Good news first: I’m doing an omnibus release of But I’m A Cat Person — still pondering what to do with the covers, but I know it’ll be a three-volume set — and the interior files are almost done!

Basically, it’s all over but the bonus material. And yeah, that’s a significant “but”, considering that’s the part that needs the most new drawing. Still good progress.

I decided to lay out the book interiors from scratch in Scribus, a freeware alternative to Adobe InDesign. Wanted to see how well it handles all the functions I find myself needing in the course of a real, active project.

Long story short, it works great. Minor differences, but I’ve found everything I needed, and the program has not once crashed while exporting a PDF. (Which you might think should go without saying…unless you’ve used InDesign.)

First pass at a layout for the start of Master’s Edition 1. (The post header image shows the layout I revised this into.)

Less-good news: I’m not setting a firm date for the Kickstarter yet. Partly because of the global economic chaos, partly because the Post Office is so busy delivering everyone’s groceries and toilet paper that they don’t have a lot of time for books right now.

A couple months ago, I had a vague idea of doing it in May? But now…yeah, I’m definitely not doing it in May. (I’m not even billing my supporters on Patreon in May.)

Better news: I’ve been working on a little digital somethin’ somethin’ in the meantime, and that will be ready to drop next week.

Digital artbook layout preview.

See, BICP has built up a huge catalog of ancillary material over the past decade. More than I’d realistically be able to print, even in the Master’s Edition.

But a PDF artbook? I can make that as loooong as I want, forget about conserving space and make everything full-page as often as I want, and still afford to give it a “pay as much as you want” release.

So I’m gonna. Proceeds will go to a good cause. Stay tuned.