Over the weekend Marie and I finished up the text for the Celestial Stick People book. We worked while on a date, and also while I was on the elliptical — whenever we could squeeze this in. Got a sudden surge of motivation here.

I procrastinate much less when I know the exact steps necessary to get something done, and I’ve been trying to figure those steps out here.

So, here’s what’s left to do:

In addition to the text, I need to know how far off my colors will be when printing — I tend to make everything too dark. So last night I ordered a funny prototype deck through The Game Crafter, who will be doing my final printing. The prototype will have a real box, and folded-up instructions, and 78 cards, but the cards won’t be real cards. It will be 5 sets of 13 different sample cards, each set containing different color adjustments. I’ll pick the set that looks the best, then adjust all my cards with those color adjustments for the final product. Also, I can see if I need changes to the box and instructions at that time.

The Game Crafter says you usually get your stuff in 7-10 days. So worst case, the color-testing deck arrives on the 23rd. I spend that weekend doing final prep work with better colored-cards and order a new prototype with proper colors and a full set of real cards.

Again, worst case, the second prototype arrives the 6th of April. I’d be surprised if any changes come out of that; it’s mostly final verification. The deck I get on the 6th will probably be the deck that people can order for real. I spend the weekend of the 6th getting my store page and product web site in place, with real pictures of the product, and then I’m done.

My biggest worry right now is the quality of the instructions. It will be three sheets of 8.5 x 11 paper, stapled in one corner, and folded in half. And folded in half again, and again, and again, and you’ll get a 2.125 x 2.75 crumpled up thing 48 pieces of paper thick. Not ideal, obviously, but I’m just shooting for adequate here. Part of the point of the web site is to have an easily navigable card reference.

Speaking of which, in the future I might want to think about making a free, lightweight card reference app for phones & tablets to supplement the deck. I might even want to explore an actual paid interactive reading app, as an alternate version of the product… but right now, I just want to get this thing printed.