End of July Update
4 months ago
– Wed, Jul 31, 2024 at 04:23:45 PM
Hi all!
Here's roughly where things stand, book-wise.
Lately I've been working on the Books of Names, trying to make them less like game text and more like stand-ins for the IC artifacts that are the rats' Books of Names; something like
(new icons by Jenn Manley Lee)
I think that there's room to criticize this shift, to be clear, because of how it compromises the word-level legibility.
... but I also think it's extremely important for comprehending and interpreting these bits that they parse to the reader as rat-written text, not game explanation; and so it goes.
As mentioned last month, I've also added a few pages here and there, e.g.,
and I've changed a few small things here and there, but ultimately, the backer draft is still like 95% accurate to the final text.
In terms of art, it's all assigned at this point, with an expectation of finishing up in August. There are two small pieces where I think the artist vanished on me, and ... three? artists who are all working on stuff that will finish soon who are suitable to take them on.
My working draft has, um ... 10 sketches waiting for finals, 8 assigned-but-not-yet-sketched pieces, and two places without planned art but which could still probably use a tiny piece (one of which I offered to an artist yesterday but have yet to confirm acceptance for).
I'm really looking forward to sharing the final with you!
Best wishes,
Jenna
End of June Status Update
5 months ago
– Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 07:42:41 PM
Hi all!
This month I decided that the "Rats you Might Meet" section wasn't quite enough as it stood, and so I spent most of the month building example rats and a small appendix with quick NPC traits. It was notionally a few days of work but I had to refresh myself on everything, make sure I wasn't screwing anything up, and integrate it into the layout, so that took a bit.
I've gone over an early print proof looking for typos and places that needed clarification and other things I wanted to fix; I'll probably have to get a new print proof with the current changes and start over, though, since there are three or four places (including the new content above) that I really need to look at the changes in print form. I'm pretty sure that the example rats and appendix will be the last and only major text content change, though; the rest seems solid and complete.
Otherwise, things are moving along. Most of the art is finalized. A modest number are still in progress. There are also currently ten pieces that I haven't assigned to anyone yet, two finished pieces I might replace, and five that I worry I'll have to reassign for one reason or another.
(Those ten pieces, if you're curious:
- a really tiny piece, like 1" tall, for the Near Roofs section. It's been tricky because it feels weird approaching an unknown or someone I haven't worked with in a while and saying "hey ... can you do an inch of art for me?" but most of the artists I'm working with actively right now are super-busy, either on more important pieces or on non-Far-Roofs stuff. I expect I'll fail to assign it to anyone and wind up asking Jenn Manley Lee to do it after her current pieces are done.
- a small piece for the Rogue's quests, which is in basically the same state.
- a small piece of a roof in the rain, same.
- a scarab; one artist I want to give it to is taking a while with an early set of pieces, and the other artist I might want to give it to just started on the project (with a different piece) this week.
- a piece for the third page of Rats You Might Meet, which I have to concept all over again because the page space changed. Fortunately I didn't have the old one done yet!
- a small piece to close out Malambruno; I feel like the concept I have for it isn't quite there yet, and so I've been waffling on assigning it.
- a small piece that needs to wait until after one of the current large pieces is finished because they're both showing Unicorn.
- the piece for "Design your own Mysteries," because the artist who I'd offered it to declined and I haven't figured out what to do there yet.
- a new piece for Appendix A, not yet concepted.
- a title page graphic, which is being delayed because I like the one I made in Photoshop but I can't actually use it.)
The book's currently looking to be 258 pages or so long---the extra length being 2 pages of rats, 5 pages of quick NPC stats, a couple pages of credits (including dedicated friend/friend of the rats credits), and a bunch of bonus art. I am trying to resist my innate desire to wrestle it down to 256 "because it's a power of two" but we'll see where we land! So far it appears that I can get away with this without bumping print-on-demand shipping cost, which makes me feel a little silly about how hard I worked to get the number of pages down in the original layout.
For the limited edition, I'm currently planning on solid-color endpaper, a dustjacket, ribbon, maybe some sort of treatment (UV?) on some of the cover's golds, but I first have to get the opinion and quote from my printer and then see what the artist thinks, 80# paper, and a good binding? I kind of wanted marbled endpaper but I don't think it's going to be an option.
And that's where we stand going into July!
Best wishes,
Jenna
May Status
6 months ago
– Sun, May 19, 2024 at 04:03:32 PM
Hi all! Just a general update.
The original art direction had roughly 50 pieces; most of these have now been received, commissioned, or tentatively commissioned, with 15 still waiting to be assigned.
Owing to the kickstarter's success, and after some experimentation with weight margins, I'm also adding 12-14 two-page speads and one bonus full-page piece---a short opening visual section, plus pieces corresponding to each of the most important Mysteries or their haunts. You've seen the Stagger of Rooftops and the Gutter-Lake; I'm also getting Leucrotta's "forest," the King of Shadows' roofs, the goblin-roofs, Unicorn, the farthest roofs where Hedge the Fang shapes the sea and the sky, Bluenettle Cliff, King Death's island, and Madcaps' Nave. Plus I decided to move the "you poor thing, you've learned to see" piece to the end of the book and put a manna-tree image on page 89.
I currently believe I was significantly overconservative on page count before and that I can include all of this safely, and probably a longer index and art index page too, while still keeping the PoD at its current weight. *^_^*;;
There aren't any rules changes at this point relative to the backer draft, but I'm integrating typo catches and occasionally making changes for clarity based on reports from discord.
I've been fairly slow this month, with a lot of migraines and allergy issues, but fortunately I'm not really needed at this point; there's a risk I've left some artist hanging on the "waiting for commission" or "waiting for commentary on sketches" phase because I've been out of it so much, but if I've managed to keep up on that then we're golden. Once I'm feeling a bit better, I'll continue my current project of working through an early PoD to catch anything that needs tweaking.
My personal target is finishing up the PDF in July and the print book in August, though ... like ... things happen, and I gave myself more time than that when setting kickstarter targets for a reason. ^_^
Best wishes,
Jenna
Backerkit Excluded Countries List Updated
7 months ago
– Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 11:33:19 AM
Hi all!
Backerkit helped me find and fix the problem. I'm not quite sure where the original extremely weird list of excluded countries came from---it doesn't look like something I set up, or like a default list---but I've reduced it down to countries I know I can't ship to right now. The list of excluded countries is now probably too small, but if it turns out I can't manage shipping to someone later, I'll cancel the pledge at that time.
On my end, this appears to also fix the problem with shipping to Puerto Rico.
There was a period of about three minutes while I was fixing this that almost every country was excluded for new surveys; I hope that didn't get anybody!
Thank you for bearing with me, and I hope this is all actually resolved.
Best wishes,
Jenna
Backerkit Surveys
7 months ago
– Sat, Apr 20, 2024 at 04:06:42 PM
Hi all!
Backerkit surveys have gone out to backers to gather addresses and suchlike! Please check your spam folder if you haven't seen yours. While the book is not ready yet, there are a number of digital downloads available once your survey is complete.
A few countries appear to be blocked at Backerkit's end. I'm currently trying to find out whether that's a mistake or not---I know there are some countries it might be currently impossible or illegal to ship to, but I don't believe those include Norway or Switzerland, so odds of a configuration error are high.
- if it's an error, it should be fixed soon. I'll let you know!
- if it's not an error, but shipping to those countries via my distributor is possible, I'll contact relevant backers individually to resolve the matter.
- If I can't resolve the matter, I'll send a refund.
Best wishes,
Jenna
