Stretch goal short story #1 + some bits of news!
about 1 year ago
– Tue, Apr 15, 2025 at 11:16:06 AM
My apologies for missing the update two weeks ago! I promise, that wasn't an April Fool's joke; it was just me falling over after Alyc and I finished the draft of the first Sea Beyond novel, and then having to pick myself right back up again to start revising it before it goes to our editor. Somewhere in there, the fact that I needed to send an update slipped through the cracks.
But to make it up to you, I have something shiny today: the first of the short stories unlocked as stretch goals during the campaign!
This is my contribution, and it's actually related to the pattern deck. You see, when we were naming the cards, Alyc and I decided we liked making the "Noun and Noun" cards alliterate. When we got to the card of adaptation, we dubbed it Hare and Hound -- but why? What does that have to do with adaptation? You get a brief explanation in The Liar's Knot, when Yvie is telling a story about Clever Natalya, the Vraszenian trickster heroine. There's a folkloric motif called a transformation chase, where one person tries to escape by turning into different things, but their pursuer thwarts each one with an equivalent transformation; because Alyc and I are both folklorists, we decided that was a suitable match for the card of adaptation.
But since Yvie's summary was quite brief, I always wanted to write the full story -- and now I have! You can download a PDF of "Clever Natalya and the Sorcerer of Souls" from Dropbox now.
(I tried to also make an epub of it, but . . . yeah, turns out I am not very good at doing that. (All my reprints and Patreon collections and the like are formatted for me by a fellow Book View Cafe member.) My plan at the moment is to take a little more time and have both my story and Alyc's in an epub together later on.)
Meanwhile, two bits of news that actually have nothing to do with the pattern deck, but I have to crow about them anyway . . .
The first is that I am up for a Hugo Award! Each Worldcon can add a special category of their choosing; this year, Seattle chose Best Poem, and my piece "A War of Words" (free to read at that link) is one of the finalists. Both Alyc and I will be in Seattle this summer for the con; if you're there, please come say hello!
And the second is that, on the heels of the Broken Binding doing their special edition of the Rook and Rose trilogy, Wraithmarked is putting out a special edition of the Memoirs of Lady Trent! If you head on over to that link, you can become a pre-launch follower of the campaign, which means both that you will be notified when it goes live and that you'll help boost its visibility in Kickstarter's algorithms. Wraithmarked has a long tradition of making beautiful books; this one will not only reprint Todd Lockwood's justifiably classic art, but it will have new full-color art on the dust jacket, black-and-white art on the dust jacket interior, and black-and-white art throughout the volume. Note that this is an omnibus for the first three books of the series; there will be a second volume containing books four and five, plus the short fiction -- including a brand-new short story, "The Incident at Booker's Club"! But if you want the series, definitely don't wait for that second campaign: it'll be cheaper if you back now rather than buying the overstock later, and sometimes the overstock sells out shockingly fast.
That's it for now, and I'll be back in two weeks -- I promise!
--Marie
Sneak peek: The Face of Glass!
about 1 year ago
– Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 01:47:52 PM
Another peek at some finished art! I shared the initial sketches for this card with you some months ago, the set of six from which Alyc and I were invited to play mix-and-match with the various features, but not the finished sketch. This is one where the watercolors and Avery's "blind contour" method work stunningly well, in my opinion: the reflective, refractive feeling of glass comes through very well here, with a real sense of depth.
I'm in awe of anybody who can do watercolors that well. Last time I tried, I produced a blobby mess . . .
--Marie
Sneak peek: Wings in Silk!
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Mar 04, 2025 at 08:58:24 PM
For the first two pieces of finished art I shared -- one from A.C., one from Avery -- it made sense to go back to the very first cards I previewed for each artist, back when they were just rough thumbnails and concept sketches. But I don't want to merely repeat cards you've already seen in process, so this week, you get a new one!
Several of A.C.'s designs go very minimalist, and when the subject is something drawn from nature, they evoke (at least to my eye) a feeling adjacent to East Asian ink paintings. Here is Wings in Silk -- the card of transformation -- showing a beautifully delicate use of color:
If memory serves, we had to fiddle with this one a little bit during the development process to make sure it didn't wind up looking too much like a creepy bug, heh. But I think it wound up lovely! And it makes a beautiful pairing with Four Petals Fall -- but to see that one, you'll have to wait!
--Marie
Update on fulfillment estimates
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Feb 18, 2025 at 12:41:15 PM
If you're like me when I back a Kickstarter project, you have probably forgotten what we originally listed as the estimated fulfillment date for the pattern deck. Since we said March 2025, though, and that's just around the corner, I want to update you all on where things stand.
Alas, we will not be able to ship out decks next month, as we are not yet ready to send them off for printing. We're getting very close -- part of the reason for these updates every other week is so you can rest assured that the project is moving forward at a good clip -- but we're not quite there yet. For which we apologize, and we hope you can be patient a little while longer.
So when is the deck likely to ship? I'm reluctant to give a specific estimate, because while I'm very familiar with book publishing and the like, decks are a new field for me. We definitely want to take the time to order a proof deck before we finalize the printing, to make sure everything looks its best -- especially since we also need to check the box, the included instruction booklet, and so forth. I'm not sure how long that will take. So all I'll say is that we are very determined to have this in hand no later than July, when we'll be Guests of Honor at BayCon, and I think there's a good chance we'll have it sooner than that. (I certainly hope so!)
Again, we apologize for the delay. There's no single cause for it; instead it's the pile-up of many smaller delays, some of them not even related to the project, but rather personal in nature. We'd rather give you something as good as we can make it than rush the process just to meet the deadline. And I am confident it will be worth the wait!
--Marie
Sneak peek: The Face of Stars!
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Feb 04, 2025 at 01:30:28 PM
Since in our last update I decided to post the finished art for Warp and Weft, on account of that being the first of A.C.'s cards I'd shared, it seems only right that I should do the same thing for the first of Avery's cards! This one hasn't yet been composited with the border, but here is the art for The Face of Stars . . .
I absolutely love the colors on this one, how it manages to be both dark and bright at the same time -- entirely fitting for the card in question!
Until next time . . .
--Marie
