Friday 26 January 2018

Friday 20 September 2013

Abandoned?

No, I haven't abandoned this place. I have just been critically unproductive in the last few months. I hope things will improve soon. :)

Saturday 23 February 2013

"Good as Gold", Chapter 19

Click here to get to chapter 18) In which Mirii finally meets Sei again, and… well, is even more confused about what to think about this whole mess. Velia and Pau sneak about in the Lanali city, getting so close to the terrorists that Yannis would really not be happy if he knew about it! and Brennan finds out exactly what his captors have in store for him.

Posted words: 78140 out of 100,000

Monday 26 November 2012

"Good as Gold", Chapter 18

(Click here to get to chapter 18) In which Mirii meets Yannis’ contact in the foreign lab (and gets even more confused), Brennan moves out to the hospital, Biohazard makes a surprising discovery of his own, and Asenka crosses swords with the sinister doctor Hueil.

Posted words: 72452 out of 100,000

Friday 16 November 2012

"Good as Gold", chapter 17

(Click here to get to chapter 15) In which the twins discuss their limited progress, Eri gets a message, and Asenka starts to have second thoughts about what they’re doing.

Posted words: 63,568 out of 100,000

Monday 12 November 2012

"Good as Gold", chapter 16

(Click here to get to chapter 15) In which Mirii visits the market with Yannis (who - as always - has an ulterior motive for the visit), and Sei finally begins to find out what his abductor is up to.

Posted words: 57,361 out of 100,000

Friday 9 November 2012

Ammut

I was aiming for the sort of... Aztec/Maya/Egyptian style I used for these wee beasties, again. Not sure I managed it, precisely, but I still like how she turned out.

I have another handful of Egyptimayan-mashup pictures to finish off, so there might be more like this on the way - if I ever get them finished. (I was going to suggest people give me ideas for other creatures to doodle up, but I'll blatantly never get them finished - I mean, this took me months already - so.)

Thursday 8 November 2012

"Good as Gold", chapter 15

I'm being a little bit of a NaNoRebel, this year! I felt like trying to finally get "Good as Gold" finished - in draft form, if nothing else - so may I present the first new material of NanoWriMo 2012:

(Click here to get to chapter 15 on Dreamwidth or Livejournal; choose which platform you prefer. ) In which a little deception is revealed, more trickery is planned, and Mirii considers her options...

Posted words: 50,445 out of 100,000

If you'd like to catch up, the story so far is posted on Dreamwidth and Livejournal.

Monday 8 October 2012

Stained glass beasties; a redux

I found my original post! December 2008, ouch. But I at least got a couple finished off!

Enfield    Kelpie     An enfield (left) and a kelpie (right).

As well as a borough in London, the enfield is a heraldic beastie, made up of fox, eagle, and wolf, occasionally with some greyhound and lion in it too. The kelpie, or each uisge, is the carnivorous water horse of celtic myth. You could always identify a kelpie by the sand and shells in its mane. (Presumably, if you dared to get close enough?)
As ever, I'm somewhat dissatisfied by the enfield's blobby "magic" and will probably rework it.

To answer Anna's question (I can't get on FA right now): they're tall, skinny pictures because that way they'll fit on a particular brand of stickers. I like to get things printed so I can hide them inside things I put in the post (like... Christmas cards, haha) as little extras.

Technically not "Beasts of Yore" but since that's now out of print, and it's a similar theme if nothing else...

Friday 28 September 2012

Memento Mori - first draft complete!

This post is slightly belated (about a week); I never got as far as posting it, because I ran out of title icons for the individual chapters.

As with the previous half of the first draft, "chapters" 19-33 are now posted as a PDF on my website, and can be accessed by clicking the picture at the right. (Again, it's just over 2Mb, and about 80k words.) If you just want to read the last few chapters, they are here: Chapter 31, Chapter 32, Chapter 33 (Epilogue)

Thus, the first draft of Memento Mori is at last finished!

I now need to think about getting to work on editing it, so I can publish it, although I may try and get "Good as Gold" finished first. (That, I think, will be my project this November.) It makes more sense to publish that and "Thunder Daughter" first, seeing as they explain a little about certain aspects of Memento Mori (notably, the feared "blood fevers").

I’ve always considered doing illustrated “special editions” of things, but as the photograph below shows, that may end up being prohibitively expensive. (I checked on Lulu’s price calculator, the base cost of a 300-page perfect bound full colour book would be in the region of £42. I’m not sure many people would be willing to fork over that much.)

The delay in making this post did allow me to get this item ready to go into it, however. As soon as the first draft was finished – and that is pretty much literally, as soon as the last word was typed I was formatting it to send off – I got the first draft printed up as a book (via “Lulu”, a print-on-demand service). It took about a week to arrive. I purchased two copies – one for me, to put in my bookcase as a “reward” for finishing it, and one to loan out to people at work; the loan copy is already out in the wild.

Edit: I'm not sure why it's so difficult to get things to post with the correct formatting, on here.