Merry Christmas Eve!

• We've shipped most copies of the book and will finish shipping any remaining copies after Christmas.
  
  
• If you pledged for a physical book and haven't received a shipping email with tracking info yet then odds are high your book is one of the few still left to be sent out. These tend to be ones paired with orders from the "New Edge Sword & Sorcery 2025" and/or "Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes" crowdfunds.
  
  If you've not received a shipping email with tracking info by January 10th, please contact us through our website here: https://newedgeswordandsorcery.com/contact/
  
  
• If you pledged and haven't received a download link for the book in ePub & PDF, please let us know by email through our website here: https://newedgeswordandsorcery.com/contact/ We'll get you your files ASAP.
  
  
• If you have your book and would enjoy sharing a picture online then hey, we'd enjoy that too! Here's just a few pictures people have shared on social media of their new copies of Sometime Lofty Towers, either solo or with other Brackenbury Books publications:

Keep your sword sharp and your sorcery numinous,

Don't forget to fill out the Brackenbury Books Pledge Manager 2025 survey covering this book, NESS 2025, and Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes.

Fulfillment for everything we have received so far begins Monday, including digital formats, and we can only send books out to backers who've completed the survey.

Also don't forget that a hiccup with this big survey, the first of its kind Backerkit has ever assembled, is that at step TWO the shipping cost is showing as the maximum international rate - which is incorrect - but then if you click through to step FOUR you'll see the correct shipping, which is what you will actually be charged next week.

Meanwhile there may be a...

SHIPPING ADJUSTMENT IN YOUR FAVOR (Canadian & International Backers)

SHIPPING BEGINS ON MONDAY, DECMBER 1ST 

Keep your swords sharp and your shipping ship-shape,

• Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes,
  
  
• New Edge Sword & Sorcery 2025,
  
  and/or
  
  
• Sometime Lofty Towers

Surveys are for:

• Paying shipping.
  
  
• Providing your mailing address.
  
  
• Providing your payment information.
  
  
• Last minute additions of Add-On goodies to your order .

UNFORTUNATELY THIS IS THE FIRST TIME EVER BACKERKIT HAS TRIED MERGING CROWDFUNDS AND THERE ARE TWO HICCUPS

PHYSICAL BACKER SHIPPING ISSUE: Some people are being told the maximum possible shipping instead of the correct shipping. One backer had this problem as part of the earlier test, and he says he just clicked through to step four and it resolved itself. 

Please try that and if the cost remains the same, please contact our fulfillment person at [email protected] 

DIGITAL BACKER SHIPPING ISSUE: Some digital only pledges are being asked to pay for shipping. This is because a kink has caused digital only pledges to still have physical crowdfund rewards like early backer postcards attached. Turns out we can't fix this ourselves, but Backerit tell us it'll be resolved by end of day - which for them is 5pm PST, or 8pm EST etc. Just hang tight and come back to your survey later today.

Books for all three campaigns are either arrived (Sometime Lofty Towers) or arriving soon (NESS 2025 and Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes).

If all goes according to plan we hope to begin fulfillment in the first week of December. While we hope this won't be the case, any significant delay will be announced with an update.

Thank you for your patience and your patronage!

Keep your swords sharp & your sorcery numinous,

IN SHORT

• We've just sent the completed files for the novel to our printer.  This should keep us on schedule for fulfilling orders somewhere in the back half of November.
  
  
• If you've also pledged to "New Edge Sword & Sorcery 2025" and/or "Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes" we'll package what you pledged for from those crowdfunds along with your "Sometime Lofty Towers" pledge, saving you money on shipping!
  
  How this works is you'll pay shipping as normal across the campaigns, then when your books are packaged together our fulfillment person will calculate the savings on shipping; then you will be credited for that amount.
  
  
• The very next paperback pledge for our "New Edge Sword & Sorcery Novellas" crowdfund will unlock a bonus 17,000 novelette 'zine that will be included free for all backers - that's like a bonus half-novella! Learn more about this and the four-novella set it comes with here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/brackenbooks/new-edge-sword-sorcery-novellas-2025

IN DETAIL

It has been a BUSY summer at Brackenbury Books and we've been grateful this novel was fully written & edited by the time we crowdfunded it, meaning that aside from another pass for typos (you can never do too many...), we were able to go straight into layout & design.

While we began making all the little decisions that go into that, Ellis set to work on the custom calligraphy drop-caps that will open each chapter of the book. I love them all, but I think my personal favorite is the M, shown here:

So yes, we've just gotten the cover & interior PDFs to our printer who will now review them to make sure we didn't misalign anything. Then it's on to the physical proofing stage, where they'll print a test copy of the book and mail it to yours truly to pore over for anything that needs tweaking.

After that, when the print files are truly finalized, they'll begin work on the full print-run. This is our first time working with this printer, however we have good reason to have faith in their work and in their timelines. They've told us it will take about six weeks from us sending in today's version of the book files through to the finished print run arriving with our fulfillment person in Chicago.

So it seems reasonable for now to say that we'll begin fulfillment in the third, maybe fourth week of November. If there are any delays, we'll let you know.

Meanwhile, those of you who've pledged for this year's issues of the magazine or last year's unfortunately delayed anthology (Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes) may like to know that the stars seem to be aligning so we can release both of those along with Sometime Lofty Towers in November. This means we can save you money on shipping by putting everything together in one package.

That sort of thing makes us happy, let me tell ya!

Okay, that's all the Sometime Lofty Towers news for now. We'll be in touch again when the printing presses are fired up for the full run of the book.

Until then, you may wish to check out our exciting new set of four Sword & Sorcery novellas!

Featuring authors published in New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine, each novella tells a captivating new stand-alone adventure! And the very next pledge will unlock our first stretch goal, a bonus 'zine featuring a 17,000 word original story by debut author Audrey Stollings and art by NESS veteran Daniel Vega!

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Novellas ends at 4pm EST, on Tuesday, September 30th. Check it out here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/brackenbooks/new-edge-sword-sorcery-novellas-2025

Keep your sword sharp and your sorcery numinous,

P.S. Following this project but chose not to back it? You can still pre-order Sometime Lofty Towers here: https://sometime-lofty-towers.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders