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Although you'd think from the continuing election coverage
that it was still autumn, we are now officially into the holiday
season, and this week finds us really starting to notice it.
The orders are pouring in now, and just keeping up with the outgoing
mail is eating up a lot of our time. (We're also running out
of packing peanuts again; as you begin receiving packages this
holiday season, remember that the best way to recycle is to re-use,
so save all that styrofoam packing material and give it to a
local mail-order business, such as Looney
Labs.)
With Christmas now just a couple of weeks away, we're working
out our gift lists, both the long overdue suggestions list
and our internal shopping notes (but of course, I can't really
say too much about the latter plans right now). A lot of our
time is still going into Secret Project 44-CC (or CC for short
as it's now being called); although we met the major production
deadline last week, there's plenty
of follow-up work to do. Since we'll be releasing CC as a Factory
Showroom item early next year, the time is now to begin providing
our distributors with catalog blurbs and sample art, which they
can use to pitch the game to their retailers. (This week we wrote
the first piece of marketing text for the game, and the reactions
from the buyers who've seen it so far have been very encouraging!)
To give our distributors adequate time to release CC through
their channels, we've settled on an official release date of
Feb 15th (which also just happens to coincide with Toy
Fair). The copies we give away during the holidays will be
the only ones available until then.
The Xmas cards have started arriving, with the first being
from Weird Al himself (his
is a particularly nice one this year, too). Unfortunately, our
own holiday mailing has been repeatedly delayed, relegated to
the back burner by more urgent work. We first started planning
the next issue of the Geronimo
Inquirer back in October; at one time we thought it would
be a Halloween issue, then a Thanksgiving issue, and finally,
a regular mid-December issue. Now it's looking like it'll be
one of those holiday leftovers you get in early January. (I'm
OK with that... I just don't want it to be one of those rare
xmas letters you get in mid-July.)
Speaking of things in July, the deadline for submitting events
for the Origins pre-mailing is in early January, so as if we
don't have enough on our minds right now, we've also been doing
some initial Origins event planning. Fortunately, Liam
has volunteered to help us work up the schedule of events for
the next Big
Experiment. Thanks Liam!
We've been to our first holiday party of the season, and we've
even started receiving gifts already. Erskin
and Marcella
were in town for a couple of days (Erskin was here for a job
interview) and they gave us a lovely pyramid-shaped, uh, water
sculpture thing, containing icehouse
pieces that float up and down in a column of bubbles. (No, really!)
Anyway, we have yet to deck the halls or get a tree, but we're
starting to feel the holiday spirit out here at Wunderland. How
about you?
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