Let’s start with the story.
Once upon a time, there was a girl called Aurelia. Every morning, Aurelia walked to go to work. There were many very reasonable reasons for her to do so: it’s good exercise, she doesn’t have a car (/there are no convenient bus routes/it’s cheaper then a cab) but the main reason is that approximately seven months out of the year, she really enjoys it. The winter can be really cold, to the point of making the ice-covered streets dangerous to navigate and making her spring for a cab, and the summer is usually much too hot to make the walks pleasant. Spring and fall were the best walking seasons, but Aurelia walked as much as she weather and her own fear of slipping on the ice and being hit by a car would allow her to in the winter, and she walked every day in the summer, no matter how hot and humid, not how much she hated it.
One week, as she was walking to work one morning, she realized: “Hey! It’s getting a little chilly. I should probably wear a jacket or a coat tomorrow morning.” The afternoon walk was very comfortable, and a jacket would have made her too hot, but Aurelia always carried a big purse to work, one where she would have no problem stuffing a jacket on the way back. So the next day, she wore a jacket, and was just at the right temperature to walk to work. As she walked, she noticed that some of the trees had started to turn a little yellow, and one was even getting really orange. She thought: “That’s it! Fall is here, at last!”
But the week-end brought a heat wave. The Canadian Weather Services issued warnings. The temperature rose up to 30 degrees Celcius, sometimes more, the Humidex to 40 degrees, and at nighttime it remained above 20 degrees. Over the next week, the temperatures kept decreasing slowly, giving Aurelia hope that her favorite season (she prefers the coming of fall after summer to that of spring after winter) was finally arriving, and once again her hopes were dashed by another heat wave.
The question here is not so much “How will the story end?” because the weather will eventually cool and fall will come. (Climate change can’t possibly be that bad yet. I’m pretty sure human life will go extinct long before we see the end of winter on the North American continent.) The question is when. When will fall come?! I know the official date isn’t for another two weeks and maybe it’s too soon to start complaining (as I’ve been told by those who enjoy risking dehydration and skin cancer, aka “Summer people”*) but it’s been so close, those last couple of weeks. There were days when it was there, when I could taste it! It’s not fair!
Anyway, on to better news: the AMMIA cards arrived this week! I was hoping to get my personal deck today, but it didn’t work out that way. I’ll get it Saturday at the latest (more on that in a minute).
This is it! A Match Made in Austen, a game that I made up in my head in December 2013 over a period of about 48 hours, after 20 months of work and rework and wishes and hopes, is a thing that exists, that I can touch and hold in my hand. It’s a game that I can play, one that other people can buy (preorder now over at Renaissance), in fact one that other people have already bought! Thank you to the Kickstarter backers! Thank you to Cécilia, for the amazing art! Thank you to Caroline and Kyle at Renaissance for all of your hard work in making this real.
Final note: I am going to be at Creative Ottawa Nerds, or CON, this Saturday between 10 and 5 at St Richard’s church in Ottawa. With me will also be Caroline Frechette, fellow Renaissance Press author, and along with the Press catalog of books, Caro and I will also have have our games. Caroline, declaring herself inspired by me, created a co-op card game based on her popular series Family by Choice. It will be the first time that the games will be available for sale at an event, and I am excited, if a little anxious, to see how it all turns out.
*Summer people, we may on occasion be bound by blood or by friendship, and those bonds I shall always respect, but you are not my people.
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eta: Damn it! I thought I set that to publish yesterday evening. Sorry everyone, and happy Labor Day!
Aurelia Osborne 