A chunk of this evening went to assembling Nod’s Way oracle dice, dice bags and Nod’s Way pocket reference cards into sets packaged in hand-sealed poly envelopes. Eventually, this will be a limited edition of around 240. I began designing a successor set even as I pulled together a master for this one. Time was the overriding design concern in this instance—I needed a credible package for Wizard World Austin Comic Con this weekend, and I needed it to fit a standard format for fast turnaround, short run printing. The next version will emerge from broader design horizons.

Nod's Way oracle dice, with dice bag and pocket reference card

I’ll be at Wizard World this weekend as one of the authors staffing the Blue Moose Press booth in the vendors area. Besides dice, I’ll be signing and selling new editions of Prelude to a Change of Mind and Entranscing, as well as some of the last copies of the first edition of Sleeper Awakes. This event will be the one opportunity of the season to pick up all the novels to date, in one stop, with the author conveniently near to personalize each volume. When you figure in the other Blue Moose titles, Rowan of the Wood series by Christine and Ethan Rose, and Avalon Revisited by O. M. Grey, you come quickly to realize there is no need to trouble with any other destination for your holiday shopping. Think of the opportunity here. In one swoop, you can acquire an array of excellent speculative fictions as stocking stuffers, while at the same time providing crucial direct support for the arts and independent media. And, truthfully, folks, if you don’t buy this stuff, then we can’t keep creating it.

Fans of the recently moribund STIKMANZ NEWS communiqués will be pleased to learn of their resurrection. Next week, I’ll launch a regular monthly e-newsletter of Stikmantic travel, appearances, projects, opinion, etc. The only way to receive these gems is by joining the e-newsletter list via the sign up form here, on the contact page of this site. You have my solemn word that this list will never be traded or sold. I also confess a vague, generalized intention to make them as amusing as possible.  That commitment requires more weasel room, since so much of amusement is in the eye of the amusee.

I just ordered the printing for Nod’s Way pocket cards, to be packaged with sets of Nod’s Way dice and a dice bag. The idea is to develop the oracle book and the dice as separate products, the primary reason for which is relative production expense. This first version of the dice package will be a limited edition of 250 available for the first time ever at the Blue Moose Press booth  this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Wizard World AUSTIN COMIC CON. I’m already at work designing the next, more permanent package.

Finally! I have finally managed to run down and fix a number of annoying bugs that had beset this site. The two biggest problems were (a) I did not know what I was doing and (b) the extremely helpful, respectful, willing technical support I sought was not on point. Nevertheless, today brought a revelation about what the various symptoms meant, and, voila! For this moment, at least, everything is functioning as it should. Now, on to routine maintenance and new developments.

I’m really happy to have restored nominal status in advance of Wizard World AUSTIN COMIC CON, November 12-14, 2010, this coming  Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Austin Convention Center. I’ll join with Christine and Ethan Rose to staff the Blue Moose Press booth in the dealer space. Permit me to take this opportunity to remind you that all Blue Moose Press titles make absolutely superb gifts for the holiday season.