The wheel keeps turning...

...but that only matters to the ones on the rim.

Frabjous joy (Have I already used that line? Alas.) Okay, I've got a basic printing timeline from Transcontinental. Everything will be ready to be bound as of March 19th. The time between March 19th and completion of the first books depends on a few options I confirmed this morning and so we should have a final date for that in the next couple of days.

Beyond that, volumes 8-13 and 15-19--Stranger in a Strange Land, How to be a Politician, Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, Farmer in the Sky, Between Planets, The Rolling Stones, Starman Jones, and the Star Beast--have been scanned and will be moving to the proofreading part of the process. Volume 14 (Red Planet) was delayed due to shipping problems. Uncountable, unspeakable, unholy shipping problems. Books will be moved along and completed at the rate of 3 to 4 a month. If we assume a bare minimum, we'll be seeing the next twelve completed in four months--about June--and at flat-out rates, we'll have 'em in May or so.

We'd originally planned to do volumes 1-10, 11-22, 23-34, 35-46 (roughly). The original volume 8 was lost to redistribution, volumes 9 and 10 needed more work done, and two volumes of screenplays have been added. Now our first two print runs will be volumes 1-7 and then 8-19. I'll double-check, of course, but I believe the best course of action hereafter will be to print 20-33 and 34-47 together. (I'm also open to all of your thoughts on the matter.)

Due to clerical and administrative delay, the refunds did not go out last week. I have everything I need now, however, and will be sending them out today and Wednesday. Frankh, don't worry, I'll make sure your leaves with the first batch.

More than a few have asked me whether or not Variable Star would be included with the Virginia Edition. Our plan is not to include it as, though it is based on Heinlein's outlines, it is not Heinlein's writing. Nonetheless, given what appears to be reasonable interest, I *might* be able to start talking with a few people to see if we can get the rights to print a copy of it in the same format as the rest of the Virginia Edition.

If we did do this, it would be an add-on you could choose to purchase. Before I do any of this, however, I'd need to know how many of you would actually be interested in purchasing the volume. (It'll likely be a little while before I find the time to make inquiries, but go ahead and either respond to this post or to my email.)

Also, Donato has completed his work on the painting and is just awaiting an address to which he should send the plate. I'll keep you posted on the status of that as it develops.

I believe that's all for today.

Ad Astra

To those who have requested to receive money in lieu of books, we will begin sending those out starting Wednesday. If, for some reason, there is a delay in a person's account, I will contact them directly and let them know what's happened.

I may have mistaken the type of leather being used--I copied the exact name from the Transcontinental quotes, it may well be an in-house name--so, when we're uploading all the files, I'll ask for a common name.

We're currently waiting for somebody to finish rechecking the reflow of Time Enough for Loved--ETA for completion being today or tomorrow--and I'm double-checking to see if there's any reason we can't have the higher-res version of the VE logo on the book's title page. I am not currently aware of any other obstacles to going to print.

Today's title is blank in honor of transparencies, the unsung heroes of the classroom.

The website is now nearly completely functional. We've had transactions run successfully and I've been able to add a basic ordering option, but I'm apparently not nearly as technically brilliant as I thought and thus need our beloved webmistress's* help to set up options for people who need to make multiple payments.


I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but a number of Heinlein's screenplays were found and will be published as a two-volume set by Shadow Press. These volumes will also be included in the Virginia Edition.


One side of this is that all the material for Volume 8: Destination Moon will be included elsewhere in the edition. As such, we're going to get rid of it as a discrete volume, move them all up a stage, and move from there. We're going to send Shadow Press all the pictures we have from Destination: Moon so that they can create a much nicer production than might otherwise have been the case.

Talk to you all Monday (though it may be a bit of a quickie).

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.

I would like to apologize to Zarf--tentatively termed My Number 1 Fan--for the lack of updates last week. There's been a whole lot of work without a whole lot of tangible results. (The intangibles, however, are off the charts.) Nonetheless, in all seriousness, sorry Zarf. And everybody else.

Our current status isn't especially different now than it was last week--when I asked Nancy to put together the layouts, I must, rather sheepishly, admit that I forgot to send her the graphic files we'll be using. This delay's rather entirely on me.

Of course, I realize I should also mention, while this business is being taken care of, progress is still continuing on future volumes--I need to get a status update and then I'll be able to post with the current progress on said volumes. Just so you know, we're not ramming our head into a brick wall.

The offer deadline came and went. I spent a lot of last week contacting those people who hadn't yet responded to make sure that nobody got left in the cold. (On a tangential note: I was unaware that Texas A&M had a science-fiction collection. I'm going to have to make a trip up to see it some weekend or another.)

As of this point, I've run an offer by the Exclusive Edition subscribers as to what we want to do for them and everybody seemed amenable to that solution--if you're an Exclusive Edition subscriber and *didn't* get the offer, please email me at sean (dot) thompson (at) dula (dot) com--and so all that really remains is for us to write a more formal agreement to mail to those subscribers.

I need to check with Donato to find out about where he is with the painting, I don't believe he expects to take too much longer to finish it. I'd like to take a moment to voice my appreciation for the complementary work he's doing on the piece. I believe it indicative of a dedication to one's art and work that's too often lacking.

In addition, my major task for the day: Getting the bloody shopping cart on the website to be fully functional. At this point, I believe, our beloved webmistress--long may she reign--has done all she can towards setting things up and we're at the point where I have to sort through the last of it. But sort I will! And now I'm rambling because I despise setting these galvano-mechanical monstrosities up.

Once again, I apologize for not updating last week. I will try (emphasis on 'try') to post again Friday to make up for it.

I didn't quite make it to the posting stage on Monday and, while work is calling, I figured everybody'd be happy with at least a quick post to let you know I'm thinking of you. Yes, even you.

Upon realizing that our files for Time Enough For Love had no proper fonts embedded in the files--the reason for the Italics problem in that volume, a solution to which I've been chasing like my own tail, is that a, so far as I understand it, fake italic font had been created and so the printer's computers couldn't recognize it, substituted their own and that caused the spacing to go hay-wire--we're going to have somebody apply a new font--the one we'll be using throughout the books, will look the same--and go through to make sure there are no reflow problems as a result. That should take about a day or two all told.

I've been back in the office for about a week now and it's time to start keeping my promise of weekly updates. Every Monday, I shall set aside a little time to update everybody on the events of the past week and expectations for the coming week to make sure everybody knows about where we are.

Virginiaedition.com no longer looks like something that crawled out of the Atlantic Dead Zone. It still needs a little work on a few things, but it is looking rather respectable.

With a little snooping, I've managed to get hold of the font styles used by Transcontinental and applied to the Meisha-Merlin volumes and I'm double-checking to see if I can get hold of the exact ones Meisha-Merlin used when they created the original files. Thus we should be good to go in and fix the errors that have been noted in the originals without completely messing everything up.

The image at the top of the post is what we drummed up to be the official "Virginia Edition" icon, however we may have to change/replace it as it seems that one might not work particularly well with Transcontinental's printing.

I need to pick out the fonts for use for the text on the spines and covers of the books--I'm so excited, it's almost like picking out drapes!--and sign off on the layout. Once I have that done, we should be good to send the books for prepress and printing and I'll have a lovely little timeline for when the first books will be printed.

Work has also begun on the juveniles. I'll double-check to see where we are on the production for those and when we can expect to have them ready for printing.

We're nearing the February 1st deadline we set in the letter and while the majority of people have responded, we still have a substantial amount of people who haven't responded so I'm going to begin calling directly to make contact with these people.

This doesn't apply to many, but we don't have the email addresses for a few of those who ordered the Exclusive Edition. I believe we have phone numbers for all of the people whose email we don't have so I'll be setting time aside to call them, but, if you've ordered the Exclusive Edition and haven't received an email from me, please contact me as soon as you have a chance.

That's all I can think of at the moment so I will bid you all adieu, ad espera, ad astra (I don't speak Latin, cut me a break) while I go and make sure my home isn't destroyed by a gas leak.

I'm afraid that I came down sick and as a result have been rather completely out of the loop for the last week and a bit. Please bear with me as we resume normal broadcasting service.