Thursday, July 26, 2001

by the Wunderland Toast Society

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• GinohnNews - Celebrating the Self Creation of Our Goddess Gina
• Number 12 took some pictures of a cool place to play Icehouse
• The Icehouse Tourney Almanac has been updated
• Ginohn has two new Tombstoners

This week finds us in the midst of turning over our warehousing and shipping operations to another company, namely ACMS down in Northern Virginia. Yesterday, they picked up most of our inventory, and today our first batch of orders was shipped out from the new facility! Kristin and Alison just got back from overseeing and assisting with this first shipment by their team, and Kristin says "I'm extremely pleased with the way things are going."

There's still a whole lot to do though; they are still just getting set up for us down there, and until we switch over to their shopping cart system, we still have to process the orders here and send the printed invoices to them for filling. And soon we have to go to Gen-Con. So this means that:

There will be no shipments from our online stores (and that includes Rush orders) until August 7th.

Speaking of Gen-Con, check out this scenic vista Alison put together:

This is what we'll be standing in front of at Gen-Con, assuming Landru is successful in turning this art into one of those big trade show standup units for us. Gen-Con is also our deadline for sending out the Nanofictionary Betas... Dave has been helping out here by finally writing the rules down for me and figuring out who we'll be sending these playtest decks to.

In other new release news, I've started making up my mind about which of the fabulous Lost Identities contest entries will make it into the finished product. Fortunately, the survey has been very insightful... it helps to know when you think a story is a winner that lots of people agree with you. At this point, I'm pretty sure I know what 11 of the 13 stories will be. In particular, I still have to decide between two fine stories submitted by the same author

Since there was no limit on how many stories you could submit, some authors sent in several, with Liam Bryan leading the pack by single-handedly writing about a third of the stories we received. Liam turned in so many great stories (he wrote 5 on my initial list of 20 or so favorites) that it looks like he's going to pull a double win, even though I was planning only to include one story by any given author. [I'm very fond of Turtle ("The Unusual Artifact") but Alison's favorite in the whole contest is Angela ("Arrested Development") and I have to say, it's a mighty fine story.] So congrats Liam, you're definitely getting in.

Another author who submitted more than one great story is Scotto Starkey. Guess what Scotto you're a winner too! The question is, which of your entries will win: Rufus ("All Good Dogs Come Home") or Kvar El Kvin ("Stranded Since the Beginning of Time")?

I think if it were totally up to me, I'd pick Kvar. I'm not much of a dog-lover, and I prefer how well Kvar's story fits with his Timeline requirements. (This isn't mandatory of course, but it is a consideration; one of the reasons I like Turtle's story so much is because of his Timeline fit.) Kvar's story also reminds me of The Sirens of Titan, and of course I dig well executed references as well.

But many of my key advisors (including Kristin, Dave, and Scotto himself) are voting for Rufus, and I have to say he has a lot of appeal too. His story reads like an old Twilight Zone episode, and I think people would get into being the time-traveling dog. Such a character also reminds me of the dog in that Joe Frank monologue, who learned to slip aboard cargo planes to travel around between the Virgin Islands. I like him.

So, they're both great stories, but I have to pick one. Any opinions?

Did you hear I won 2 Origins Awards? I'm so happy!