Clarifying International Shipping & Shipping in general
almost 6 years ago – Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 03:53:06 PM

Hey Everyone, 

We wanted to take a quick second to address some of the questions we have been getting with shipping.

•  Only one tier that contains international backers has been sent by us, Voidwalker. The rest of the international pledges will be sent by Gamesquest. GQ was effected by the the UK shutdown and have since reopened, but they have a massive backlog. Everyone is hopefully for July but please understand that this is malleable and can change at any moment. 
•  We have completed shipping of all domestic US tiers with the exception of the last 2, Cartographer of the Old Weird World and Bookbearer of the Ages. We are approaching the last of Cartographer to go (around 100) and then we will get to Bookbearer which shouldn't take very long as it is just the single line item. 

Dont worry! The end is in sight and more and more will get them. Please make sure you are subscribed to our newsletter (available at the bottom of our homepage) and also our Discord here for even more updates. 

thank you, 

EF

Reflections on Completion
almost 6 years ago – Thu, May 21, 2020 at 01:24:18 AM

Hey folks, this is a personal piece from the author, Luka. As of this writing, Exalted Funeral is working through the stacks of books, dice, t-shirts, and other items from the kickstarter, dispatching them batch by batch. Voidwalker editions first (those are mostly done), then standard editions. International deliveries will be a bit bumpier than we'd hoped because, well, the pandemic. Take care, everyone, and thank you for making this possible!

—Electric Steel Wizard Temporary Cyborg

Reflections on Completing the UVG

A solid half-year late the UVG hardcovers are finally reaching their backers. This has been an incredible project for me. Hard, yet fulfilling. Grueling, yet often fun. Exhausting, but also somehow inspiring.

I drew the first pieces of art and wrote the first versions of the texts that went on to form the UVG in early 2017. By August 2018 the core of the book was written. By April 2019 we had a successful kickstarter and an edited manuscript. By June 2019 most of the hard layout was done and I knuckled down to start coloring all the art. That was quite a bit of work, to be honest!

Then, quite unexpectedly, my father died in August of 2019. Dealing with the funeral and the aftermath was almost certainly the hardest thing I had ever done.

I tried to throw myself into both finishing the book and my planned Korean course that September. It was a mistake. Between lessons and homework, the course demanded easily eight hours of my day, five days a week. Until mid October 2019, when I finally finished coloring the last pieces of art for the UVG, my days were a blur. Wake up at seven, color one piece, go to class, come home, color a bit more, fall asleep, color some more art, do home work, go to sleep at midnight.

It all felt a bit much, but perhaps I needed it at the time. When I saw the piles of homework to prepare for the midterms, right after I finished the last coloring on the UVG, I knew I was done. I couldn't keep up the pace anymore.

I skipped the classes and promptly fell ill as all the stress came cascading down on my head. After a week, still ill, I decided I wasn't going back. This was too much.

I still tried to maintain a schedule of private classes while finishing the last parts of the UVG. The referee screen, the postcards, the other details, but my progress had slowed to a crawl.

Whether I admitted it to myself or not, I was circling the drain of complete burnout by November 2019. I wanted to take a holiday there and then, but one thing after another still required my attention. Redoing a .pdf, tweaking a contract, other work.

Over the new year my wife and I went on a week-long holiday and that helped. It helped me realize that I had depleted pretty much all my energy reserves. I couldn't even handle day-to-day tasks in Korea anymore, much less new projects with Exalted Funeral. I went ahead and disappointed Matt by pulling back from any creative direction work. I'd been keen to get a whole line of products up and running, but there was just no time or headspace left.

I ditched my private Korean lessons and focused on getting some urgent administrative tasks dealt with, before heading to Europe for a bit of rest and recalibration. Even as I was sorting things out, the coronavirus pandemic began spooling up.

I watched with a kind of dull horror as the Daegu outbreak spread in Korea and country after country blocked flights from Korea. Fortunately, I made it to Europe ... just in time to see the outbreak repeat itself in Italy and all my plans for a sabbatical go up in a cloud of virus-loaded droplets. Within a week of the start of my sabbatical, I was self-isolating within my family home, watching in something akin to terror as one European government after another failed to take the pandemic seriously.

Even as the books arrived at the Exalted Funeral warehouse, the pandemic continued to ramp up and lockdowns continued to spread. Days, weeks, months ticked by. Later and later we were.

Still, there was one good thing: everything was out of my hands now. All the books and merchandise and extra materials were printed and on their way to Matt. My part was done. Meanwhile, Slovenia locked down. First the borders were shut. Then the county borders, too. The world contracted to the family house and garden and nearby river and forests and hills. The airplanes disappeared from the skies. The cars disappeared from the roads. Birdsong reclaimed the silent world. Friends and acquaintances disappeared from the horizon, made unreachable by the distancing measures.

All was still.

In April it had been eight years and three countries since I had left my homeland for the second time in my life, and this chance to simply be myself, to simply speak my own language, to not be a migrant or traveler, to not be apart from the world (though apart in isolation), was a wonderful tonic.

I marveled at the landscapes and the flowers and the flighty deer in the fore-dawn mists as I never had. I had seen these sights yet been blind to them before. Now I watched again.

Was it even burnout?

I can't tell for sure. I guess, looking back, it might have been. Or its very edge. I had had the distinct feeling that I was skating round and round the edge of a deep well, leaning further and further over that lip, closer so closer to falling in. I'd felt that if I was carrying a teacup, then my cup was very very full, so full I could barely keep its tea from spilling, so full nothing more could be added without spilling.

By late April 2020, eight hard months late in the teeth of pandemic, the UVG books—my UVG books—were going out. Were meeting their new owners. And I was able to feel joy when I saw that.

When I reopened their pages and saw their layout I was able to think to myself, "You know, this isn't half bad. I did put in quite a lot of thought and effort. There were reasons to my madness."

Do I think it's perfect? No, of course not.

But I am quite proud of what I've made. Yes, after many months, I do feel some small flicker of pride.

Thank you to everyone who made the UVG possible. To all you backers, without whom this kickstarter could never have happened. To my wife who encouraged me to try writing. The patreons who watched and encouraged its growth. Exalted Funeral who helped turn it into a physical kickstarted thing. The Moonrats who made the text more excellent. Saker Tarsos who built a digital companion. The typohunters who made sure to hunt down every literary gremlin. Anna of Doubleproficiency who jumped in to help by the time I was too tired to do the final pieces. Everyone who bought and shared and read and enjoyed it. Everyone who shared warm words and kind excitement and useful critique as it took shape. And finally, everyone who was patient and understanding these last six, eight, nine months that I barely remember through the blur of work and life and death and events.

This has been hard.

But it has been good.

And the UVG is complete*.

—Luka, May, 2020, A Quarantine

*well ... not completely done. There's still the congratulatory videos, and new books and works and illustrations, but you get the picture.

Address Changes, Questions, etc
almost 6 years ago – Fri, May 01, 2020 at 12:31:23 PM

First Wild Voidwalker Spotted!
almost 6 years ago – Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 08:48:42 PM

Yep, they are really getting sent out!

Even the signed and numbered doodle came through.

It's a truly strange and exhilarating feeling seeing these books in the wild, finding their new owners after all these months of work. Fly, bookies, fly!

We Have Ultraviolet Lift Off
almost 6 years ago – Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 08:16:12 PM

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