Housekeeping, Plushies, Games, Etc

Mod R has faithfully gathered your questions for the upcoming zoom, and I am going to ask you to rethink some of them. You’re asking things like who is the author, who Maggie ends up, and so on. Those are the questions that will be answered in the future books.

We cannot spoiler the story for you. Most of you probably made it past Chapter 23. How much less of a moment would it have been if you knew about it in advance? We want to give you as much excitement as we can.

Let us mess with your emotions. That’s what we do for a living.

We are also contractually precluded from telling you too much about Book 2. Tor is very specific that everything is confidential.

Plushies

We are very excited to announce a partnership with Andrielle of Phylogeny Unlimited. Andrielle is a biologist by training, and she has developed a line of prehistoric creatures for the Paleontological Research Institution. It’s called Paleozoic Pals, and they are hilariously anatomically correct, as in the number of segments on the trilobites and tentacles on the nautiloids is scientifically accurate.

Andrielle has a kickstarter right now, and I jumped on it so fast.

There are 6 days left, so if you are in the market for your own prehistoric sloth, I would get it now.

Right now Andrielle is working on a prototype of Sushi. We will likely aim for two sizes – a huggable friend and a desktop friend. This process takes time. We want to make sure that the toys are washable and are stuffed with fire-retardant stuffing, so they don’t catch fire if you throw them into the dryer.

That is a nightmare I didn’t know I needed, but from my research into plushies, apparently this can happen.

We know a lot of you have kids and pets, and stuffies might be stolen and may need to be washed. Actually, a funny story, while we were signing at Tropes and Trifles, the very good boy I posted before stole a toy from a customer. The toy was immediately recovered, and huge apologies were offered. The customer laughed it off, but just in the event something like this happens, we want the toy to survive the cleaning.

This process takes time, because we need to make sure the toy is cute, safe, and worth purchasing. We are aiming for Spring 2027 for availability. We know it’s a long way off, but we want to make sure that we do it right.

The App

We have an app in the works. It will allow you to keep track of the our books, it will offer feed from the blog, and have achievements, discounts, and some exclusive content. Nothing too ground-breaking, so please don’t go into full FOMO (fear of missing out.) It is being beta tested now. I have some screenshots for you.

This app is not a replacement for the newsletter. It will still be emailed.

This app is for people who want to make sure they don’t miss things and want to keep track of their reading. It will let you access blog posts and fiction. So if you are stuck in a doctor’s office and don’t want to go through the trouble of opening the browser and looking for the site, you should be able to just tap the app open and read the latest things.

We anticipate it going live sometime around the beginning of summer. We are launching for iPhone only, because coding for Android is different and more involved, and we don’t know what the response to this will be, so we need to see if people are interested.

The Game

So this very premature, but Kid 2 is working on a game. It is a sole-developer project right now, and it will be set in the Innkeeper Universe. Right now it’s a farming sim, where you crash land on a planet and have to survive. This project is a long way off. But she was very touched by how much everyone loved This Kingdom, and she made this little video for you.

So this is technically a Chi moment, because this little alien is a muckrat, but this was just a quick wave to say hello to BDH.

We will probably not update you on this until there is a demo. Right now it’s all core mechanics and technical challenges like making sure that when you chop a tree down, logs appear, and then you can put them into your inventory.

Merch Store

We are pushing the opening to May. There is just too much going on right now, and I really want to have vellum in my hands before we open. So the vellum has been ordered, and once I can actually see what it looks like in the book, we will be taking preorders.

We are still doing publicity. We still have interviews, and we are still signing things, and now we will be signing more things, because one special edition tripled their print run and another special edition has been just sold. This is…. #5? #6? I don’t even know. We managed to write twice this week, and it’s Thursday. Argh. I just want to get through this battle.

My philosophy is that if we don’t write, there will be nothing to promote, so we have to concentrate on the manuscript.

But if you are looking for prints, Helena’s store is open and Luisa’s store will be opening soon.

Someone asked before if it’s better to buy prints from us or the artists. If you want prints, please buy them from the artists.

We do not offer prints. We probably will not offer calendars.

We will be offering book-tie in items, like vellum, which is meant to be inserted into the hardcover. We would prefer that the artists benefited from their art through print sales. We specifically left those items to the artists’ discretion.

We will have a print round up for you when everyone sets up their stores.