More news!
9 months ago
– Mon, Sep 08, 2025 at 05:59:32 PM
I know it’s only been a week since the previous update, but there are a bunch of things to report in on!
Signed cards
My thanks to the great many of you who have answered the new survey question! I neglected to put a timeline on when that needs to be done by, so for the minority who haven’t yet responded, you have until 9 a.m. UTC this Thursday, the 11th -- that’s 4 a.m. Eastern, 1 a.m. Pacific -- to get your choice in. After that, I’ll choose a card at random (but avoid spiders in case of undeclared arachnophobes).
(And, uh. If you don’t have your heart utterly set on The Liar’s Knot or The Mask of Mirrors as your card, we’d be grateful for you choosing something else. We didn’t quite anticipate how focused demand for those two would be, and since we’re cannibalizing decks for this add-on -- to be clear, since a few backers had a question about this, it's an additional card shipped to you, not one card removed from your deck for signing -- that’s leading to multiple sets that are missing only one or both of those cards, and nothing else . . .)
Guidebooks AND dice
They’re here! Both of ‘em, arrived just today!
This greatly expands the range of orders we can fulfill, so we’ll be getting on those right away. In fact, by this time next week there will be almost no orders we’re not actively working on processing, because . . .
Gilded decks
Cross your fingers for us: we’re about to embark upon adventures in gilding! Emiko Ogasawara, the artist who created the back design, is helping us out with workshop space and instruction. If all goes well, a week from now these will be done, and we can get them in the mail to y’all!
International backers
I’m pleased to say that I’ve begun working my way through these orders, after the glitches I ran into initially with BackerKit’s postage setup. They will of course take longer to arrive at their destination than the domestic packages, but they’re heading out the door!
And finally, art -- originals AND prints
I mentioned before that the originals of the Faces and Masks are for sale. Several more of them have been purchased, either through backers messaging me or the various conventions Alyc and I have attended in the last couple of months, but many are still available! This is the updated set (larger image here):
Key:
Stars, Night, Glass, Mirrors
Light, Nothing, Ages, Fools
Crowns, Knives, Song, Ravens
Weaving, Unraveling, Balance, Chaos
Roses, Worms, Seeds, Bones
Gold, Hollows, Flames, Ashes
As before, it’s $400 for a single painting, $700 for a pair. If you’re interested, drop me a line, and I’ll put you in touch with Avery! Meanwhile, if original art is not within your budget, we can also hook you up with one or more prints of whichever Faces and Masks you’d like on your wall. So please do get in touch!
In closing
Current state of fulfillment: 27% done. But that is going to skyrocket now that we have the guidebooks and dice on hand! In fact, I'm heading downstairs right now to start assembling more packages . . .
--Marie
Many updates on fulfillment!
10 months ago
– Tue, Sep 02, 2025 at 04:54:50 PM
Okay, this is a long and complicated update, so please at least skim the headers to see what's contained herein! Up top, I'll note that we're about 10% done with fulfillment so far, but there are a few snags along the way that have been slowing things down from what we were hoping for -- details on those below.
BACKERKIT BACKERS
I wasn't aware until recently that updates I send out through Kickstarter also go to people who ordered on BackerKit after the campaign closed -- so hello to you all! Apologies for some of the confusion that has resulted. To clarify, we are focusing on filling Kickstarter orders first, but that doesn't mean you'll be waiting for those to be completed before you get your rewards; basically, as we wait for the final elements we need there (e.g. the gilded decks for our premium Kickstarter backers), we're also going to be handling BackerKit fulfillment. If you ordered your deck after we finally had the good sense to set up a "second round" set, though, that will be happening at the end, after we've dealt with everything else.
DIGITAL REWARDS
If you ordered the digital art assets or the digital guidebook, those have now been distributed! Sorry for the delay on the latter especially; I tried to have something clever done with the formatting of the ebook, but it didn't work, so I retreated to a simpler version. If you have not received these, it probably means that your card has not been charged yet -- check and make sure you haven't gotten any messages from BackerKit asking you to update that.
SIGNED CARDS
One of the snags I've been trying to work out has to do with orders that include signed cards. In short, an oversight on my part when we originally sent out the surveys meant that I didn't include a question about whether each affected backer wanted a random card or a specific one. Unfortunately, figuring out how to update that in BackerKit has been . . . something of a mess. (Their system is very powerful; however, it is often not intuitive at all, and I've been having a ton of back and forth with a very helpful woman in support.) I am fairly certain that what happened in the last twenty-four hours is that those backers got an email about the new question, but also ran into the problem of not being able to answer it because their surveys were locked. So, if you ordered a signed card, I have now unlocked your survey, and you should be able to answer that question. (I hope.) Please do so ASAP! Once that's handled, I'll be able to start shipping out orders that include signed cards.
INTERNATIONAL ORDERS
Speaking of snags with BackerKit: it turns out their "BackerKit postage" system does not always play nicely with international shipping, especially when -- as is the case with us -- the address things are being shipped from is a post office box. What this means is that, instead of being able to use the very convenient in-system buttons to buy labels for your packages, I'm probably going to have to manually order them myself. Because of this, we haven't yet started shipping out non-U.S. orders. I think it's possible that I can still upload information to BackerKit such that you'll get a notification and a tracking number when those go out, but I'm not positive about that -- see above re: BackerKit's being both very powerful and often not remotely intuitive. I will do my best!
DICE AND GUIDEBOOKS
For those of you who ordered pattern dice or a print guidebook, we're just waiting on those to arrive at my house; then we'll be able to start fulfillment on those subsets of our backers. I don't yet have an ETA for those, unfortunately -- hopefully it won't be much longer!
GILDED DECKS
We are working on getting these done as soon as possible, but as with the dice and guidebooks, I don't have an estimate yet for when that will happen. My apologies, and I hope to have more concrete news about them soon!
I think that's everything I needed to cover in this update. Thank you all for your patience as I muddle through my first experience of dealing with BackerKit as a creator rather than a backer -- hopefully it will be smoother sailing soon . . .
--Marie
Important questions inside!
11 months ago
– Tue, Aug 05, 2025 at 11:05:03 AM
They're heeeeeeeeeere . . . .
Sixteen boxes of pattern decks, ready to start shipping out!!! If you had any charges pending on BackerKit, those have now gone through, as we're about to start sticking things into the mail.
This is going to take a while; we thank you in advance for your patience. As I said quite some time ago, Alyc and I are doing fulfillment ourselves -- not paying for any service to assist -- and we're having to do that around our other work, so this is going to be very much a piecemeal process. First to go out will be orders for non-gilt-edged decks that include no other physical rewards except pins and/or those already delivered (i.e. the books and tea samples we shipped right after the Kickstarter); then we'll start working on the ones that involve physical guidebooks, pattern dice, bags, and so forth.
You can still change your address. Even with orders locked, you should be able to update your address at any time; we'll be pulling from that record when it comes time to ship to you. Just remember to do so if you're about to move!
If your order involves digital rewards, we hope to have those to you very soon. Digital art sets and digital guidebooks can obviously go out as soon as we have them ready, and that shouldn't take too long -- no more than a week or two.
If you're going to be at Worldcon in Seattle, let us know! Even if your order does involve other items, we're happy to hand over your deck in person! Alyc and I will have a table in the dealers' hall at the con, so you can find one of us there pretty much at any time the hall is open.
Let us know if you are severely arachnophobic. We know that spiders can be a real problem for people, to the point of even images being deeply upsetting -- and, of course, there are some spider images in the deck. If you would like those cards removed before we ship your deck to you, please drop us a line. (Above all this affects The Kindly Spinner, the Varadi card, which is very front-and-center with its subject. There is also a tiny spider in the House Vargo bonus card, and spiderwebs with no visible arachnid in The Peacock's Web.)
Going forward, updates will likely be a little less regular. Rather than updating every two weeks, I'm likely to switch to sending out messages as the situation changes, i.e. letting you know when we've finished one stage of fulfillment and are moving on to the next. I figure y'all would rather I spend this time on sending things out, not writing updates!
Thank you again so much for all your support and patience. The finish line is in sight!
--Marie
On sale now: originals of the Faces and Masks!
11 months ago
– Tue, Jul 22, 2025 at 06:03:15 AM
I've given you sneak previews of a number of the Faces and Masks, but now I'm going to reveal them all en masse . . . because you can buy the originals for yourself!
Because I'm traveling right now, I didn't have a chance to add a gloss of names to this image. (If you need to click through to a larger image, though, I've uploaded that here.) They are, in order by row:
Stars, Night, Glass, Mirrors
Light, Nothing, Ages, Fools
Crowns, Knives, Song, Ravens
Weaving, Unraveling, Balance, Chaos
Roses, Worms, Seeds, Bones
Gold, Hollows, Flames, Ashes
Avery Liell-Kok, our artist for that part of the deck, did all the Faces and Masks as watercolor paintings, rather than working digitally. The resulting paintings are 11x15, and you can buy one for $400, or a pair for $700. Some of these have already been sold -- Stars and Night, Glass and Mirrors, and Chaos on its own -- but the rest are ready to go to a new home!
Because I'm about to close our BackerKit store, I'm not going to add these there. If you would like to purchase one or more of them, message me directly and I'll make the arrangements!
Now, to finish packing for my flight . . .
--Marie
Let's talk logistics!
11 months ago
– Tue, Jul 08, 2025 at 12:34:45 PM
Since we've had a few queries about this recently -- and since the decks are on their way to the United States -- let's talk logistics!
If you have not filled out your survey, please do so! Otherwise we won't be able to send you your rewards. (You should have gotten an email reminder last night. If you didn't receive one, you're fine -- though check your spam folder to be sure.)
We will lock our BackerKit pledge manager on July 22nd. If you've moved since you filled out your survey, this is the place you'll go to update your address. We can still accommodate address changes after that but this is the best way to make sure we send your rewards to the right place! You can also still order add-ons up to the point at which we lock it.
If you have any pending charges on BackerKit, those will go through on August 19th. That is likely to be around the time that we begin shipping, hence scheduling it for then.
For transparency, we'll announce it here as we go through each phase of fulfillment. As I think I've mentioned before, we'll be organizing this according to which add-ons are in the order, rather than shipping each type of item separately. So if, during the course of that, you realize you'll be moving before we get to your wave of fulfillment, just let us know, and we'll update our records!
I think that's it for now! It's possible our next update will feature a number of boxes shoved into my garage . . .
--Marie
