The Sketching Begins!

Book 18, Mandatory Failure, has arrived from the printer. I've signed about 2500 copies, and we've begun queueing those up for sketches.

A few stacks of MANDATORY FAILURE awaiting sketches from Howard

My stamina is not what it used to be. I'm as fast as ever, but I wear out pretty quickly. Slow and steady, then. If you've ordered a sketch edition, it's in one of these boxes stacked against the wall, and it might be waiting there for a while...

Twelve hundred books. It's a good thing the sub-floor in this room is solid concrete. Books are heavy.

I'm also doing sketch cards for some of you. I've finished about 200 of those already, and another 270 remain to be done. Those take longer, but I can work on them from my zero-gravity recliner, which lets me work for much longer stretches.

How long will you be waiting for your sketched book? I do not know! One thing that I learned in 2024 is that I need to recalibrate my estimates. I promise you this, though: I'll work on these every day, and I'll pace myself carefully.