Looking for a friend

Is there anyone with adult or sub adult females in the northern Ohio area for sale?

As I learned last year, this is the worst possible time to be searching for an adult female. A shame you're starting with a male instead of a female. I could have offered a decent loaner to test possible hets.

This amel tessera might be a good option for next year:
http://market.kingsnake.com/detail.php?cat=65&de=1174900

More expensive route, but another fun project starter, ultra anery:
http://www.morphmarket.com/us/c/reptiles/colubrids/corn-snakes/56207

If you like bright yellows and oranges, the eventual mandarins and caramel mandarins you could produce from this female would be quite interesting:
http://www.morphmarket.com/us/c/reptiles/colubrids/corn-snakes/53760

I'm really kind of looking for darker colors... I'm Leary of having animals shipped. Is my worry misplaced?

All but one of my animals was shipped to me. To say it's commonplace is an understatement.

If you want something dark, you're looking at anery or charcoal, maybe caramel. I tried to aim for things that might give you decent project animals to work with or sell. So here's my question then... do you want a cool project you can continue working with or sell off, or do you just want to make a bunch of normals with basic hets just for the experience of trying out breeding? Because in literally any other animal hobby the latter is strongly discouraged. Frankly it annoys me that it's still no big deal in reptiles. It might be soon enough, though; the adopt-don't-shop movement already has a foothold in the UK.

I'm not saying this to be mean or discourage you, but we see a ridiculous number of posts (esp in Facebook groups) saying, "I put my red corn with my black corn and got all these brown babies. What are they?" and then they get rehomed for free into homes that may or may not take care of them properly, OR they end up stuck feeding 20 snakes they didn't anticipate keeping because the market is already oversaturated with unknown classics. The point I'm trying to make here is that if you're not contributing to the hobby by breeding, you might be contributing to the problem.

Now, if you want a darker colored female, charcoal is going to give you better het babies over anery, as blizzard corns are always popular but less common than snow. I can try to help you find a decent one if you'd like. They're certainly one of my favorite single-gene morphs, and I'm planning to work on darkening them further in the coming years.

Unfortunately I just got laid off from work so i think im going to have to put this plan on hold on account of not being able to go out and spend 200 dollars on a new snake. Are you saying that if I get a charcoal or an anery I have the possibility of producing Blizzards?

You have the possibility of producing blizzards in the second generation with a charcoal. So about 3-4 years from now if you're waiting until next year.

Chuck Pritzel has a free copy of an older, less detailed version of his genetics book available here: http://cornguide.com/geneticspages.php?page=1 I highly recommend at least going through the first chapter, which is only the first 20 very short pages.

Ok cool thanks

Regarding shipping, like Dragonling all but one of my snakes was shipped without any issues. The selection here in socal is pretty poor. If I bought all my snakes local I'd be stuck with a bunch of single gene snakes.