It’s about a year behind schedule (which is why you should never announce a release date until you’re positive), but Visual Novel Maker is finally coming out in mid November.  It’s a game engine / editor designed specifically for visual novels.  While I can’t say yet whether or not it will be a good fit for Aurora’s Nightmare (I’ve been all but settled on RenPy for a while now), the feature set sounds pretty impressive and I’m looking forward to picking up a copy to play with (whether or not I end up using it for AN).  Now if I can just get the last few pieces of art and sound I need to get the demo done…

Anyway, Visual Novel Maker could potentially be a pretty cool program and, if you’ve got any interest in making a visual novel of your own someday, I’d recommend giving it a look when it launches.