbeat Dialogues author chat.
Even more than that, your support creates bridges, pathways you can journey along into strange and beautiful worlds that will cause you to see our own in entirely new ways. And the best part is that, once built, these pathways and bridges don’t fall. In helping to build them, you help not only yourself, but others to travel them, discovering stories that show us that we matter, that what we do makes a difference, and that, even in the darkest times, there is always, always hope.