Congratulations to Jason Lee, winner of the Argleton geogame. Jason actually managed to solve the puzzle in a few hours, which quite surprised me. I honestly wasn't expecting it to be solved the day it was posted, so well done Jason! You'll get an email from me soon and a selection of five hand-bound notebooks will arrive on your doorstop in the New Year. 

An honourable mention must also go to Noirin Plunkett, whose correct answer was only a few hours behind Jason's. 

Thank you to all of you who played! If you want the answers to all the clues, then you can find them here http://chocolateandvodka.com/argleton-geogame-solutions/ (password: Argleton). 

All Argleton backers should check their email as you should now have a fun little something to do over the Christmas break, or even before: the Argleton geogame! The email explains how the game works, but any problems, please do post a comment. 

The game will close on January 31st or upon receipt of the first correct answer. I will announce on ChocolateandVodka.com and here when the game has been won. And remember, the winner will receive five hand-made notebooks, crafted by yours truly over the next few weeks!

With the completion, at last, of the geogame, this brings to an end my Kickstarter project. Immense thanks to all of you for your continued support and patience. But before I go, I’d like to just do a little bit of housekeeping:

— To continue getting news from me, including updates on my next project Queen of the May, please sign up to my email newsletter.

— If you have not yet received your copy of Argleton, please email me and reconfirm your address as soon as possible. Sometimes copies do go astray in the mail and I will happily send a replacement as soon as I have confirmation that I’m sending to the right address.

— Please do consider leaving a review of Argleton on Amazon if you enjoyed it. It’s available in Kindle stores in the UK, America, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. 

— If you want to download any of the other versions, e.g. mobi or epub, these are also available free online. Please feel free to forward the story on to any friends you think might like to read it.

Thank you all once again for your kindness and generosity. Your support has meant a great deal to me over the last year and a half.

Kickstarter's Cassie Marketos wrote a lovely blog post about Argleton, which made me very happy indeed. It mentions the geogame, which you may be thinking that I've forgotten... I haven't. I got really close to being ready to send out the game PDF when my landlord decided to throw us out of our flat, so right now I need to deal with that whole finding a place to live problem. Soon as that's done, I can finally wrap up the very last Argleton lose end. Fingers crossed!

Just a quick heads-up to let you know that if you'd like Argleton in epub, mobi, html or text formats, you can now get them off my website. If you want to share your PDF or any of the file formats with friends, please do feel free to email it around as much as you like! 

If you have taken unboxing photos or have written a review, do let me know so that I can add it to my reviews page. Thanks to Beth Dunn and Fiona Campbell-Howes for writing reviews, and to Beth and Stephanie Booth for great unboxing photos. 

Last thing in my Argleton To Do list is the geogame, which will soon be winging its way to you as a PDF. But it's great to see the story out there in the wild - it wouldn't be out there without your support, so again, thank you! 

I'm delighted to announce that all copies of Argleton are now winging their way - in some cases, literally - to you as we speak! Yay! 

Believe it or not, it took me over 35 hours just to wrap and pack all the books, and then a another full day to sort out the postage and get all the packages to the Post Office! (I'll note here that some 120 small books, fully packaged up, are quite heavy, and I don't have a car... eep!) But we're done now, which is fantastic. 

Today you will also receive the PDF version of the book. And then some time next week or the week after, you'll receive the geogame PDF. I still have a few loose ends to tie up for that, but thought that it was more important to get the physical part of the project complete. 

Far be it for me to put this suggestion in your head, but should anyone happen to do an unboxing video, do let me know! ;) I was going to take photos as I put everything together, but in the end, just didn't really have the time or wherewithal. 

Once you've had the story to yourselves for a couple of weeks, I'll be putting a version up online under Creative Commons licence. At that point, please do feel free to share it with whomever you like - I'd rather like Argleton to be read by as many people who are interested! I'll also be putting together an ePub version, and my website will have a text and an HTML version. I may even consider a Kindle version for people new to the project who wish to support it financially. 

The hashtag I've been using on Twitter for this project is #Argleton, so please do let me know what you think of it all! 

And if it turns out that you really like the story and you want to know more about what I'm doing with my next fiction project or my bookbinding, please do feel free to join my mailing list. There's a form on Chocolate and Vodka. I'm running the mailing list by Mailchimp, which allows you to unsubscribe at any time, choose if you want HTML/text emails, etc., so you have full control, and I promise I won't spam you or pass your email address on to anyone else, ever.

A few boring practical matters
If your package doesn't arrive or arrives damaged, please let me know immediately. I understand from the Royal Mail website that there are some postage delays for items going to the US (eep, that's most of you!) so please do have patience. 

Due to the unhelpfulness of the people at the Post Office, I remain slightly concerned about whether I ultimately ended up with all the right postage on the right packets. I'm pretty sure I got it right, but if anyone at all ends up having to pay an excess, please let me know and I'll immediately PayPal you the money. I checked, double checked, and checked again, so I think everything should be fine, but wanted to give you a heads-up, just in case. 

Finally, if there's any interest in a more robust box for the books similar to their wrap, I can look at doing that, but it'll be a separate project/cost. 

Wow, it took me a while, but I got there in the end! The last of the bookbinding has been done and the last six books are drying on my bookshelves. It is a wonderful feeling to have the making part of the project finally complete and to be moving on to the packaging and posting stage! 

I'm now printing out address labels, so if your address has changed recently and you haven't already let me know, please do so now. If you have messaged me recently through Kickstarter or via email, and I haven't replied, that means I haven't received your message so please do send it again. 

My plan is to stagger the posting, starting with the people who are furthest away, so that hopefully you all get your books around the same time. I'm also going to try to time sending out the PDF to coincide, roughly, with the arrival of the physical objects. 

Right, I'd best go get packaging! 

Very excited to say that the Signature hardbacks, which are covered with a specially printed and laminated paper cover, are all complete! I did the last batch today and they are sitting on my shelves, drying. I started keeping tabs on how long it was taking me to do things and so far I have spent 46 hours binding, with 39 hardbacks complete (including a few spares). 

The Codex hardbacks, which are bound in hand-embroidered silk, are going to take a bit longer. So far I've spent 49 hours just embroidering (doesn't count the time spent cutting out and bonding together the pieces of silk), and I have 11 covers complete. Well, almost complete - I still have a little bit to do on each one which I've been putting off because it's fiddly. Next time, I think I'll get the silk covers screen-printed instead!

If you'd like to take a look at the process of putting together the hardback cover and attaching it to the book block, then Kevin kindly uploaded another Qik video. It's a bit fuzzy in places, but you'll get the idea. If you don't want to see a spoiler for how the finished book will look, then don't watch the video. 

A couple of people have contacted me recently to say that they have moved house and to confirm their new address. For that, thank you! If any of you have moved house or intend to move house within the next few weeks, please do let me know. We really are close to completion now, and I expect to be able to start sending the books out in about 2 - 3 weeks!

It's very exciting, and a bit nerve-wracking, to be able to say that the first Argleton hardback is currently drying on my shelf, squished flat by four of the heaviest books I own and an antique iron. All the gluing and sticking and trimming and gluing and trimming is coming to a conclusion, although very slowly. I can only do three or four hardbacks a day, due to lack of space, and I still have some sewing to do! But the end really is in sight now! 

In the meantime, you might enjoy this Qik video that my husband shot the other day as I was tipping in the end papers. (Sadly, I can't embed it, but you can see it on the Qik site!)



Today is a rather exciting day, as I've taken delivery of the paperbacks, book blocks, endpapers and cover papers for Argleton. Hooray! Now, of course, I need to fold and glue in the endpapers, strengthen the spine, trim the blocks, add the bookmark and headbands, cut the book boards, trim the covers, glue up the cover, and attach it to the book block. 60 times! Yay! 

The paperbacks: 

The book blocks:

We are moving, slowly but inexorably, to the day I post each book out to its lovely owner. Not too long now! 

Phew! It's taken me ages to get here, but finally the big red metaphorical button has been pushed and Argleton has gone to print! Of course, it's right before a whole bunch of bank holidays, which slows things down a bit, but I should be getting everything delivered at the end of the second week in May.

Whilst the end is now officially in sight, there's still the geogame to polish up, lots of embroidery still to do, and then when the book blocks arrive from the printer, lots of bookbinding. No rest for the wicked, eh? 

Oof, it's been a bit mental here since I last updated you! I've had a trip to Mumbai and four reports to write, three of them quite sizeable, and one involving a lot of original research. Now, though, my client work is almost completely out of the way, bar a little bit of editing, so my focus has swung back to Argleton, and I can work full time on this project until you have the book (or the PDF) in your very own hands. 

I went over to the printers this afternoon and we are very nearly ready to rock. I need to get a new paper stock for the endpapers as the stock we had chosen crinkled when it was pasted down on to the book boards. That was rather frustrating, but better to find that out now than when I'm about to start binding. 

I have to say, Oldacres have been incredibly patient with me, never pushing me to make quick decisions, and being willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that everything is exactly right. Once I've sorted out the endpapers, we'll do one more test run, which I will then bind, and when that's all done and approved we'll be pressing the Big Red Button, after which there'll be no going back! 

Meantime, I still have a metric effload of sewing to do for the silk covers, which will now be my primary work during the day. As someone who has spent most of her time working at a computer, having work which involves sewing feels more than a little strange. There's a small part of my brain going 'But, but, this is fun! Surely you should be doing this evenings and weekends only?!'. 

But, ye verily, the end is nigh! Whoopee!!!

PS. If you haven't given me your address already, please do! Otherwise I'll wind up with a stack of lonely books that don't know how to get to their owners. 

I spent much of the weekend before last putting together the 'surprise' which, because it's a surprise, is going to be a little tricky to talk about without ruining it for you! It took me a while to get all my ducks in a row, but by about 10pm that Sunday I was ready to hit 'order'. The surprises themselves arrived at the end of last week and I have to say that I am really chuffed with how they all came out. So much so, I'll be buying some more for another project later in the year.

Meantime, I've had some of the proofs back from the new printers, but am just waiting for the rest to arrive so that I can do a test binding. Once that's done, then hopefully we can move ahead and get the printing done. I think, because of time, I'm going to see if I can hire a bindery to sew the book sections (signatures) together for me. My diary has become surprisingly full of paying work - including two weeks in India in February, which sounds exotic but is mainly going to involve me sitting in a meeting room for 14 days - so any help I can get to progress this project I shall take.

Hopefully I'll have another update for you soon!

As the oft quoted Rabbie Burns once said, 'the best laid schemes o' mice an' men / gang aft agley', and things have indeed gone a little bit agley here.

I got the second proofs from the printers just before Christmas, but didn't get a chance to really look at them due to the usual family festive season shenanigans. When I finally had an opportunity to take one of the perfect bound (i.e. glued) book blocks and bind it into a hardback, I discovered that something I had worried about in the back of my mind was, sadly, true: When opened flat, the glue couldn't hold the pages in place. Within a few moments, pages had started to drift to the ground like fallen leaves. On second opening, half of them leapt forth to join their friends in a rather successful bid for freedom.

As Rabbie might have said*:

Thy wee-bit bookie, too, in ruin!
It's silly pages the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane...

The answer, I am told, is not to use perfect bound, but to go back to the original plan and use sewn sections so that the whole thing can open and lie flat without the pages going spoing and fluttering off on the breeze.

I have spoken to a second printer who can print in sections for me, and fold them, and will be speaking to a bindery soon to see if they can sew them. Much as I would happily sew them myself, I'm aware that time is rather marching on and I'll happily cough up a bit to get things done sooner. Hopefully I'll have a new set of proofs soon and will be able to do another test binding to see how things are looking.

Also a little delayed is the embroidery for the silk covers. I had hoped to do lots of sewing over Christmas, but various things got in the way, including hubby putting a hole in his foot which resulted in a trip to A&E on Christmas Eve! (It's all healed up well now, though, thankfully!). Still, that's underway now, although I'm pretty sure that I'll never want to see an embroidery hoop ever again once it's done.

I am making progress, but I do feel like I'm running the tortoise's race.

* What Rabbie really said: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Mouse

We've had a few wrinkles with the printing, which is to be expected given that this is the first time I've done this! The first test print didn't come out quite the way I wanted, so we've a second test print on a different machine and with different paper. I'm just waiting now for the results to be delivered, which will probably be a bit delayed because, of course, a little snow and the entire country grinds to a halt!

I'm now on holiday with my family for Christmas, but I brought everything I need in order to make up the silk covers, which I'll start this week. I need to cut out all the bits of silk, iron on the bond, trim to the right size, then bond to the next piece until all of them are in place. Then tape up the edges so it doesn't fray and embroider. It took me ages to figure out the best way to do this, but the final process should - hopefully - go fairly painlessly.

Of course, I have to get my Christmas shopping out the way first, although if the snow doesn't let up, a few people will be getting IOUs...

I'm excited to report that I should be able to go to press within the next week. This means I can finally estimate a time of arrival: hopefully I'll be sending out packages to you all at some point in January. I had hoped to get them all out before Christmas, but two sudden and urgent client projects put an end to that. (Still, they pay the rent, which is important!)

Other progress:

- I have an awesome illustration by Sydney Padua, which I am sure you will love.
- Matt Patterson and I spent last Thursday tidying up the typesetting in InDesign, and now my manuscript looks like a proper book!
- The paperback cover is 99% done. Just a few more tweaks and I'm there.
- Endpapers are sorted, though in a much simpler way than I originally imagined.
- I have found a printer, so baring any last minute disasters we will soon be good to go.
- I have been offered the rental of a room at a London bookbinders, which I'm hoping I won't need, but it's good to know that I've got the option.

Once the book is with the printers I'll be making up the silk covers and will probably sit and embroider them over Christmas. Luckily, my client deadlines are all before Christmas, which means I should be free to just sit and sew for the two weeks that we're with my parents. Of course, spending the festive season in a five cat household (we'll take Grabbity and Mewton with us) will make the mere act of using thread ... interesting, let's say. I've no doubt there will be much pouncing.

Also good for the schedule is the fact that I have no client worked booked in during January, and I am determined not to miss the deadline I have set for myself! One thing I do need to get is a lot more blotting paper, though. Every book has to sit with blotting paper in between the cover and the book block, and be sandwiched between blotting paper - this helps draw out the moisture from the paste and helps prevent wrinkling. I've just realised I only have enough blotting paper to do four books at once. Time to go shopping!

So, thank you once more for your patience. Your kindness and generosity has made a huge difference to my life and I am thankful for it every day.