This month’s title is broadly applicable to a lot of things, but I chose it because we’ve done a load of work on the Burn This City notebook.

Voidheart Symphony is queued behind one of our other books for editing. That book’s proved to be a bigger technical challenge than we expected, which means it’s taken longer to do. It’s worth the wait: when in-house editor extraordinaire Maz is ready to tackle it, we’ll get a thorough layout review as part of the deal, to make sure all these bold graphic design choices pay off.

Shifting the timeline would mean, in theory, that we should start shipping books out to you in December. Since packages have a greater tendency to get lost, banged around, etc. over the holiday season we’ll probably just… wait until January.

Still in editing.

While the core manuscript’s in editing, Minaerva has been working on the other material. Primarily this month, that’s meant the Burn This City notebook. We’ve been bouncing ideas around, balancing structure (that helps you use the notebook the way we think you will) against freedom to use it however you want to. We’re pleased with the result, and I’m extra pleased with Mina’s decision to design it so that, as far as possible, complete sections are on the front and back of a page - so if you want to cut them out and keep them separately, you can do that.

The pages above are a spread from the rebel part of the book (in blue) and the architect side (in red). Take notes about NPCs, the progress of the rebels' investigation into the latest castle shard, and manage your antagonists and their goals. Why is the architect side upside down? Because you flip the book to read it: each section starts from a cover and works in, so the architect side is, well, upside down.

OK, I may be overselling it a little bit there: this isn't quite a playable version. But we do have a gift for you!

Shortly after this backer update goes out, I’m going to upload some digital files to Backerkit:

If you’ve already done your survey, you should get immediate access to all these files. You may already have them, depending on when you read this. If you haven’t done your survey, consider this a reminder it’s worth doing!

Bye for now.

Chant