I’ve got two days left at DragonCon and two and a half days left in the pattern deck Kickstarter. Can I survive them both?

We’re down to 55 hours and counting, and Alyc has decided to throw one more temptation into the mix. We already had a stretch goal to make digital art for a Rook & Rose “card” (currently just over $500 away), and we decided a while ago that if we get to 400 backers we’ll print that in the deck (we’re currently at 373), but they announced this morning that if the Rook and the Black Rose get a card, then dammit, Vargo and Peabody should as well. So if you want to see your favorite crime lord and adorable peacock spider on a card, help us get up and over that goal! All backers will receive the digital art, and every backer gets us closer to putting them in the physical deck as jokers, so even backing at the $1 tier helps us toward both goals.

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You have added
to the funding
that is in
our Kickstarter

and which
I wasn’t really
expecting
quite so soon

Thank you
we’re almost to goal
$295 away
and so close

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I’ve been so busy promoting the pattern deck Kickstarter up one side of the internet and down the other that I’ve completely forgotten to update about its progress here! We’re at the halfway point of the campaign (it ends on September 5th), and as of me posting this, we’ve made it to 89% of our goal. Which is fabulous, but also I won’t breathe easy until we’re past the 100% line with a bit of cushion to spare. My thanks to everybody who’s been spreading the word about this — and don’t forget, all of our add-ons are available at every tier! So even if the deck itself isn’t of interest, you can back at $1 and still get access to signed books or bookplates, tea samples, personalized readings or horoscopes, art commissions, Tuckerizations, or your very own peacock brocade frock coat!

Meanwhile, we have some other promotional events lined up for the Kickstarter and the release of Labyrinth’s Heart. This upcoming Thursday the 24th, from 4-7 p.m. Central time (5-8 Eastern, 2-6 Pacific, 9-midnight UTC), we’ll be playing Rook & Rose D&D online, courtesy of New Orleans bookstore Tubby & Coo’s! Our special guest player for this event is the wonderful author and editor Fran Wilde, and I have no idea what will happen in the game except guaranteed hijinks.

Alyc and I will also be at DragonCon, though I don’t quite have a finalized schedule yet. If you’re attending and would like anything signed, feel free to catch me after a panel or ping us to arrange a meetup; I know that getting into the dealers’ building can be an incredibly time-consuming process, and we don’t mind signing items in passing to save you hours of waiting in line.

Finally, two pieces of non-Rook & Rose news: first, from now until the 27th, the ebook of A Natural History of Dragons is on sale for only $2.99! And second, looking ahead to October, I’m going to be in conversation with Kate Heartfield to promote our mutual Norse-inspired works, her novel The Valkyrie and my The Waking of Angantyr. That’s organized by Brookline Booksmith, and it’ll be on October 27th at 5 p.m. Pacific (8 Eastern, midnight UTC).

I know there are other things I need to scrape together to post about, but brain am mush, so they will have to wait . . .

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Nearly six years after Alyc and I said “hey, let’s write the Rook and Rose trilogy together,” the story is complete!

Labyrinth’s Heart is out in the world today, in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Alyc and I will be celebrating with some carpal tunnel syndrome later on as we conduct an AMA over at r/Fantasy — I’m posting this before I go to bed and Alyc will be setting up the AMA once they wake up, so I don’t have a direct link yet, but you’ll see it there soon enough. My plan is to offer a one-card draw and its interpretation for every person who asks a question, so if you want to see some pattern-reading in action, here’s your chance!

Speaking of pattern, the Kickstarter is 2/3 of the way to goal! And since Alyc and I found a more efficient way of doing the gilding, we’ve decided to offer a third batch of premium decks; it seemed only fair to have a few available on the day the book comes out. So if you were regretting having missed the previous offerings, hie thee to Kickstarter and get one while they last!

(There are a lot of exclamation marks in this post, aren’t there? Six years, yo. It’s a long road to walk from “hey, let’s do this” to the final book being out.)

I should go to bed. But the book! It’s out in the world, for more than just early reviewers! How can I sleep at a time like this?

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With the Kickstarter launching tomorrow, I bring you the last of our artists!

H. Emiko Ogasawara works in a dizzying variety of media: woodblock prints, pop-up books, ceramics, and more. I’ve known her for a few years — I think we met at the San Jose Worldcon in 2018 — and not only is she a great artist, but she has the kind of mind that digs deep into the context of the art; on the Discord server for our readers, she at one point asked about what type of paper-making is practiced in Vraszan, given that we talk about them having printing presses. Y’all know me; you know I love thinking through my worldbuilding in depth. Emiko managed to catch me flat-footed: I had not given so much as a moment’s thought to that question. But it absolutely delighted me that she asked!

We say in the story that pattern decks can either be hand-painted (for the fancy ones) or woodblock-printed (for those without so much money). Obviously we’re going more of a hand-painted style for the fronts of the cards, but for the backs, I really loved Emiko’s eye for design and attention to technology. In fact, she’s cut actual printing blocks for her backing! We’re not going to actually use them to print all the decks, of course — that would be wildly unfeasible — but she’s gone to work with carving tools and several stages of lino blocks to give the image that authentic look, which is above and beyond the call of duty.

As for her work in general, you can check out her website to see her range! For visual art, I was particularly charmed by this fellow:

And with that, you have met all of our artists! Tomorrow, we kick this Kickstarter into gear!

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Time for a peek at the second of our artists! As Avery Liell-Kok will be doing the Face and Mask cards in the upcoming pattern deck, the wonderful A.C. Esguerra will be doing the bulk of the deck itself: all the “unaspected” cards in each thread, plus the seven clan cards.

A.C. has a gorgeous style that meshes beautifully with Avery’s watercolors. When they sent in their portfolio, my eye was immediately caught by this image:

The vivid colors, the dreamlike feel without sacrificing crisp detail — it felt absolutely perfect for our deck. You can check out more of A.C.’s work on their website and see the range of styles they practice, but this is absolutely the angle we fell in love with for the project.

One more artist to come!

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