*** Happy Birthday to Us ***

11th April 2001 ring any bells? Today is Cloudmakers' three year birthday.
That mailing you signed up for oh so very long ago, the one where some
people were jabbering on about this guy called Evan and how he was dead?
Three years today.

(An aside: it looks like we have around five and a half thousand people
still signed up to the main list, having lost around two thousand since our
peak. Two thousand over two years is, incidentally, six hundred and
sixty-six point six recurring. Rather fitting, I thought.)

Three years ago, we all fell down a rabbit hole and plunged into a world of
murderous sex-bots (but it wasn't their fault, honest), genital re-treads,
singing mailbots, step-selves (yes, you can congratulate yourselves for
managing to wriggle out of that mess, PMs) and a globe spanning web of
plankton. Oh, and a certain Mr. Sweborg. Oh, it was fun. But anyway, enough
of looking back.

*** What's been happening in the ARG universe? ***

Biggest shout out, as ever, goes to you - the players. Without people like
you putting together the ARG Network (http://www.argn.com/) and other
community hubs like Unfiction Forums (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/)
and Collective Detective (http://collectivedetective.org/), there wouldn't
be much of a genre left. Game of the moment is AWARE
(http://www.ruaware.org/), in pre-game mode right now (check out discussion
at http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=72).

PM-wise, Elan Lee has jumped ship and is now VP of design at Myriad Mobile
(http://www.myriadmobile.com/). Mod-wise, rumour has it that a startling
proportion of them now actually have jobs and aren't students any more.

*** Sean's New Books (emphasis on plural) ***

PERFECT CIRCLE

Sean Stewart has two (two!) books coming out. Perfect Circle is due out June
15 2004 from Small Beer Press - check out the publisher's page here:

http://www.lcrw.net/seanstewart/index.htm

so you all need to go out and buy at least three copies and tell all of your
friends to do the same. And for them to tell their friends to do the same,
too. Those in New York--or near it--get to Sean speak at the Little Gray
Book Lecture Series on 2 June, although Sean reliably informs me that these
aren't *boring* lectures and promise to be a whole barrel of fun. As if they
wouldn't be...

DARK RENDEZVOUS - A CLONE WARS NOVEL

And yes, the rumours are true: Sean's other book is a Star Wars novel.
Here's what he had to say about it:

"Yes, it's true‹I've written a Star Wars novel. Funny how life works out,
isn't it? ButŠ I was eleven when SW came out. I made a (sad and floppy)
lightsaber by lashing a length of PVC tubing to a flashlight with black
electrical tape, and demonstrating in the process why I was not cut out to
be an engineer.

"One of the things that made this project appealing was the chance to write
about the Big Questions‹truth and pain, the difficulty of right action and
the Problem of Evil‹in a context that, like, half a million people, many of
them kids like the one who made the lightsaber, would stop to read.

"Plus for twenty years I have wanted to write a really killer swordfight
scene, and I finally got my chance."

Again, now's the time to propel this book up the Amazon charts. Buy at least
three copies and tell all your friends to:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345463099/102-1294971-7435309

*** Enough about us ***

Where are *you* now? And are you still waiting for the next big thing?

Regards,

Dan Hon (co-mod)