UPDATE: 4/14/3025

AHHHHH the second payment has been made, which means the lawyer fees are covered!! We shouldn't have to pay them anything else unless something goes weird with the filing, which it shouldn't. Ours seems to be simple in the grand scheme of things.THANK YOU, EVERYONE. Receipts of the payments are at the very bottom. 🥹🥹

UPDATE: 4/13/3025

Thanks to all of you, we officially have enough for the lawyer. 😭😭💓💓💓 First payment has been made (receipt at the very bottom of page), and as soon as the money is in our bank, I'll be paying the second half.Anything that comes in from here will go toward the things we aren't confident will get discharged. (I don't know that all of our back taxes qualify, for instance, because it has to meet certain rules, like being a certain number of years old, etc.)The weight this has taken off of us is just...phenomenal. THANK YOU. 😭

THE SHORT VERSION

You can read the full, boring, woe-is-me version down below. For those who already know it or don't have three hours for my rambling...these are our current personal goals:

Things we aren't sure of:

* We expect filing chapter 7 is going to make finding a rental or getting a house loan for the next many years difficult. I'm anticipating we may need to pay upfront for a few months to get into a rental that's reasonably priced.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

DONATE DIRECTLY

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SUPPORT OUR BOOKS!

• kell's books
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OUR SERVICES

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• sensitivity reading by hannah

Hannah offers sensitivity reading services on a broad range of subjects. She charges only by donation with a simple $20 base. This is her way of giving back to the indie author community, as sensitivity reading can often be costly (rightfully so).Kelley runs Sleepy Fox Studio, which has...well, a lot. Book cover design and illustration, interior formatting, character illustrations, chibi illustrations, 3D renders, blurb writing, and more.

THE (REALLY) LONG VERSION

"Hi! I'm Hannah. I'm a chronically ill, disabled, neurodivergent queer enby. I live with my chronically ill and disabled wife (who works full time), along with our ND trans child and a plethora of pets."Hannah originally started our GFM and has been the driving force behind it. I don't want to step on her toes, because she's invested so much time and emotional energy when she's already drained dry trying to help. What things she was doing for a while (writing, being very engaged with GSP stuff) are things she can barely manage now, even on good days.I've always had a difficult time asking for financial help, likely stemming from my need to be the caretaker and do everything myself and tying my worth to my productivity and what I can provide. (Why, yes, I am in therapy, why do you ask?) Hannah doesn't find it easy, either, but she's been doing it, and she's gotten some incredibly cruel comments and harassment.Thankfully, MOST people have been so incredibly supportive. Y'all, you've helped us get a long way, helped us get some stuff paid off and paid down, and your love, words of support, shares, comments, and donations mean the world to us. It's overwhelming emotionally when I think about it too much.Still, Hannah's very burned out and I don't blame her. It's for this reason she took down our GoFundMes. However, some of you (!!!) still wanted to contribute, soooo here is this page. Where I talk. Entirely too much. Because I do that when I'm self-conscious. (Therapy, remember?)Since we're all about transparency—people deserve to know what they're donating to and why—I've laid out the Very Long Version of things below.We left Sacramento back in 2018-ish(??) to move to Humboldt County. Rent was cheaper up here, Kelley was working 100% remotely, and…well, it just made sense. What we were paying for a small 2-bedroom apartment in Sac got us an old but large cabin in the woods where we had peace and stability for the first time…ever.In fact, things were going incredibly well. Kelley's business was thriving, we had savings, we had monthly charity donations, our bills were on auto-pull without worry. We eventually saved up enough and bought a small home.Then came COVID. When the pandemic was in full-swing, work trickled to practically nothing, and we racked up debt trying to stay afloat. It was a domino effect. People unable to work > less spending money > buying fewer books > authors (Kell's clients) having tighter budgets + the rising influx of GenAI crap and predatory "artists" taking advantage > Kell's income dropping. Significantly.When I say significantly, I mean my income this last year (2024) was down 40% from what it was the year we bought the house. And yet, I'm working more hours than ever.We weren't paying enough in self-employment income taxes (taxes and CareCredit are the bulk of the debt we owe). We relied on credit cards to get us through, hoping things would pick back up. We had two major earthquakes on the SAME DATE in 2021 and 2022 (more about that here, if you're interested.) 2021's resulted in our main water line breaking, flooding the backyard until the city could shut it off at the street, leaving us without water for over a week while we tried to get the money to hire someone to come fix it. Note: we got through this FAR BETTER than most in our area. Our little house in Rio Dell had some damage, but it was still green-tagged, unlike some of our neighbors. Most of our costs went toward replacing possessions that were broken, and again we were fortunate to have some help with friends and family pitching in. (Kell now has some trauma around earthquakes, so that's been fun.)So things went. Eventually, we couldn't upkeep the debt payments and the mortgage, and were forced to sell the house. What money we made (which wasn't a lot; we'd only been in the place a few years) went toward debts, but wasn't enough.We've been very lucky to have housing at a friend's property as she lives out of state, but her plans are to sell this place, so this situation is very temporary. We've spent the last year and a half paying on whatever we could. Since we haven't had the cost of mortgage, we've kept up on all our payments…but it's all moving at a snail's pace. At the current rate we've been going, if income stays the same, it'd take us another 5-6 years to get out of here.Add on various "Shit Life Throws At You"—having to replace our car, emergency surgery for a pet that added 5k to our Care Credit, health issues and covering medical costs while insurance screws around with us, Hannah's health making it harder for her to work, the economy blowing up and things now costing a fortune, Kell needing a new work computer, etc.—I don't honestly know now what we'd be looking at doing this all ourselves.That's where the GFM came in. Some didn't understand why it was labeled as "dire need" and that's because this isn't something that's brand new and we just haven't tried to get out of it. We've been trying.I'm awkward talking about it and you'll notice my posts on this are infrequent, so trying to be open: for me, I feel like…we worked our asses off clawing our way out of poverty for the first 10 years of our marriage. We did all the right things. I worked a 30-hour-a-week job while growing my own business full time while also attending college full time for several years. We had so much hope and relief during that first year in Humboldt, and to have it all yanked away by things out of our control has just…been really soul-crushing.Now, Hannah's physical and emotional health has deteriorated drastically (she's dropped 30-40 pounds over the last 4 months from being unable to eat due to stress, she's unable to work, she has little quality of life and spends most of her time in bed), and so has my own. I'm working 6-7 days a week, usually from the time I wake until midnight. Sleep. Get up. Repeat. We try so hard to give back. We've dedicated a lot of our time, what little money we can, and effort toward Palestine, other peoples' GFMs, sending money when someone was strapped for cash and needed groceries… I've done a lot of steeply discounted work these last few years and haven't raised my prices until recently because my clients are also struggling in this economy, and it's the only way I can help them (according to my records, I did about $5,500 worth of discounts last year).I'm not saying all this to be like "wow look as us we're good" but just…trying to emphasize that things have sucked for a lot of people since the pandemic started. Our story is one of millions and we have it better than many do. I know that.We're currently trying to file Chapter 7. It's not something either of us wants to do, but with owed taxes, especially, there's no way we can expect others to fund all that.Our current goals are listed above. We have receipts (Hannah's been posting them on Threads) of where every dollar of the GFM money has gone. As mentioned, the GFMs are down now, but people expressed interest in still wanting to share and donate, so here we are.… Are you still here? Did you actually read all this? You good??I don't have a witty way to wrap this up, so let's just say: we're grateful to you. All of you who've helped in any way, big or small. We see you and you've helped us immensely when things aren't easy for many of you, either. So thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.-Kell & Hannah