The Lair of the Clockwork Book will be reaching its conclusion in April. Like Trapped in the Tower of the Brain Thieves, the whole story will be available then as a paperback book (in full color!)

But I’m hoping to release a limited edition hardcover version of The Lair of the Clockwork Book, too.

The hardcover edition will be printed on heavy weight archival paper. It’ll be bound in linen-covered boards with foil stamping on the spine and front cover, a handsome dust jacket and – just like the paperback version – it’ll have 126 full color illustrations in its 130 or so pages.

It’ll be pretty much the bees knees, with its retro bookbinding, a lot like a the kind of beautiful book that was an everyday thing a few decades ago – in those days when we were dreaming about The Future That Never Was. The first time around, I mean.

But this is a Kickstarter funded project: if enough people don’t sign up for the book in advance, it simply won’t happen. We’ve got to raise the whole amount before anyone can get their limited edition copy.

So I’m counting on you, your friends, and even that guy you always avoid at the laundromat to Tell Everybody, and I do mean Everybody, about this spectacular little book that won’t exist unless we make it happen.

I think that it would be just plain tragic if we fell short, and the limited edition hardcover did not happen. If you’re inclined to agree then I hope you’ll rush on over to my Kickstarter page and think about reserving a copy of your very own.

Once upon a time, some books were sold by subscription – in fact the Direct Market for comics works just about exactly that way now. A book would be solicited, and interested readers could sign up to buy one in advance.

Of course the way this differs from the Direct Market is that you’re not reserving a copy from a dealer. Kickstarter’s fundraising engine has become the middleman – but that doesn’t really affect the outcome. If enough of you reserve a copy, the edition will exist. If you don’t, it’ll remain an imaginary, though beautiful, book.

Bits that look a lot like this have been dominating the screens of two – no, it’s three now! – computers here in the Secret Laboratory for the past week and a half, as I try to work hard on the book (and Kickstarter) trailer for The Lair of the Clockwork Book‘s just-maybe hardcover edition; but in spite of my all my trying I’ve spent far too much time beating my head against dynamic microphones, USB microphones, Windows 2000, Windows XP 64 and 32 bit, buggy audio drivers, mysterious clicking noises, mysterious crashes, and – it seems – everything except making the spiffiest trailer I can get out of myself, because my entire computing universe would really rather blow up right about now, thank you, and then have a quick melt down after.

No, wait: that last part was me.

It really has been like that, especially over the past three days. But I think I’ve managed to mollify Premiere to the point where it will now crash after exporting a movie instead of while exporting a movie, and as annoying as that still is it’s just so very much better that way, isn’t it? I mean, you actually get the file you were trying to make before the great big explosion happens, so, you know, whew.

Except that Premiere just crashed again. Okay, sorry, gotta go.

Of course if you have read The Other, there may still be a bright side: because although they haven’t (yet?) been collected in print you can now download ePub formatted digital versions of seven short stories about the more or less hero of The Other, Luff Imbry from their publisher, Angry Robot Books.

They’re each less than a dollar (if my inner currrency exchange is working) and they will fit just fine on your Nook, Sony Reader, iPad, or anything else that can read an ePub book, including your computer.

Luff Imbry is a bit of a rascal. He’s an antiquities trader who specializes in recently redistributed wealth and, sometimes, in wealth that hasn’t quite yet been redistributed, but could be. He’s a gifted forger, too, and in that (at least) he reminds me of Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy mysteries… though since he’s quite gifted in the girth department, Luff Imbry may be more of a heavyweight.

Angry Robot’s FAQ also suggests the stories may be available in the Amazon Kindle Store, but as you can probably see from that click I couldn’t find them there. Maybe they’ll show up in the near future.

Hughes’ Archonate novels are often compared to the science fiction and fantasies of Jack Vance, and with good reason; in fact we discover along the way that the Archonate’s Earth may even be the Old Earth of Vance’s Dying Earth stories… just a little while before the balance of the Universe shifts back to magic (or "sympathetic association") from its more rational state of science.

They’re fine stories, and wonderfully well told, and you just ought to go and read them if you haven’t. A good place to start might be Majestrum.