Adrian, Andrea, David & Naomi

We have finally sorted out our international paperwork involving a truly dizzying array of stamps, seals, ribbons, and signatures. The final result is the most official-looking document any of us has ever handled, and now, it looks like we will finally be able to spend money. So of course things are now moving full steam ahead. Victory!

But that’s not the only piece of news we have to report this week – it is with delight that we announce we have decided on an artist for Balance of Powers – and it’s Anton Bogaty, the widely beloved illustrator who worked with us on Perplex City! It’s like old times all over the place around here.

We are also plugging away at other, more secret stuff with renewed inertia now the holidays are over. No promises, but fingers crossed by our next update we’ll have something exciting to announce…

And since we left you hanging over the holidays, we thought we’d share another little piece with you. Until next time!

There are two people sitting at the far table in the Cafe des Anglais, a man and a woman, both of them in their sixties, both dressed well but not obtrusively. Husband and wife? No, the body language is not quite right; they are neither at ease with each other nor obviously hostile. Brother and sister? Perhaps that, although he is fair-haired and pale and she is dark-haired and tan. Old friends, maybe, but they do not laugh. Colleagues.

"Do you know what they have?" he asks.

"The Prussians? Better question: do *they* know what they have?" she smiles, stirs her tea. Her voice is crisp, amused, cut-glass English.

"We're all looking for answers here. There's no need to pretend to be stupid." His accent is very faintly foreign, but hard to place. His face is perfectly impassive.

She meets his gaze, then drops her eyes. First hint of nerves. "It's evidence. Of whatever's going on out at sea and…"

"And?"

"And the last time it happened. And what happened afterwards," she speaks a little too quickly, as if glad to be rid of the words.

"Ahh. Yes, then we certainly do have to get it."

Her hand shakes a little, stirring her tea.

"Send Hausmann," he says at last, "he likes a little challenge."

Hello, again! 

We said we'd keep in touch every two weeks, and that means right about... now. We're still working on that pesky paperwork-and-banking issue, but meanwhile, we thought you'd like to know about some other behind-the-scenes work we're doing.

One of our backers (hi, TC!) rightly poked us yesterday to find out what's going on with Balance of Powers. The answer, sadly, is nothing glamorous, at least not yet.

Right now we're bogged down in the international paperwork required to open a business bank account in such a way that all of your lovely donations don't wind up on any of our personal income taxes. We had thought this would be a fairly easy thing to do, but for reasons too tremendously boring to get into here, it's actually requiring us to ship a document between all of us to be notarized (it now has WAX SEALS and RIBBONS on it and looks incredibly official!) Alas, given how much travel we've all been doing, this has been a time-consuming process.

However, we're in the home stretch now, and hopefully it won't be long until we can finally get that bank account opened, and then we can start *spending that money* to bring Balance of Powers to life.

Note that we haven't been sitting entirely idle aside from the paperwork, mind -- more on that in the next update.

And speaking of updates: We've been really bad about that, and we think we need to get better. So we're pledging to give you an update about where we are a minimum of every two weeks until we're up and launched. No more radio silence for us!

Hello wonderful backers of Balance of Powers!

We’re so thrilled that, with your support, we’re going to be able to make our dark sinister imaginary world a dark sinister reality. We thank you, the provisional government of Bulgaria thanks you, and the brooding forces of darkness thank you too.

We’re working hard to get the infrastructure set up that will let us tell our story. From mailing lists, to setting up a website with hosting and email management, to designing the physical products and, oh yes, finishing up writing the story, there’s a lot to get done, and we’re grateful for your continued patience, which, to be honest, rivals that of the calmly calculating government of the Kingdom of Texas.

We’re planning to release some morsels of story as soon as we can to start letting you into the world. And we’re especially excited that so many of you will be able to join us in our live online storytelling – we hope that you’ll get as deeply immersed in this world as we have already.

For now, goodbye! Or, as they say in Constanta: помощ!