Friday, June 14, 2019

Through Ultan's Door Issue 2: Nearly There




It's been a long time in the making, but Issue 2 of Through Ultan's Door finally made it to the printers! I wanted to talk lift the curtain on the process and give you a glimpse of the finished product.

I tried a new, more rational method for printing issue 2. With issue 1, I edited the manuscript, had layout done, and commissioned art, all simultaneously. This was good for speed, since the delays in these different areas were simultaneous, but it was also the source of the considerable problems I ran into, problems that produced more stress than I could handle. (I talked about some of the problems here.) This time I told myself I would be more patient. My basic principle is to move to the next stage of the process only once I had finished the previous stage.

With issue 1 there were a ton of errors in the text that we only caught slowly after production had begun. This time, once I finished a rough draft of the text, I sent it to Fiona Maeve Geist for editing. I was a little worried, since I have intentionally adopted a pretentious, purple-prose style for this zine (and my blog), and I knew she was a fan of more muscular and direct writing. But she is a subtle wordsmith. She performed the remarkable feat of suggesting substantial changes to almost every paragraph that preserved my style 100% while simultaneously making objective improvements everywhere, giving verve to what Patrick Stuart rightly characterized as my overly professorial voice. (Of course, she also caught a bazillion errors.) Everyone should employ Fiona.

Once I had the edited draft in hand, I sent it to Matt Hildebrandt who did a preliminary layout including the spaces and dimensions for all artwork. Matt is amazing talented at layout; he's another gem whom game companies should absolutely employ. (I was astounded to find that he is also a wonderful illustrator, since at the very end he threw a couple of his own gorgeous pieces in the zine when a last minute layout changed opened up extra space.) Once we had the layout done, I only then commissioned artwork.

This piece is by Orphicss.
The artwork took a while, as artwork does. After receiving the artwork, Matt finalized the PDF. I then took it yesterday to the printer, hauling box after box of French Paper Co paper. The printer and I had already come to an understanding with issue 1. What he is able to print for me is much higher quality than what I can manage myself on a home printer, without any of the heartbreak. I am giving him huge orders (about 13,000 sides this time around!), and so he's happy to give me a very fair price on the volume. For anyone in Chicago, the printshop I use is Indigo Printing. It's a locally owned small business. The owner is an extraordinarily careful professional.


Now that the printing is finished I am folding and assembling all my zines by hand, before I begin selling them. This saves me the mad crunch as my stock dwindles and life presses in, and somehow I have to find time to fold, staple, press and cut 30 or 40 zines. It's been wonderful to get the gear and tackle and trim on the table and to discover that I still have the hang of using it.


The only anarchic element--anarchic in the best possible sense--was Gus L's contributions, since he contributed so much for free in a spirit of brotherhood, from substantive revisions to the text, to a not one but two amazing maps, and a couple of unsolicited delicious interior illustrations. In fact, his map of the sewer river was so evocative that it fired my imagination, leading me to decide that I needed to give the pointcrawl of the sewer river its own separate issue of the zine. So that's going to be issue 3 now. Issue 2 is squarely focused on the Catacombs of the Fleishguild. I'm not going to show you the sewer river map yet, but here's a glimpse of his map for the catacombs in issue 2.

Hot damn look at that thing

One consequence of employing this more rational approach is that delays in the process, instead of running simultaneously, stacked one after the other. What was a week here and week there for issue 1, accumulated into a few months of delay in Issue 2. I think it is worth it, since I have not yet been stressed out (!), and I am convinced that issue 2 is better than issue 1. But I'll let you be the judge of the question about quality. By the way reprinted issue 1 as well, as promised. Here they are together.


Right now, here are my priorities:

  1. Fold enough zines to send a shipment to Daniel Sell at the Melsonian Arts Council, who will be distributing them for me to locations outside the U.S. at better shipping prices than I can manage.
  2. Test shipping costs under various permutations. This time I won't be shipping media mail (the zine doesn't actually qualify), and I'll also be offering a more deluxe priority mail option for those who want their zines bagged and shipped in a sturdy box. Both will be more expensive than shipping was last time, but for the cheaper option, not too much more expensive I hope. 
  3. Finish folding all the zines I have (400 of issue 2, 200 of issue 1). 
  4. Put the zine on sale for U.S. customers through my Big Cartel store. 
I hope to have this all done by the last week of June, and be shipping zines from then through September. After that I'll probably put things on hiatus again for a while. I hope this summer I can also get some work done on Issue 3, maybe finish at least a draft of the text. We'll see. For now, full speed ahead!

For the curious, in closing, here is a list of the table of contents for Issue 2:


27 comments:

  1. So pumped. I've been holding off buying Issue #1 in pdf until it and Issue #2 dropped in print.

    Plus I'm keen on learning about all the factions we missed in the Catacombs of the Fleishguild...

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  2. I note you missed adding the "7" in the circle on the map... which I am glad you enjoy.

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    1. Thanks for catching this, and for everything else. I'll enter those numbers by hand on the stock I have, and we'll fix the PDF.

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    2. Such a pleasure to be involved in such a worthy project. I think a little number stamp with a red ink pad would do a fine job of making those already printed maps into "limited editions" quite quickly.

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  4. Very much looking forward to #2, Ben!

    Allan.

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  5. Very much looking forward to seeing this! Gus's maps are a really good fit with the mood of the setting.

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  6. Wooooooh!
    I can't wait. It's a really fun dungeon and I'm excited to see the completed zine.

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  7. Ohhhhh MAN this is sweet. Are you shipping across the way to Canada, or is Daniel handling those too?

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    1. Absurdly, Canada is no easier for me to ship to than Australia (cheaper, but not easier). So yes, Daniel will be shipping to Canada. I'll certainly email you when they go on sale there. And you can always reach out to me if there is a problem. As a credited playtester I'll make sure a copy gets to you even if they sell out at Melsonian Arts. (This is all new to me, so there are bound to be some kinks along the way.)

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  8. Are you sending some Issue 1s to Dan as well? Is your shop then US only? Also, looking forward to (hopefully) getting both issues.

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  9. So how do we order this time? Think last time somehow involved G+ that was.

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    1. When it goes on sale, it will be available in the US at my Big Cartel store: https://throughultansdoor.bigcartel.com/
      For people outside the US, it will (at least initially) be on sale through the Melsonian Arts Counsel webstore: https://www.melsonia.com/

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  10. Your zine is a thing of surpassing craftsmanship and individual vision - can't wait to add the new issue to my collection of oddball artefacts.

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  11. I ran The Inquisitor’s Theater to some fellow DMs not familiar with the OSR (being that Israel tends to be about 2d4+1 years late to catch up on trends) and we had a blast! They managed to avoid the swine altogether, got in a fight with some of the Guildless, ate enough byzantine fruit to burp out some Cruel Legalese (I made a random table of mock-terms with vicious twists on existing terms. “A hung jury” for example). They slew some Ravens of Perjury that lived between the pages of dusty confessions. They found themselves having tea with the explorers and their giant caterpillar, getting their fortunes read to them in tea leaves & seeing enough of the future to avoid an ambush by Shadow puppets, desperately burning candles in a circle around themselves to fend off said puppets while running away, and finally descending into the dark pit in search of the white jungle. And all this within about 3.5 hours of play.

    I can’t wait to see what shenanigans they’ll be getting into now issue #2 is near!

    (BTW pretty Passover cup, and prettier embroidery)

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  12. Good eye! That sounds like a blast Shahar. I especially love that they had tea with the explorers and had their fortunes read. That seems like a very dreamlands thing to happen and warms my heart. Issue 2 is just about to go on sale so at least there won’t be too long a wait.

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    1. Thanks, it wouldn’t have been possible had they not find masks of the hung bodies in the first room. That’s actually very clever, having an object immediately tied to one faction while antagonizing another.
      Speaking of Dreamlands style, I made a humble Pinterest board with inspirational images for Wishery:
      https://pin.it/graoa4x5gh4x2g

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  13. Woo! Excited for this to go on sale, I'm crossing my fingers for a copy of each of them!!

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  14. I am excited to see issue #2 and get a print copy of issue #1. Why not take pre-orders? You don't have to charge until the item ships (no pressure) and you would have a better idea of demand.

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    1. I haven't take pre-orders for two reasons both having to do with shipping. (1) because I haven't been confident about pricing for domestic shipping. And (2) I am having Melsonian Arts Council distribute my zine outside the US. And I don't know what their pricing for shipping to different places in the world will be. But you won't have to wait very long. The zines will go on sale both in the US and elsewhere on 7/8.

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    2. I may well take pre-orders in the future. We'll see.

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  15. I am hoping I’ll be able to afford the shipping. I had the pdf of issue 1 and then got the physical copy and wasn’t disappointed. There is something about a real old fashioned ‘zine that pixels on a screen don’t do.

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    1. Alistair, are you outside the US? If so, you'll be ordering from the Melsonian Arts Council webstore. Shipping from the UK should be considerably cheaper than anything I can manage from the US.

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