Hi again, DreamScapers!

Just got a reminder that there are 3 days until cards are charged. So, this is your reminder to check your orders (maybe double-check addresses?) and make sure you've got all the stuff you want, your cards are up-to-date, and all that fun stuff.

Progress on the book: I've gotten notes back from my Dev Editor, the amazing Josh Domanski of OB Month's Paramour. So now I'm working up the courage to go back and make updates to the main text.

I've also been pulling together art for the book itself, including the commissioned pieces, the art I've made myself, and stock art (which includes Due Diligence of "Was this made by an AI?", and when in doubt, tossing it out). Once I've got the text updated, and all the art together, it'll be Layout o'Clock.  Then we get to figure out how printing works...

Day job hunting continues as well, nothing particularly exciting there. Let's talk instead about one of the factions: 

I've worked in cybersecurity for 12 years now, and one of the most enduring things one picks up in that industry is the knowledge that any new technology is going to attract curious people who want to see if they can break it. Not maliciously, just to see where the boundaries are of what's possible. I had some of my colleagues in mind when I wrote the Surrealists, the hacker collective in the DreamScape.

The DreamScape is going to have some rudimentary tools for building and designing shops and other virtual spaces for people to hang out in. People given a toolbox will create, and I'm envisioning the Surrealists as a group who really love doing just that. They build virtual parkour courses, and challenge each other to beat them.  Compared to the more grounded spaces over in the Open Market, the Surrealists' courses are cobbled together from random assets. Think Mario Maker levels designed by people trying to put the "Dream" in DreamScape. 

The book includes a procedure for making your own courses, in a collage style from maps of other platformers and 3D games, as well as a minigame for completing those courses. Impress the Surrealists, and you could gain access to their hacker knowledge: They're not *just* pushing the limits of the physics engine, they're also testing the limits of the system-wide network security and trying to understand what Commway's got going on under the hood. 

As long as the Mods are asleep, anyway...