Two weeks to go! We've raised almost $250,000 for Grandmaster, announced new development stretch goals, and connected with so many cool people in the Valdemar fandom. We invite everyone who signed up before the launch to join us, and to remember that we're offering need-based scholarships for people who can't fit the book into their budget.

Also, we're amused to share that, due to a fluke in how Goodreads works, Misty is currently the number-one-most-followed-author-in-the-world on Goodreads this September. Since she just claimed her Goodreads author page, everyone who had followed her books got assigned to her profile all at once, bumping her to the top of the charts! (Steven King will assuredly take back his crown in October.)

If you use Goodreads, this is a great time to follow Misty and help give her and her books more visibility!

Words cannot express how exciting the last couple of days have been! We've received new concept sketches from Nene Thomas, Rob Carlos, Dasha Park, and Alyssa Trudel... and these paintings are going to be amazing.  We don't have clearance to share sketches yet, so we'll have to use words for the moment.

Rob is working on Alain riding the Deep One, and has decided to make it a full oil painting. In his concept sketch, epic moonlight, crashing waves, and ships cast aside by the Deep One's passage surround Alain on the creature's back.

Nene's line art has been approved and she's starting to draft in color for the moment when Tafri is Chosen. He stands with his Companion in the snowy town streets as several onlookers observe, but our focus is on the moment when the Bond takes, as they gaze into each other's eyes. Every detail is carefully observed, down to the decoration on the ceremonial hackamore.

Alyssa delivered several delightful concepts for Sherra's reading nook, all of them warm and cozy. We love the side view, with the light pouring through the round window. As she moves to line art, Larry shared that "there should be ridiculous amounts of ornamentation in a hertasi's burrow, bits like garlic braids and drying pepper bunches, and an underlying sense that it's all orderly. They fit a lot in, but it doesn't look like haphazard hoarding."

Finally, Dasha is tackling Those Meddling Heralds. If you've read the story, you know the joke and can probably guess exactly where she's drawing visual inspiration from. We don't want to spoil too much, other than to share that the concept sketches nail the "animated" look that we were hoping for!

Did you apply for a need-based Grandmaster scholarship on or before September 9th? If so, we sent out redemption links yesterday! Over 100 fans who couldn't fit a Deluxe Grandmaster into their budget have now reserved their copy of the book, thanks to the generosity of all of you. Thank you!

If you applied and did not receive the email, please send a message to [email protected] and we'll help you out.

As a reminder, we have eighteen questions in the trivia challenge. We're releasing them over the course of the campaign (so on most, but not all, days). We'll lock the questions and show your scores when the campaign ends on September 26th. You are free to change your answers until then, if you think you got something wrong.

To qualify for the free Loremaster patch, you must 1) be a backer and 2) get at least 13 out of 18 questions correct before the campaign ends. And everyone who gets all 18 questions correct will be credited as a Loremaster in the book!