Chill winds blow and a succession of chilly nights and battering storms have stripped the leaves from the trees.  Pumpkins are gathered and carved, tiara’s re-glittered, and carefully hand-sewn costumes steel themselves to go toe to toe with an army of cheap plastic masks – Halloween is here.  (Except in the part of the U.S. where I live and some idiotic localities mandate kids must trick-or-treat on some other day to avoid getting in the way of football games or under the mistaken notion that Satan can’t show up if you do it on a Sunday at 1 in the afternoon.  Ugh.)

Today, to conclude our month-long October-ganza, I thought it would be a good time to update our readers as to the status of various Sentinel Hill Press projects, talk about future plans, and politely ask you all what sorts of projects you would be interest in seeing us produce.

The Arkham Gazette #3

I am happy to announce that a final version of the issue has been sent to Chaosium for their approval (as is required of we licensees); once they give their approval I will submit it to DriveThruRPG’s print service for their clearance.  Once that happens – which should take a few days, unfortunately, the issue will be loosed upon the world.  I am very proud of this issue, despite its very slow gestation, and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.  Clocking in at 120 pages of Lovecraftian madness and steeped in the history of New England, I think there is something to inspire and perhaps even scare in every article.  Witches and witchcraft have appeared in so much of Lovecraft country, both background and scenarios, that I think this will be a useful resource to just about every Keeper.  Estimated retail price $12 (PDF)/ $20 (POD).

Re-releasing issues #1 & #2

This project is next on my agenda.  Some work remains to be done – squaring contents with our other issues and updating the enormous Arkham scenario list for one (we’ve found more!) but I am confident these will be available again, in PDF and POD, before the end of the year.  (We are also readying issue #0 to include it as a ‘pay what you want’ issue, with an added article, and including a POD option.)

Other Kickstarter stretch-goals:

We’ve fulfilled most of these already – a prop handout autopsy record for Walter Gilman, Newspaper mastheads from Lovecraft Country newspapers, a scenario by Kevin Ross – but a few remain to be completed.  I am working on revising the Miskatonic University-set scenario and hope to have that ready before the end of November, the NPC group by the end of December, which will make it the last piece of the Kickstarter.  Ideally all of the part will be to our backers within a year of the Kickstarter’s close.

The Arkham Gazette #4 and beyond

We’ve already had a call for submissions for our next issue, and based on the number of submissions we have received I suspect our next issue will be all about Kingsport but ultimately it will depend on what other material you, our readers, submit.  Have I said submit enough yet? 😉  Submit.  Submit.  Submit.

Ideally I would like to have at least one issue of the Gazette come out a year, possibly more, but the rate of their publication will greatly depend on the ratio of my editing work is to my writing – the more I do of the latter, the slower things go.  Hopefully now that 7th edition is out (and hopefully the Arkham, Innsmouth, etc. source books are reprinted for 7th ed), more people will be finding their way to Lovecraft Country.  I’ve certainly learned a lot in the process of creating issue #3 and hope to apply those lessons to future projects.  Future issues will definitely be shorter – 90,000 words is a lot for a magazine 🙂

Other Projects:

Here are the other projects for Sentinel Hill Press outside of the Arkham Gazette that we are developing or considering for the future; these are just hypothetical at this point – do not mark your calendar yet! – and have not been approved by Chaosium, which is essential when you’re hoping to release books that build off of one of their important properties.

• Graveyards of Lovecraft Country – a guide to New England’s burying grounds in general and those found in Lovecraft Country specifically – I’ve IDed more than 30 from the core books and have been developing others based on what might have existed historically.  I want to include at least one scenario, possibly more.  Word count stands at about 30,000, with a final count estimated to be between 60,000 and 80,000 without scenario.  If you have a scenario heavily featuring graveyards set in Lovecraft Country, drop me a line.
• Stranger Still – Ben Wenham, author of the eerie “The Bosworth House” from issue #1 of the Gazette, has started working on his 3 (or more) part King in Yellow-themed campaign for Lovecraft Country.  He has posted a flow-chart for the whole campaign yesterday – be prepared to squint though. 😉  He and I will keep in touch on how this progresses and I will in turn, keep you updated.
• A Boston Guidebook – I think Boston should have a guide for the 1920s.  What do you think?  (Yes, I’ve been doing some research for such a book – just look at our posts this month – but I do not want to make any promises.)
• Other Books – I would love to have Namacknowatt Island become more fully developed, maybe as a special issue of the Gazette.  Would anyone be interested in collection of tome write-up (a la The Ponape Scripture or Thaumaturgical Prodigies… from earlier issues of the Arkham Gazette) about some of the volumes in the Miskatonic University library?  How about a scenario collection?  We are too small do conduct consumer research (imagine being approached at the local mall – “Would you care to try a few Lovecraftian roleplaying games, give your opinion, and be paid $5 for your time?”) and so must rely on you feedback to understand what products our customer base is looking for.
• Other Projects – I’m still planning to move forward on a Lovecraft Country/Sentinel Hill news podcast, but time is at a premium, and I’d focused on wrapping up the Kickstarter rather than new projects with what hours in the day I can squirrel away.  I do not want to just duplicate the fine work done by the Miskatonic Unviersity Podcast/The Good Friends of Jackson Elias/The Unspeakable Oath/etc.  While I have some ideas on how I might differentiate a Sentinel Hill Presscast from these fine programs, I am still ruminating on such matters.  Watch this space for more news on this.

See you in the future, which is where we all shall live.