Tag: shipping

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Update 28: Print Proof Ordered

Now we’re really steaming.  I completed all the corrections earlier this week and I’ve uploaded the first digital files to Ingram so that I could order a print proof.  It should arrive in the next couple of weeks and you’ll be treated to a photo of me holding it in the next update, if all goes well.

Here’s a screenshot of the print order.  You can see that the print cost of the book implies a large volume…  We’re looking at 438 pages and 2250ish passages.

The book isn’t quite finalised – there are a few gameplay edits still pending, but I want to have a think about these while turning the real pages, and I’ll take the time to have a playthrough as well.  You can always catch a few more errors in print too.

However, having digital files ready is a crucial catalyst for the project: it allows me to get a final print cost and book size and weight, which I need to proceed with the shipping preparations.  I’ll explain more soon, but rather than use the Kickstarter pledge manager, I’m going to be collecting shipping costs directly through Stripe.  It means I can tailor the costs a lot more finely, hopefully keeping shipping to a minimum for all of us!  I’ve begun looking at the costs and overall it seems my estimates were fairly good, despite the time that has passed.

But there is one particular shipping option I want to draw your attention to: collection.  The final costing of the book and extras has shown that the project is within budget and therefore then there is nothing more to pay if you collect your rewards.  When and where?  Howabout at Fighting Fantasy Fest 6, on Saturday 5th September, in London, UK?

If you haven’t been, the Fest is the premier convention devoted exclusively to gamebooks – including, of course, the Fighting Fantasy series.  However, it has also become a haven for the independent authors of the gamebook renaissance and a great place to meet heros of the medium both past and present.  It’s organised by the stalwart Jon Green whose work bridges both the original Fighting Fantasy books and modern independent gamebooks.  What a legend.

COLLECTION FORM

If you mean to be there, then use this form to register to collect your rewards in person.  Please try and use the same email that you used for your pledge so that I don’t lose your response!  

If you can’t make it to the convention but would like to arrange collection in London, UK on a date following 5th September, just put a note in the form.

Otherwise, I’ll be sending out links to collect shipping payments and arrange final addresses in about a month for everyone who wants their rewards delivered to their door.  I’ve put a lot of work into shipping costs but they aren’t quite finalised yet.

It was late last year when I first wondered if this was all going to come together in time for FFF6 and I’m pleased to say that I’m on schedule for a complete set of physical rewards by then.  The extra adventures may take a little longer or may also be ready in time – I’m not sure.

So what else needs doing?  Here’s a longer list of the remaining jobs of the project.

– Acknowledgements

– Complete 2 maps (Plymouth and the siege of Tintagel)

– Write short adventures (Dark, Satanic Mills and Harvest of Death) 

– Complete shipping estimates and plan

– Digital decorations for boxes, frames etc

– Look over / improve character sheets

– Codeword check (partly done!)

– Create companion (partly done)

– Order maps

– Complete Touring Guide 2 (about 20 pages to do)

– Draw pubs (at least 3 to draw)

– Order guide folders

– Order guidebooks

– Assemble folders

– Order packaging

– Assemble TG2s

– Order TG1s

– Assemble TG1s

– Chase Wanted Posters

– Create remaining wanted posters

– Set up stripe links for shipping payments

– Update SH1-3 companion

– Update SH1

– Update SH2

– Update SH3

– Update errata

In the next fortnight I’ll be keenly awaiting that print proof, doing the taxes for my wife’s small company (an home education hub) and trying to survive in the heat.  I may get to the drawing of the maps or work on the guide – pretty much all of the remaining jobs are pleasant ones and I’m not pressurising myself now.

What’s in the Steam Highwayman’s tankard?  A pint of Marston’s Pedigree.

Next update due: 2.7.26

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Warming the engine…

Unlike an internal combustion engine, a steam-powered motor can’t simply be switched on. The fire has to be carefully built, warming the machine from the inside so that metal parts expand gently, gases flow smoothly and the temperature increases gradually. In the old days, it made for a whole career for those engine-shed firemen whose job it was simply to ready the great locomotives for their day’s work, rising early and stoking the fires of the particular engines they knew and cared for before handing them over to the driving team.

In my world, many of the road engines must need the same care – and I fancy that big Guild engines aren’t allowed to cool overnight or on stops, in order to prevent wasted time and fuel. In the case of the Ferguson velosteam, well, I created the ‘friction igniter’ – some sort of kick-start mechanism, hahaha – and I presume that a coal-gas system must have a bit less expansion in it… Or something. Anyway – that’s what fiction’s for, isn’t it? To gloss over the difficulties of reality and escape into a world of fun and adventure.

Some time ago I came across this fantastic video shot at the Colorado Railroad Museum. The detail is just great and it assured me of a couple of things: firstly, I do love the technology of steam engines! The weighty components, the awesome engineering and the primal urge to master a fire – a furnace, no less – are all part of the appeal. On a recent trip to the East Anglia Railway Museum outside Colchester, I even found myself enjoying the handiwork of the century-old door latches and wishing I could fit a few into a house I’d love to build.

And secondly, I realised that life as the Steam Highwayman could never work if you needed an hour to get your machine up to temperature before riding it away! The invention of the Ferguson is key to the adventure actually working – structurally speaking, as a gamebook, and technologically speaking too. So God bless Mr Ferguson, whoever he was – presumably an ancestor of Harry Ferguson, whose Antarctica-crossing tractors I so enjoyed learning about in this other (excellent) video. Alternate history is really powered by anachronistic technology, whether it’s the Guns of the South or the Guns of Spain… In my case, that’s not a weapon, but a mode of transport.

That’s a long metaphor for the current situation. I’ve been spending the last few weeks preparing for my upcoming (fourth!) Kickstarter and now I’m looking at the fire and beginning to add fuel to it. This morning I completed estimated shipping costs – phew! – for the various rewards and regions, which is a major piece of work – and one I’ll probably need to give a lot of detail about in another post. The world is not what it was, back in 2020 when I last ran a crowdfunding campaign. Why, the world isn’t even what it was last week…

So despite international tensions, I’m continuing with my project. Who knows what tomorrow holds? Whether we’re on rails to a doomed destination or have an open network of roads before us, it’s better to get moving, rather than to become frozen by fear. In the micro, trying to estimate shipping costs and publish them to backers is the sort of thing I hate: what if my estimates are all wrong? What if people complain? What if it means far fewer people choose to back my project? Will it turn off all my European backers – including some of my most committed fans? That’s why, I think, I left this task until so close to when my platform review deadline – when I have to submit the campaign page to the Kickstarter team for checking. Because I’ve never liked this bit and the submission to a world of unknown variables.

But in the macro, I’m not personally worried by the chance of a global war, although I can see it is possible from where we stand in late June of 2025. Part of that is no doubt due to the distance between me and Tehran or Tel Aviv or Kiev or Vilnius or Taiwan – although I know I have readers far, far closer. Partly it’s my own personal outlook: if I acted as if the worst were going to happen, I don’t think I’d be typing this. I’ve a faith perspective and a historically-informed one, yet I don’t believe that I will be somehow shielded or insulated from any potential imminent conflict about to kick off. But war and disaster have never been as far away as we like to think – just hidden, or not thought about. And there’s a time to think about them and a time to get on with the job, I think.

That’s quite a serious meditation for now. What I’ve got before me is this small project – not one that seems to have much relationship to the real world – but it is mine and I feel led to it. So I’ll keep working at it with all I can. So tell me – anyone been to the Colorado museum – or the Colchester one? Or both? Now that would be a very Steam Highwayman thing to do…

See you all soon.