First-Don't look to Patreon or favs or outside sources for confidence & a reason to continue. Do so for your own sake. Don't look to others for validation because people are fickle. You have to look to yourself because at the end of the day you're the one you should be doing good things for. You deserve it. Go for it.

Second, as far as an artist to do covers no artist in their right mind is going to put that much time & effort into something unless you're paying them up front. No one with decent enough quality work to make it worth it. You're talking about signing contracts-you have to remember that you're asking someone to sign over their copyright to you unless they're willing to give you first run rights.

What you're looking for is someone decent to work free. That's unrealistic, and unfair to the artist. With a profesional editor it's the same deal. Nobody worth having do it is going to do it for less than $1k at LEAST for a 50-100k word piece.

thanks for the tips :) and i understand what your going at and for so i respect that but art wise i do have a friend with that ability to draw what i need but he is in highschool currently and will not have the time to draw it all right now.

and the editor i would understand that fully but it would only be edited by chapter release and for what is already done so thats what could be covered by the patreon that i am doing :)

as for my searching for a reason, i only mean that because although i have a small backup it isnt my up to date one that is there and i had done a lot of editing work on it so it really lowered my moral and willingness to work on it. and although i will continue regardless it makes me upset and not want to work on it when this stuff happens if you know what i mean

I know that feel. I've been working on Rock & Roll Fantasy since 2009. Meanwhile, I've finished a bunch of other stories since then...I just can't seem to get going on that one even though it has the most potential.

yup kinda like me