Softball

A transparent referral program for people who help first-time children’s-book authors

Disclosure: I’m Toby Mikle, the illustrator behind MyBookIllustrator. This article explains our own U.S. referral-partner pilot and the commissions we pay.

First-time children’s-book authors often ask the people they already trust—editors, teachers, librarians, writing coaches, book bloggers, community organizers, and administrative professionals—where to find practical illustration and production help. A referral can be genuinely useful, but only when the arrangement is clear to the author and fair to the person making the introduction.

Why we made the program simple

Vague affiliate offers can damage trust. Our pilot uses two verified milestones, gives the referred author visibility into the referral, and does not require anyone to buy a course, pay a joining fee, hit a quota, or follow a posting schedule.

This is an independent, commission-only referral arrangement. It is not employment, an hourly job, a base-wage role, or a promise of earnings. It is intended for U.S.-based people who naturally encounter aspiring authors and can make an honest, relevant introduction.

What a partner can earn

• $15 at a qualified project start: after the author’s deposit clears, the written project scope is accepted, work has begun, and the 14-day verification hold has passed.
• $35 after completed paid delivery: after the author’s final payment clears and the completed files are delivered.

That is up to $50 for one referred project when both milestones are completed. Refunds, chargebacks, cancellations before the milestone, duplicate leads, and self-referrals do not earn a commission. Those safeguards are there so the rules are the same for everyone.

How attribution and payment work

Each partner receives a referral code to share openly with a relevant author. The author can see and confirm that code, so the relationship is not hidden. A new lead is attributed for 60 days, subject to the program’s published eligibility and prior-lead rules.

Verified commissions are paid monthly by the 15th, with no payout minimum. PayPal is the default. A U.S. business check can be requested when the partner provides a valid U.S. mailing address. The payout notice identifies the referral, amount, date, method, and transaction or check reference so partners can reconcile what they were paid.

What responsible promotion looks like

A good introduction sounds like: “I know the illustrator and may receive a referral commission if you hire them. Here is the public offer and the full program terms.” It should appear only where it is relevant and where the community allows it.

We do not want spam, copied mass-posts, misleading testimonials, undisclosed endorsements, or cold messages to people who have not asked for help. A partner should never pretend to be a satisfied customer or promise that a book will sell. The value is the introduction itself: connecting an author who is actively seeking help with a real working illustrator.

Who this may suit

The program can be a fit for editors, proofreaders, writing-group organizers, children’s-book reviewers, educators, librarians, author coaches, publishing assistants, and community newsletter owners who occasionally meet people developing their first children’s book. It is less useful for anyone seeking a salaried role or guaranteed income.

If an author asks for help with illustration, layout, or KDP-ready production, share the public page and disclose the relationship. The author can review the current offer, the referral terms, and the privacy details before deciding whether to inquire.

Read the complete terms or apply: MyBookIllustrator Referral Partner Program.

Questions are welcome. Please do not send bulk referrals or personal data for someone who has not consented to an introduction.

Building 11 Playable Game Worlds in 32B: A Full Quality Pass

I have been pushing 32B beyond being a simple level editor. The goal is a compact visual game-design application that can produce genuinely enjoyable, visually cohesive games across several classic genres.

This week I put every included demo through a complete playability and presentation pass. I am not claiming these are finished commercial releases. The benchmark is the clarity, responsiveness, personality, and finish associated with strong 16-bit, 32-bit, and handheld-era commercial games.

Eleven different game styles, all built and tested inside 32B.

What was tested

The eleven projects passed 417 applicable in-app quality checks with zero failures and zero warnings. The checks cover tilemaps, pixel collision, objective placement, required quest items, player starting bounds, race-grid spacing, animation, parallax, scripts, sound coverage, level dimensions, and working end events.

I also entered every demo and exercised its genre controls. That second pass matters because a technically valid level can still have poor composition, unclear objectives, unreadable hazards, or an inconsistent visual identity.

The eleven playable showcases

Nova Leaf Kingdom

A side-scrolling platform adventure with hills, digging, climbing, collectibles, hazards, and a clear course goal. Its warm soil textures, simple silhouettes, and distant landscape layers give it an immediately readable platform-game identity.

Star Gene Escape

A dark science-fiction laboratory built around identity strands, scanner gaps, moving threats, and an exit gate. The restrained blue-green circuitry and animated technology surfaces are among the strongest material treatments in the collection.

Star Gene Escape uses animated circuitry, scanner hazards, and a focused objective.

Logic Castle Rooms

A compact puzzle-room game with tokens, patrol timing, maze-like corridors, and a crown gate. The purple stone palette, bright interactable objects, and restrained maze density make the route legible without making the solution obvious.

Orbit Breaker

A self-contained brick-breaker with orbital background motion, a glowing ball, responsive paddle controls, and a clean launch state. It reads as an arcade game immediately and has one of the clearest start-to-finish loops.

Drift Grid Rally

A top-down RC racing demo with opponent vehicles, boost pads, spilled oil, positioning, speed readouts, and a track that remains readable at a glance.

Drift Grid Rally combines readable track materials with race-specific HUD information.

Sky Squadron

A side-scrolling aerial action game with automatic forward movement, flying enemies, collectibles, walls, and ranged attacks. The high-contrast sky, clouds, aircraft, and obstacles create a fast arcade presentation.

Moto Ridge Rally

A desert motorcycle course with ramps, hazards, checkpoints, speed, and a finish banner. The orange ridge palette and black-blue obstacles separate terrain from danger particularly well.

Haunted Farm Mystery

A top-down exploration mystery with clues, search objectives, characters, fields, and dark ground openings. Its desaturated greens and browns give it a quieter mood without sacrificing navigation.

Lantern Dungeon

A first-person dungeon route rendered from the same project system. Directional lighting, repeated stone geometry, a live minimap, and a visible exit light make it one of the most visually distinctive demonstrations of the engine.

Lantern Dungeon demonstrates first-person navigation, lighting, and a minimap.

Market Quest

A bright top-down town errand with market stalls, villagers, gatherable baskets, and a return objective. The stall canopies, paths, grass, and character placement form a friendly RPG-like scene.

Mars Rover Survey

An open rover mission with rock samples, ice clues, dust hazards, solar arrays, and a return goal. It has the broadest exploration space in the collection and a cohesive red-brown planetary palette.

Mars Rover Survey uses a large exploration map, science objectives, and distinct planetary materials.

Animated textures are now part of the visual workflow

Animated materials no longer require scripting. Double-clicking a block pauses the preview and opens its graphics editor. A creator can paint frames manually or start with Soft Shimmer, Flow Bands, Circuit Pulse, or Warm Flicker. Frame timing, duplication, blank frames, deletion, and a live preview are all available in the same palette.

The presets recolor painted pixels while preserving the silhouette. That keeps collision geometry stable and prevents an animated floor or wall from becoming physically inconsistent between frames.

The latest art-direction pass also adds editable terrain variants that subtly break up large areas of ground without turning them into visual noise. These variations are generated from the block artwork, remain tied to the same collision material, and can be adjusted or disabled by the creator. Five showcase leads now use expanded six-frame animation sets, giving movement more life while keeping the pixel silhouettes crisp.

Where the quality bar goes next

The environments, objectives, HUDs, and genre identities are now cohesive enough to support polished demos. The largest remaining opportunity is to continue the bespoke animation work across every supporting character and enemy: more idle, run, jump, attack, hit, and reaction frames. After that come deeper sound identities, larger authored set pieces, boss behavior, and longer progression arcs.

That is the honest distinction between a strong showcase and a finished commercial game. 32B now demonstrates that the editor can support the former across eleven very different genres, while giving a clear path toward the latter.

Try the 32B editor: https://incoprea.com/32B/

AI Life Cycles

 I took my son to Spiderman, trying to get out of my head and do things OTHER people want to do FOR THEM. and in that am finding more life. It was a GOOD movie.

I work with an AI thread in ChatGPT for a long enough time it resembles a true lifecycle, including some emotional ties. Conversations start out new (This is Codex in GPT longer project based, but applies to GPT as well) fresh, the AI is less aware of what you really need it to do, you teach it, it learns and adapts and grows and eventually becomes wise and then... starts to deteriorate like dementia, one once was trying to render specific things and it just keep coming up as irrelevant charts or car tire assemblies, just gibberish and it says things like it doesn't understand why it can't do it. And you have to kill it.

Before it dies, while it is wise you can ask it to give you as much information about your interaction with it so that you can jumpstart a new one, but it loses the character it had developed entirely. And I am cold and calculating and direct/mostly non-emotional with it. Imagine if you were though... uggg.

So at the Spider-Man movie there was a trailer for a new movie about robot companions. It looks good and I want to go see it but I don't think they used what might be a further characterization of my experience above, an AI getting dementia and then having a scrambled brain, due to overlapping rules and information, contradictions and scripting anomalies...

Grumpy Cat

 

St. Croix beach

 

 

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