It's really great to see so many creators having a support system. For some it's quite the opposite.
Since we're a team, we can't speak for everyone on it, but as far as for the lead writer, only one family member is even vaguely aware of the fact that we're writing for comics. They probably did not know about it for about eight months, until one day they noticed a printed page set aside that we were proofing. About all they said on the matter was, "do you want readers thinking that you're into comic books and no longer a serious novelist?" Something to that extent, as if writing for comics was somehow a negative.
No one else in our circle knows about our comics and its going to remain that way, given what happened in 2015. Back then, when we were doing novels full time and not comics, a lot of family knew about our writing. We finally got a deal with a publisher who felt that the manuscript was a bit too experimental so they wanted to try a pre-order first to see what the demand was. We had 60 days to generate as many orders as possible so we pushed hard on social media and telling family and friends. We serve on a board of directors for a non-profit writing organization and so we told the entire org. We had a critique group and all of them were so excited because we were the first "success story" from that group and everyone wanted to know as many details as possible so they could be the next success. The number of people saying they would pre-order a copy was rather extensive.
Needless to say, around day 23 the publisher contacted us and stated that they would be closing their firm the following quarter and that pre-orders for our manuscript was extremely low so they were just going to cancel everyone's orders, refunding their money. We didn't have any exact numbers but based on the number of people who said they were going to buy a copy or multiple copies, maybe 1 in 10 actually placed an order.
Of course the next family function was like a funeral with everyone coming around saying how sad it was that the book had failed and how they were "sooooo looking forward to reading it", blah blah blah. The org went out of its way to bring the book up at a board meeting in front of everyone and wanted to know why it failed (at least we got the secretary to strike that portion of the meeting from the minutes). Talk about public shaming. The critique group went on and on about how it failed and "how unfair it was" for several sessions afterwards. All the Facebook PMs about "what a big disappointment". So much salt got dumped into the wound. All we wanted to do was let it go. Finally the matter seemed to go away.
Until months later we ran into a colleague who we knew for only 2 months in 2009 (so yes, six years later) who had noticed the pre-order being pushed on all our social media and they specifically mentioned it during a convention and "where was it". We just wanted to scream!
The whole thing felt like a family member had died by how everyone kept bringing it up for months and months afterwards. . .
. . . a family member that died because no one donated blood when asked to while it was on the operating table.
Finally it just went away and no one has brought it up for 6 months now. Relief.
Now when asked about our novels and when are they going to come out, we just say we're writing for Seeking Alpha and since no one knows what that is, which is a convenient topic killer, they move on to something else.
Oddly enough strangers are more supportive towards our works than our own circle is, so we're going to keep things that way.
If something happened and one of our comic series terminated or something else negative happens, the last thing we want to hear is it brought up over and over and over again at every family function.
Maybe someday one of them may find out accidentally about our comics somehow (it seems very doubtful since we keep our social media accounts very segregated now) but hopefully by that point we can just tell them they can go to Amazon and get a copy if they want (or not) because the book is done and successful thanks to the support of people you never see.
