Truly we have seen the Face of Gold!
about 1 year ago – Tue, Sep 05, 2023 at 03:05:52 PM

AAAAAND THAT'S A WRAP!

The Rook and Rose pattern deck Kickstarter is officially complete! You, our wonderful backers, have made all our dreams come true. Before this campaign launched, I was (no exaggeration) waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety over whether this could possibly succeed, given the scale of the project. In the end, 433 of you have come together to raise $42,932 -- more than ten thousand dollars over our original goal!

Here's what we can create now, thanks to you:

• a beautifully illustrated deck printed on premium card stock
• two additional "joker" cards added to the deck, one for the Rook and the Black Rose, the other for Vargo and Master Peabody
• hand-lettered card names
• rules for three social games (based on the families of koi-koi, poker, and rummy), and one solitaire game
• full-color print guidebooks
• enamel pins of the Rook and Rose logo
• pattern dice and rules for a game to play with them
• short stories in the Rook and Rose setting from both me and Alyc, sent to all backers

. . . all of which will, of course, take a while! We'll be back later this week with an update giving you a look at the road ahead and when you can expect to receive the various add-ons and rewards, plus the opening of our BackerKit store -- but Step One in the process is "fall over and stare vacantly into the middle distance for a while." Know that you have our profound gratitude, and we can't wait to have this gorgeous deck in our own hands!

--Marie (and Alyc)

ALL goals reached!!!
about 1 year ago – Mon, Sep 04, 2023 at 07:00:01 AM

We've done it!

Or rather, y'all have. EVERY goal of ours has now been reached! Since my last update, we've unlocked not only the bonus card art (for both the Rook & Rose and Vargo & Peabody cards) and the stretch goal after it, the pattern dice; we also reached the 400 backers necessary for printing the bonus cards AND the last of our stretch goals. All physical decks will now be printed on premium card stock!

Pattern dice

Since these went from "pie-in-the-sky target" to "unlocked stretch goal" while I was busy at DragonCon, I have been remiss in telling you all what exactly the add-on entails!

For $25, you'll get a set of nine custom dice (enough for a three-person game, the optimal number) and a PDF of the rules. The dice are marked with simplified symbols for the threads of the pattern deck: — for the spinning thread, # for the woven thread, and X for the cut thread. In brief, gameplay is along the lines of poker, with the goal being to assemble a valid arrangement of symbols among your three dice. Players pay an ante each round and roll their dice in secret. If they come up as a good set, you can choose to stand; otherwise, you can pay more into the pot to reroll some or all of your dice. Once all players have stood or the maximum number of rerolls has been reached, everyone reveals their dice, and whoever has the highest-value combination claims the pot.

Since the dice have been added in the final hours of the campaign, i.e. with very little time for people to add them to their pledges, don't worry: this will be one of the add-ons available through BackerKit afterward.

Final hours

With only 32 hours left in the campaign, we're not going to make any last-second lunges for any new goals. This has already succeeded as well as we could have hoped for . . . and it is all thanks to you, our amazing backers. I will be floating on a cloud from now until it ends!

--Marie

56 hours left! Full-color guidebooks + expanding the next stretch goal!
about 1 year ago – Sun, Sep 03, 2023 at 07:05:29 AM

We've entered the home stretch, y'all: yesterday Kickstarter tipped over to that stage where the remaining duration of the campaign is counted in hours! We've got about 56 hours left, and yesterday we cleared the line for the fifth stretch goal, so all of you who have ordered print guidebooks, those will be in full color instead of black-and-white! (I'm so excited. This is one I really wanted to reach -- color guidebooks will look so much better -- but since it increases the printing costs, we had to put it a bit further down the path.)

We're nearly halfway to the next stretch goal, which is bonus art of a Rook & Rose card. I think I said before that we also have a side goal on that one: if we make it to 400 backers, that card will be printed in the deck along with the rest, rather than just being delivered digitally. Well, I've got some news for you all; Alyc, who is (cough cough) not partisan at all, decided that since decks usually have two jokers, they want a card for Vargo and Peabody, dammit! So that $38,000 stretch goal now includes art for TWO bonus cards, one for the Rook and the Black Rose, the other for everybody's favorite crime lord and adorable peacock spider. (Apologies to the arachnophobes among you. If it's a significant problem, we can arrange to leave that one out of your rewards.)

With the campaign entering its final hours, if you were eyeing any of the add-ons, now's the time to grab them! With the exception of the frock coats, all have at least a few instances still available as of me posting this. And while some of them will return in our BackerKit site after the campaign ends, not all will -- so gather yet add-ons while ye may! And if you want the bonus cards to be physically in your deck, spread the word, so we can get to 400 backers!

May we see the Rook and not the Rose -- wait, no, that's not how it goes. May we see the Face and not the Mask!

--Marie

Hello from DragonCon!
over 1 year ago – Fri, Sep 01, 2023 at 07:47:54 AM

Despite the best efforts of United Airlines, I have made it to Atlanta! Alyc and I are now ensconced in a hotel on the fringes of the chaos, ready for one last big push in promoting this campaign. We're nearly halfway to the fifth stretch goal (full-color guidebooks), and hopefully will manage to cinch that one by the time we leave DragonCon -- or even go beyond that . . .

Rook & Rose Miscellanea

To entertain you in these final days, we've got a few series-related links to share. First up is a post I wrote for fellow author Alma Alexander's blog, "It's in the Cards," wherein I go into greater detail on how exactly I designed the pattern deck -- what led to the three-thread structure, the order in which the various layouts developed and so forth.

Second, Alyc and I were recently interviewed by Sarah at Voyage Through Worlds about the Rook & Rose series. It's fairly spoiler-free -- the one section that goes into mild spoilers is clearly flagged -- and since Sarah shares our interest in worldbuilding, we had a lot of fun going into our choices around certain aspects of the setting.

And third, some of you may be familiar with Elias Eells' YouTube channel "Bar Cart Bookshelf," wherein he designs cocktails as accompaniments to SF/F books. (He's also sold an upcoming book, of cocktails for video games!) With his permission, I've reposted those recipes to our website, where you can make yourself two different kinds of Vraszenian spiced chocolate, a Black Rose, or a Trials of the Volti! Some of those can be non-alcoholic, too, for those you who prefer your drinks that way.

I am definitely going to be having a Black Rose to celebrate after this campaign ends!

Other campaigns

Just a quick reminder, if you were not already a pre-launch follower, that Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine and the Diaspora has now gone live! Thanks to support from people like Neil Gaiman, it has made its minimum goal in less than a day, but there is a ton of room for it to grow in its stretch goals, adding more fiction and illustration with additional funding. I encourage you to check it out!

--Marie

Solitaire + DragonCon!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 09:54:17 AM

We're almost 3/4 of the way to our fourth stretch goal -- the one for a second piece of fiction in the Rook & Rose setting, this time written by Alyc -- and on our way to that, we've achieved another milestone: 350 backers! To celebrate that, the digital and physical guidebooks will now include rules for a solitaire game you can play with the pattern deck, along with three games to be played with friends.

I know I accidentally said 400 backers for that in a few places (after three weeks of running this campaign, my brain increasingly resembles Swiss cheese), but Alyc and I have a different plan in store for that milestone, if we get that high. The stretch goal for $38,000 is a bonus "card" depicting the eponymous Rook & Rose, delivered digitally to all backers; we've decided that if we also gather 400 backers, then we'll actually print the card as a joker/wildcard in the deck.

So as we head into this final week, keep spreading the word!

DragonCon

Alyc and I will be at DragonCon this year; in fact, we miiiiiiight have chosen the dates of this campaign specifically so we could spend its final days promoting it at the convention. If you're going to be there, too, here's where you can find us!

SIGNINGS (Marie & Alyc together)

Time: Friday 2:30 p.m.
Location: Overlook Westin

Time: Friday 5 p.m.
Location: Vendor Hall Floor 1 Mart2, booth 1201 (The Missing Volume)

Time: Sunday 5 p.m.
Location: Vendor Hall Floor 1 Mart2, booth 1201 (The Missing Volume)

We're also happy to sign outside of those times (especially since we know it can take literal hours to get into the AmericasMart building). I'm easily findable after my panels, but since Alyc will be a roving Author at Large, if what you want signed is one of the Rook & Rose books, drop us a line ahead of time to let us know when to expect you; that way Alyc can arrange to be there as well.

PANELS (Marie)

Playing With Fire: The Fae in UF (panel)
Time: Friday 8:30 p.m.
Location: Chastain 1-2 Westin

Gender Essentialism in the Wheel of Time (panel)
Time: Saturday 10 a.m.
Location: L401-L403 Marriott

Finally! A Dragon Panel! (panel)
Time: Saturday 7 p.m.
Location: L401-L403 Marriott

Back in Time: Historical Urban Fantasy (panel)
Time: Saturday 8:30 p.m.
Location: Chastain 1-2 Westin

The Baba Yaga (panel)
Time: Sunday 1 p.m.
Location: L401-L403 Marriott

Is Nostalgia Killing Creativity? (panel)
Time: Sunday 2:30 p.m.
Location: L401-L403 Marriott

Fairy Tale & Folklore Retellings
Time: Monday 2:30 p.m.
Location: Chastain 1-2 Westin

Other campaigns

This is another one that won't be launching until later, but is worth pre-following now: The Map of Lost Places, an anthology helmed by Lesley Conner of Apex Magazine and Sheree Renée Thomas of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Those of you who are involved with SF/F publishing may have heard Thomas' name going around lately; for those who haven't, the short form is that there were some problems with the magazine, for which Thomas took the brunt of the internet outrage even though the decisions rested with the magazine's owner and publisher, Gordon Van Gelder. (Unlike most magazines in our field, the publisher and the editor are not currently the same person.) Van Gelder has since addressed the issue at hand, but Thomas took a lot of online abuse in the meanwhile, which is all the more troubling since she's the first female Black editor of a major SF/F publication. Becoming a follower of this anthology ahead of launch is an indirect way of showing support, to be sure, but I'd love to see this new project succeed.

That's it for now! Even if we reach the fourth stretch goal today or tomorrow, you probably won't hear from me again until Friday, as I'll lose basically all of tomorrow traveling to DragonCon. I hope to see some of you there!

--Marie