I can't believe we're already here at the end of August. It has been a hellacious summer for me. This is where I slip into my personal essay mode (which you may have seen in my newsletter, The Adventure Gaming Periodical).

My mother suffered a debilitating fall at the end of June. She suffered from a rapid decline of mental capacity after that. She's been getting surgeries and scans, and I've seen my father so beautifully rise to the occasion, but it leaves me taking care of him, I can't let him be Super Man. So, I've become the bookkeeper for the their family business. There are a lot of frustrations and emotions associated with this entire situation, eldest daughtering it to the max (my brother lives across the country). Combine all of this with the off kilter schedule that is working from home while children are out of school, frustrations and delays with other projects, and it's been enough to set off my ongoing mental health struggle with Bipolar 2 disorder.

I've exited out of what is called a mixed episode, where you experience portions of depression and hypomania simultaneously. What is this like? It's having impulsive, obsessive, recurring, rushing thoughts, and then having the inability to do with anything with them since they are coupled with lethargy and executive dysfunction from depression. It's being locked into a spiral state. It's forgetting to eat and take your medication. However, working from home, I could keep up with things on my uneven pace, I could make it to meetings, I've kept up with the projects, I've been going to therapy, I know how to cope, I do have the skills.

This project is the one that I couldn't come back to in the midst of everything. I was making incredible progress on the painstaking work of typesetting this book all the way into June. However, it's work that takes a lot of sustained focus, which was drained by everything that piled on this summer (alongside a full time day job). The good news is that school has started again, we're on a regular fall schedule, the frustrations are on their tail end and almost complete, and my focus has returned to finishing this book.

I apologize for the delays on this book, and I apologize to anyone I was snarky with in the comments.

While I finish the typesetting, this is a reminder that online version of the book is available. In a prior update, you were also given access to our stretch goal, the solo and Wardenless adventure, Return to STAR Station, if you were a backer.

Here is our updated timeline.

I have a release date to announce for the early copy of the print edition book as a PDF, Sunday, September 7. This will include all of the content of the book that has already been edited but it will not contain the index. Backers will be sent an update with access to this when it goes live. We also hope to have a draft version of the Advanced Rules Character Sheet and maybe a couple of the other stretch goals that will launch along side this draft. We will have a form, so you can report anything that may have missed our eyes, and you can ask for clarification about anything.

Developing the index and proofing the final draft are the final steps we have with Roz and should go smoothly once I am done with typesetting.

Thankfully, this is just wire bound book without a lot of moving parts, so production and fulfillment will go pretty quickly. We will send surveys and charge for shipping once the final draft is sent to the printers, and we will close to Late Pledges right before we start shipping.

Much love,
Violet