First, business: The surveys have not been sent out yet. You'll have a chance to add more stuff to your order later, when I send out the surveys. 

I'm seeing the video above a grey placeholder box. In case it doesn't come through here's a direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPk3zeEqNfs&t=2s

The printer sent me the innard pages for The Vampire Prisoner. Here is a flip through video:

My pal Rebecca just happened to be visiting on a my-dog-was-sprayed-by-a-skunk-and-she-needs-to-check-if-it-still-smells-so-bad-that-it-is-not-allowed-in-her-house inspection when Fedex delivered the package. She was gracious enough to sit with me while I inspected the pages on video. I shot the video because I wanted to be sure to catch my reaction when I discovered whatever horrible problem was hidden in the page block. Having Rebecca there, ready to call an ambulance, was just good luck. 

But, spoiler, nothing was spoiled. The pages look great.

I wish they were a little more contrasty, but that's it. And the paper is good. Not what I was expecting, but I like it. It's a pearly matte. I'm guessing the slightly matte paper is the reason the contrast isn't where I would like it to be. 

And these are the -actual- pages that are going into the book. Like, they printed the entire run of innards and assembled the book blocks, THEN sent me this for a proof. That's a new one on me. Every printer is a new adventure.

And this was a new one on me: They printed an ordering number on each folded signature spine. Normally I get a stack of signatures and use a marker to make a sloppy diagonal slash down the spine side of the stack so that they can easily be put back into order. This is the first time I've seen organizing information printed on the signatures. Emphasis on SEEN. Maybe this is always a thing and I just never noticed.

So I'm happy with The Vampire Prisoner's guts. 

A reminder: Everyone who backed So You've Met A Thousand Year Old Vampire is also getting a copy of The Vampire Prisoner. I promised you folks 600+ pages and the two books together make up that count. 

I laughed while making the video because a dedicated person could read much of the book in the video. Don't do that, you'll wind up with a squint and a headache. I'll send out PDFs in the first or second week of October.

High fives,
Tim H

(Note: This is copied and pasted version of the newsletter/blog over at thousandyearoldvampire.com)