The initial plan, as listed on the Streets of Bedlam Kickstarter, was to release the corebook in April. As it is now the first weekday of that month, let’s take a look at where things stand.

Text
The text is going well. As of today, the parts of the book are in the following state:

Introduction (Premise and Basics): Written, Edited, Laid Out—COMPLETE
Chapter One (Setting): Written, Edited, Laid Out—COMPLETE
Chapter Two (Characters): 75% Written, Initial Stages of Layout (To give some context, this is a BIG chapter. It covers all the Archetypes.)
Chapter Three (Setting Rules): 50% Written
Chapter Four (NPCs): 20% Written (Still compiling backer data, speaking with high-level backers to get more info. This will go smoothly once I put my back into it.)
Chapter Five (Plot Point and Orphan Stories): 0% Written (But the backbone is there.)

Art
Shawn continues to crank out images. They look great. Being the only artist on a book carries a heavy burden but Shawn’s taking it in stride. All the character archetypes are in, along with most of the chapter intro images, about a dozen interiors, and a handful of “filler” pieces (standalone images for end-of-chapter white space).

In sum
That’s the state of the book. If the unfinished parts look scary to you, please don’t be alarmed. I’ll have a lot of time the next two weeks to focus on this book. I plan to finish both the writing and layout for Chapter Two and Three this week (I tend to do those stages in tandem) and get them over to the editor. I’ll knock out Chapter Four in a weekend, which will leave me with Chapter Five. That should take another week or so.

I wish I was farther along but some medical issues (including a broken elbow/sprained left wrist/bruised right hand following a fall and an outpatient surgery slated for tomorrow) and a sudden influx of job opportunities (one of which I accepted) pushed me well off-track. I’m not offering these as excuses, just a look at what’s happening behind the scenes.

Once the PDF is up, I want to give folks a week or so to find all the typos and errors that escaped our attention and make the corrections to the corebook. The corebook will take about a week and a half to get to me in print. I’ll ship them out immediately. I’ll keep everyone abreast of that process as well.

Soundtrack
The tracklist and intent/mood/tone of all the pieces have been finalized. We’ve gone over the broad strokes so now it’s on Ed. He is currently working his magic and I hope to have some preview tracks up this month.

Five-Story Drop
The first supplement is slated for June but I will try to pull it forward, if at all possible, so that I can get it out before my impending move (see “accepting a job” above). I will begin that immediately after finishing the corebook. If that experiences any hiccups, I will let you all know immediately.

Next Update
I will update again next Monday to let you all know how things are going. I like to be transparent and honest with folks so nobody’s wondering or making bad assumptions. I’ll keep updating as the book wraps up so everybody knows their money isn’t vanishing into thin air. In the mean time, if you have any questions, please get a hold of me at jasonlblair@gmail.com.