As we near to door closing time here at Mongoose HQ, I am looking to relaxing for the weekend - we have had quite a week!

Today, for example, it was all hands to the pumps to take in a delivery of new books (including Warships of Babylon 5, so if you are waiting for your mail orders, you should see them early next week!). They should have arrived earlier in the week, but the entire pallet was lost by the shipping company (seriously). As well as Warships and a few restocks for us, there were also 300-odd books for something very special that, I believe, will be announced this Monday. . .

Aslan and the Central Supply Cataloghue are going through their final proofing at the moment, as is Agent, so we will have all manner of Traveller goodness coming through very soon - heavyweight stuff too, as the first two books are big hardbacks.

Beyond that, Price of Honour, the Land of the Samurai campaign for RuneQuest, goes to print next week, as should Lone Wolf 11, so it's busy, busy, busy here!

Once the current 'generation' of books moves off to print then, of course, the next crop comes in. Right now, Charlotte has been slaving away at the new Paranoia rulebook (for Troubleshooters), as well as the Limited Edition version, entitled Black Missions. This comes with a free disc that has oodles of Paranoia material on it, from complete supplements, to forms, to sound files of the Computer speaking (all recorded at Rebellion's own studio), to video interviews with some Paranoia luminaries - and lots more!

Fordy (Northman), on the other hand, has been working hard on the new Judge Dredd RPG and, looking at what he and Lawrence have done, it is going to be a killer book - not least because Will has stated that, during layout, he will be putting the 'awesome' into it.

Hammers Slammers is due to arrive at our warehouse next week, a full month earlier than predicted (one good reason for printing purely in the US, even for full colour books, and this is certainly one to watch out for. Check out the previews on the Traveller page of the site, and you'll see what I mean. . .

As for the writers, they have been busy beavering away. Gareth is just about to start the second Paranoia rulebook, this time covering Internal Security agents, while Lawrence is starting on a project I know a great many of you have been waiting for - the Strontium Dog RPG! Bryan is adding more spells to the RuneQuest grimoire, and Simon is about to revisit Lankhmar for a brand new look at the city and its surroundings.

We have some great titles lined up for you this summer and autumn, so stay tuned!

I am _really_ looking forward to the next State of the Mongoose (due end of November/early December), as it will be the first real opportunity for use to announce all the cool new things we are currently working on for 2010. We have just had a meeting about the various new covers and styles we will be using, and this hammered home the books they will be going on to the front of.

Traveller, for example, will be well into its stride and firing on all cylinders - some books here we have already talked about, such as Supplement 6: Pirate Fleets, which does not just feature pirate-type ships, but gives you everything you need to run your own band of ruffians (and is non-OTU specific, so you can use it for Raiders in Babylon 5 or perps in Dredd, as well as you can in the Marches).

We'll also be expanding our coverage of the Traveller universe with some new sectors, the Zhodani make an appearence, and there are some cracking OTU-shaking campaigns on the way.

That really is just the surface, however, and there are a lot of exciting things happening with the other game systems. Still, not to worry - just six months to wait, and then we can reveal all!

Every now and again, we get a flurry of activity here at Mongoose. A few things we covered today;

1. Sending out all the remaining mail order copies of Psion.

2. Arguing about the new Mongoose logo (to be launched with the new Mongoose web site, which ties in with the new Mongoose warehouse system, likely launched somewhere around October this year).

3. Some tweaks to the proofs of Hammers Slammers.

4. Playtesting a new Gloranthan-based boardgame.

5. Finalising the design decisions on the cover of the 25th Anniversary edition of Paranoia.

6. Convincing some veteran Traveller fans we are not the spawn of Satan :)

7. Proofing Pacific War, Warbirds, and Catacombs of Hyboria. Hopefully getting them off to print in the next 24 hours.

8. Tweaking the reprint of Traveller Pocket Edition. Yes, the important footnotes are back in!

9. Prepping for tonight's office game of Traveller - still playing out Project Steel. The witch in the party is going to go dippy over Psion.

10. Announcing our all US-based printing. Will mean something to some, nothing to others, but we are happy to be able to do it.

11. Badgering two licensors to give us their licences, dammit!

12. Watched our re-re-restock of Powers & Principalities dwindle away to nothing. Again.

13. Arranged some co-operation with another company for Hammers Slammers.

14. Ordered a French-style keyboard for our new French translation department.

Just a short note.

We will be making an announcement about the way we print our books very soon (hopefully this week). It is good news overall, though we will see a slight slippage of release dates on _some_ titles, but no more than a week or two (so they may lap into the next month). And some titles will be appearing somewhat earlier than originally planned!

Apologies for the radio silence from my corner of the ever-expanding Mongoose empire. Let's see what I've been up to, by poking the "recent items" folder on my laptop and seeing what comes up.

Hmm. 19 Skills, 32 Secret Society Missions, 39 The Quantum Traitor, and artnotes.doc - those are all part of the 25th Anniversary PARANOIA extravaganza. Some details about the all-singing bonus content CD are already circulating, but most of my work this month involved kicking the book into shape. It's not there yet, but I've handed it over to Charlotte to give my kickin' feet a rest.

Scoundrel Outline.doc demonstrates the highly complicated and professional manner in which files are named. I have not saved the spreadsheet in another window, but it may be called Scoundrel Wordcount, or possible Wordcount of Flaming Neurotic Doom, Mark XVII, depending on how long this cup of tea takes to kick in. Looking at the Scoundrel outline, I realise that one of the first things I've got to do involves looking back through Traveller Mailing List archives for discussions of piracy. I push the tea away - I don't think I want full consciousness yet.

Winterwood.doc is of no interest to anyone except the players in a D&D4e game I'm supposed to be running. At least, not yet.

In the distance, I can see hazy outlines for the IntSec and High Programmer books, but they're on the far side of Scoundrel. So, I'm off to raid shipping across the Spinward Marches...

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While checking The Computer's twitter feed, I notice from Allen's always interesting feed that PARANOIA writer, Star Wars Novelist and all-around good guy Aaron Allston is recovering from his recent heart attack, which is very good news.