Things Accomplished This Week

I'm afraid this week's post isn't going to be very exciting. Just a list of stuff I wrote and published this week. I'll probably, eventually, do a separate weekly update post at the end of the week and put up something more interesting on Wednesdays. But I'm lacking in sleep this week, so this is all you get.

• Review of See Jane Run by Hannah Jayne
• Review of Witch Finder by Ruth Warburton
• New chapter of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective @JukePopSerials
• New page of Fey (actually an old page, but new in this current re-launch)

I've also thumbnailed and pencilled the next four pages of Fey, but haven't quite managed to get them inked yet.

I've also been reading a lot, and I'm thinking of keeping track of what I've read again in a new 50 Books challenge. Except since I know I'm going to read more than 50 YA books this year, on account of work, I'll aim for 50 YA books, 50 adult fiction, 50 non-fiction, and 50 graphic novels. That's only a little more than I've managed in previous years. Sure, maybe it will be too much, but I'm more curious about how many I'll get to than in actually hitting the goal.

So, here's what I've read so far:

YA Books

1. See Jane Run by Hannah Jayne
2. Witch Finder by Ruth Warburton

Non-Fiction

1. Artists on Comics Art edited by Mark Salisbury
2. Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic Book Universe by John Bell

Graphic Novels

1. The Tomorrow Girl and Other Stories by Aaron Diaz (aka Dresden Codak)
2. The Replacement God by Zander Cannon

Hunh. Six books in one week. That's kind of a lot.

And that's it for now. I'll try for something more exciting next week.

Goals and Such

I don't really like New Year's resolutions. I always figure if you want to do something, resolve to do it right there and then. Don't save up all your promises-of-things-you'll-do for one big day. That seems like a recipe for failure to me (though there can be success in failure, too). However, this arbitrary counting of time we call a year (OK, not entirely arbitrary, but how many people really think about what it is we base the length of a year on?) can be useful for stopping to take stock.

Last year, I didn't do as well as I hoped with my goals. I had planned to have a lot more writing done and available for people to read, but I got derailed pretty early on, and I'm not even sure why. I did manage to write (or finish) three novels (two shortish YAs and one somewhat longer adult novel), so really that's not so bad. And I drew some dragons, made some books, got a die-cutter and expanded my card-making repertoire.

But this year, I'm not going to focus on what I didn't get done last year. Well, I am, sort of, but not really. Actually, I'm going to work on some much older things in addition to trying to write more new things.

Old Things to Work On

(Note that I didn't say "Old Things to Finish." I hope to finish them, but if I don't, that's OK. At least I will have more done than I did before).

This Blog. I'm going to aim for a regular weekly post again this year. This is the first one. I won't give myself any soft of word count goal. Just one post a week, even if it's just a picture or a favourite quote.

My Comic. A million years ago, I started an urban fantasy comic -- a webcomic in the sense that I intended to first make it available on the web, though except for lettering, it's all drawn the old-fashioned way and ultimately I want it in print. I worked on it off and on over the years, a little here, a little there. It takes me a really really long time to draw.

Then, in 2004, just before I moved to Nova Scotia, I decided to re-draw everything I had already done to fix it. And I did. Every week a new page, and I even kept going after I finished re-drawing. I made it to the middle of issue 3 (around 50-something pages) and then, for reasons I no longer recall, I stopped. I even still had a few more pages planned out.

So now, ten years later, I'm going to have another go at it. I still love my characters, and it's still a story I want to get to the end of. But I'm not going to re-draw it again, even though it's old art and I might be able to draw it better (and looking back, I really shouldn't have bothered re-drawing it last time; I should have put the energy into making new pages). If I still have all my old files, and I can figure out WordPress well enough to make it do what I need, I might even have the first page up today. I'm going to start from the very beginning, one page a week to start, and while old pages are going up, I'll work on new ones. We'll see how far I get this time. I'd like to at least get to the end of the current storyline.

My Serials. I've have two serial novels on JukePop Serials, both of which have been neglected, due to the mysterious derailment of 2013. One of them -- the one I write as Calliope Strange -- is actually finished. I just haven't posted it all. For that one, I'll put up at least one chapter a week until it's done. The other one, Reindeer Girl, is not finished, but it will be. It was meant to be a way of finishing a book I started a while back, and a way to get me writing regularly. It can still be those things. Maybe I'll manage once a week, but if I can at least get going on it again, however slowly, I'll be pleased.

Other. I'm sure there are other old things I'll revisit through the year, but for now, these will do.

New Things Ahead

Dragons. This isn't entirely new, of course, as it's something I started working on on 2013, but this year I want to make it a major focus. A couple of days ago, I made a Scrivener file for it so I can start working on the text, and yesterday I had another stab at a dragon illustration that's been kicking my butt. I still didn't get it, but I got closer. This is my fun thing, the thing I'm making entirely for myself, but I'll share it, and maybe others will like it, too.

Fiction. There are always too many novels in my head, but this year I'd like to see if I can write one or two more Others novels (as Nic Silver). There are two more I know I need to write for sure. One is what happens to Evgeny while Su is in Germany, and the other is the continuation of Su's quest to find out what happened to her little sister. Also, I'd like to get working on the next Kentaurs novel, which I had intended to write over the summer. And eventually, though perhaps not this year, we'll have to find out what the heck is going to happen to Dubhghall and Maddy after the events of Dark Stranger.

Publishing. I need to get White Raven Press back on track, starting with a new website. I have a handful of novels and collections to get into print, and one to put up digital. Maybe two, but Deer Mouse is an experiment in submitting to a traditional publisher, so I'll have to wait till I hear back.

Painting. Last year I bought some exciting new art supplies, and promptly had no time to play with them. So this year, that's what I'll do. Play. Learn some things. I have a selection of casein paints, and I've already prepped a whole pile of boards to paint on. Maybe something will come of it, or maybe I'll just have fun. Either is good.

Craft. My goals here are just to keep on making stuff, and make more of an effort to market and get work into stores. I hope to do more hand-papermaking, so likely I'll have more cards printed on my own paper, and probably more linocuts rather than polymer letterpress. But again, we'll see how it goes. Also, I plan to play around with more 3D sculptures using die-cut elements. My first batch of dragons came out well, and were well-received. Also, they were great fun to design.

Photography. Some of you may know I studied photography (as well as printmaking, design, and book arts) in art school. I haven't done a lot of photo recently, asked from snaps to sort of visually journal things I see. I have some ideas for projects tumbling around in my head, but I just upgraded my iPhone, and I got a set of Olloclip macro lenses for Christmas (I had their 3-in-1 macro/wide angle/fish eye for my old phone, and will probably pick up the one for my current phone eventually), so I think I'm going to focus on shooting iPhone pictures. No pressure on myself to make great pictures, just something fun. And if they start turning out well, maybe I'll get more serious.

More…

I'm sure there were more things I was going to say, but I've gone on way longer than I meant to, so I'll stop. Basically, I plan to have fun this year, and finish more things -- some old, some new. The only way I can fail is if I stop writing/drawing/crafting completely, and that's pretty unlikely.

A Quick Writing Update

So, it seems to have been ages since I last posted here. Oops. But I found a big stash of old articles I wrote when I was the "Guide" at About Creative Writing for Teens. The site no longer exists, so I can use the articles however I like. So I think I'm going to start posting them here. I'll edit them some, probably, because my views on some things have changed over the years.

But, the reason I started this post was to say something about the writing I'm doing now. When I first started this blog, it was a way to keep track of what I was working on publicly, with the idea that if people could see when I was being lazy, I'd be less likely to be lazy. So I'm going to try to start doing that again. This could mean lots of very short posts like back in the old days, so be warned.

Anyway. Right now, I am just about to start on today's word count on Dark Stranger, the sequel to Milk Sister. It's coming along very well, at 44, 234 words, and I think it's just about to head full speed into the finale. But I also seem to be leaving a lot of unanswered questions, so there's going to be a third book, most likely. Milk Sister was Maddy's tale, Dark Stranger is Dubhghall's, and untitled book 3 will be their story together. Or something. Then again, I did introduce a pair of interesting new characters in this book, who also have a story...

Other writing news... Reindeer Girl (aka White Foxes, Full Moon) is being serialized at JukePop Serials. Soon I'm going to reach the end of the bits I've written and start writing new stuff. Fortunately, I know more-or-less where it's heading. Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective, by alter-ego Calliope Strange, which was formerly serialized at Doctor Fantastique's is now also being serialized at JukePop. It's been finished for some time, so it will appear a chapter at a time until the end (14 installments). After that, I plan to write the next chapter in Aeryn's story. Especially if the current book proves popular.

And finally, now that this update has already gone on longer than I meant it to, Kentaurs. I had a reader (a fan? Do I have a fan?) ask if/when there would be a sequel to A Madness of Kentaurs. The answer is, this summer, if all goes well with finishing up the projects listed above. It'll be called Melanippe's Odyssey, and though it's not a direct sequel (Octavian and Ixion probably won't be in it, except maybe at the end), it will tie into the larger story.

So, there. That's what I'm up to. Now I need to go get Dubhghall a little closer to finding Maddy and figuring out how to escape his destiny.

(PS. I will come back to this later and add links. I'm on my iPad right now and the Blogger app is a bit of a pain for doing much other than text. Edit: JukePop links added (and pictures, too!))

Looking Back, Peering Ahead

One of last year's beginning-of-the-year goals was to blog more regularly. I did okay with that, up until mid-year, when everything fell apart. In fact, that's about when my fiction-writing goals evaporated, too. I'm not even sure why. Possibly I was just trying to do too much at once, as usual, and got overwhelmed.

But even though I didn't really meet many of my 2012 goals, I can't really call the year a failure, either. Here are some of the things I accomplished in 2012:

• I wrote three novels, a short story, and a novella. I was aiming for four novels and ten or twelve short pieces, so I didn't meet the goal. But still, three novels! Two of them still need editing and transcribing, but the bulk is done.
• I printed some new letterpress and linocut pieces, finished up a few bookbinding projects, and came up with a new notebook product (at the last minute for the holiday craft fair!) that I'm really pleased with. Again, I didn't meet my goal of finishing up all in-progress projects before starting new ones, but I did get a few things off my worktable.
• I spent more time walking in the woods. Though I didn't get in as much exercise-oriented walking as I wanted to, I renewed my love of simply wandering and seeing what there is to see. As a consequence, I felt renewed and refreshed creatively, even though my writing production crashed halfway through the year.
• I changed jobs. Sort of. Though I really loved my job writing about videogames for About.com, I've been wanting to get back into something more writing or fiction or book oriented for a few years. I've applied for a few other About sites, and even made it to the evaluation stage once (the process of getting hired at About is fairly long and involves writing a lot of samples, but it's worth it). Finally, this fall, I made the switch to writing about books, and I'm now the "Guide" to Young Adult Books. I'm still editing the videogames super-newsletter, though, so I get to keep up on that stuff, too.

Those are the biggest accomplishments, I think. So on to my goals for 2013.

• I'm going to attempt, again, to blog more regularly. I've just installed Blogger for iOS on my iPad, which I hope will help with that, since I've been doing more and more work on my tablet since I got it. My two pen-name author blogs will probably only get infrequent updates still, but this blog, and my bone blog should start seeing some more posts.
• Again, I'm going to aim to finish more in-progress projects. I have plans to do a lot more linocut prints this year -- there's the Vanishing Bestiary to work on, and a triptych of fossil-inspired prints, and I just had a request to make my winter raven card design into a larger art print. I have some bookbinding things to finish up, too. First off, though, is to get those dragon pop-ups done and sent off to my IndieGoGo backers.
• I'm going to focus on getting my fiction writing and publishing activities back on track. This means transcribing and editing Familiar (book 3 in the Others series by alter-ego Nic Silver), and adding needed scenes and editing Dark Stranger (sequel to Milk Sister). Also, I'm going to get the full Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective novel formatted and available as an ebook and POD paperback (by alter ego Calliope Strange). As far as writing, I'll be finishing Reindeer Girl, and tackling the next Nic Silver novel. After that, I'm not sure, but I have a list of ideas to choose from.

Of course, I can't start a new year without a few brand new projects. This year, I have two big ones in mind.

• First, a non-fiction project. I won't say too much yet, because I'm still mulling it over, and it's the sort of thing I have a specific publisher in mind for, and if they don't want it, I probably won't make it a priority. It'll tie together my folklore background and my current writing-about-YA-books in a scholarly sort of book. This month, I'll be working on a proposal and sample chapter.
• Second, an artistic and natural history project. This is one I've been thinking about for a while, but always put off because it seemed most logical to begin it at the beginning of the year. So starting a little later today, I'm going to use a great big notebook I made for an unrelated art project and start keeping a natural history journal. So as not to be overwhelmed, I'm not going to try to force myself to write every day, though it would be cool if I managed it. I'll just write down observations and make little sketches of the world outside my door as the year goes by.

And now I think I've probably blathered on enough for one day.

Reindeer Girl Cover

If you're a Facebook friend or you follow me on Twitter, you'll have seen pretty much everything in this post, but I thought I'd bring all the work-in-progress shots for this book cover together in one place.

First, a bit of background. I've been working off and on to write a novel about a character called Maring Darkberry, who belongs to a culture called the Reindeer Herders (or just Herders)--a genetically mixed people who live on the barrens of my imaginary island/continent of Frisland (also the setting for many of my short stories, and for the Aeryn Daring stories I write as Calliope Strange).

The story started out as a short story called "White Foxes, Full Moon," but I soon realized there was a lot more to Maring's tale. But for some reason I never got farther than perhaps two-thirds finished.

So recently, I saw a call for submissions from a place called JukePop Serials which had an interesting business model. And I thought maybe by serializing the thing, so there were people waiting for the next chapter, I might actually finish it. And the editors at JukePop liked it. So now the title is Reindeer Girl, and it'll be serialized starting in September. And it needs a cover.

Maring

First I needed a reference for Maring. It didn't have to look like her, exactly, as long as the pose was right. So digging through a box of old pictures, I found this one of my beautiful mother with my sister and me (I'm the chubby one on the left) in her lap.

I did a sketch I was pleased with, changing her features to make her look less like my mom and more like the character in my story. Though in the story Maring has fair skin and blue eyes to go with her black hair, I wanted it to be clear from looking at her that not all her ancestry is European. Her people have intermarried all over the place, and they currently live quite close to a people they refer to as the Snow People (who are, of course, Inuit). So I wanted Maring to look like some of her recent ancestors were Inuit or perhaps Siberian or even Mongolian.

I could already tell that I probably hadn't really left enough room for the rest of the picture, but I was thinking about scanning the inked drawing and colouring digitally, so I went ahead and inked the drawing on the sketchbook paper, rather than transferring it to watercolour paper.

Text

 I spent a long time looking at type, and found what I thought was the perfect typeface for the title. It was Celtic, but rough-looking; calligraphic but loose. Unfortunately, none of the links on the designer's website worked. So I kept looking and eventually decided that what I really wanted to do was hand-letter, a la Walter Crane, or more recently, Charles Vess.

Of course, I then decided I also wanted to hand-colour, so I had to figure out a way to squeeze everything onto the page.

Background

I had in mind a particular photograph, taken on the barrens of the southern Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, which just happened to have caribou in the shot (for the curious, caribou and reindeer are the same animal, Rangifer tarandus, the first usually used in North America and the second in Europe). Alas, there must be another box of my photographs still in storage at my mother's house in BC, because I couldn't find it. So instead I used this one, taken somewhere between Cape Ray and Gros Morne, Newfoundland.

I started with a blue wash, and quickly began to wish I'd taken the time to transfer the drawing to watercolour paper before inking.

Then I added green and yellow. You can see the paper getting more and more wrinkled with each colour I add.

Then some brown and grey, and a little red and purple.

Finally, I brightened up some of the colours and added a few details with pencil crayon.

Then I had to flatten the thing so I could get a good scan. I did this by thoroughly spritzing it with water from the back, until the paper relaxed and it lay flat. Then I put it between sheets of printmaking rag (I used some old proofs) and newsprint, and put it under a goodly amount of weight to dry. And the next day it was perfectly flat.

I had to scan it in two pieces, because it's too big for my scanner--thanks to Photoshop's "photomerge" function, putting the two pieces together was a snap.

And if anyone's interested, I've made it available as a print through Zazzle (if you order, make sure to let the preview load for the size you select--some sizes will cut off the top and bottom of the image). I may do my own prints at some point, on my very nice super-deluxe photo inkjet printer on digital photo rag paper. If enough people ask, that is.

Writing Wednesday: Little by Little

I don't really have much to report. I've mostly being trying to get caught up and ahead on freelance (which is to say, reviews and non-fiction) writing lately, before I start teaching (Intro Letterpress starts next Thursday!). The requirements for my main gig change starting September (which is tomorrow!), and though I'll have more to do each month, I'll also get paid more, so I'm quite pleased about that.

As far as fiction goes, I haven't written much, at least not as Niko Silvester. As Calliope Strange I've finished chapter 4 of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective, and have realized that the story is not going to be wrapped up by chapter 5. I always intended it to be a series of short novels (a series of serials?), but it looks like this one is going to be a little longer than I originally planned. Maybe not a lot longer, but I'm not sure yet.

I've also been writing a little as Nic Silver. I've edited the the first two parts of Brother Thomas's Angel and am just about ready to write the next part. I needed to make sure it was really necessary (it is) and from whose point of view it would be (Simon's), and what exactly needs to happen (more time in the police station, alas, and Dr Sutter will make a return appearance). I also have a story outline (I hesitate to say "short story" as Nic can be a little long-winded) (yes, I am talking about my alter ego in the third person, but no, I am not crazy) (it's just clearer for me to think about my different writing styles that way). And chapter two of Newborn is about to burst from my head. I have an interesting experiment in mind for launching this book, but more on that later, when I have a better idea of how I'm going to approach it.

And speaking of Newborn, here's the latest version of the cover. I think it may be very nearly done.

Assorted Stuff

I haven't blogged much because I'm sick, and it's an effort just to get though the "must do" tasks each day, but I did want to say, "I'm not dead."

Things in progress but without much to show yet:

• Chapter 4 of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective is coming along. I'm working on that today and hope to get at least half done.
• I've started another "porthole specimen" book, this time in a brass-coloured tin lined in red velvet. I discovered that the big erasers I used to used for making stamps are no longer made (or are at least really hard to find), so I may have to buy a block of the stuff they actually make for printmaking, as regular-size erasers are just a little too small for what I want.
• I'm getting antsy to be working on prints again. Lots of ideas and no energy or time due to this cold. Sooooon.
• More copper skull jewellery is coming soon. I have four ready to cut, but have had to set them aside to get actual paying work done (now, if they'd start selling like hotcakes, I'd have a good reason to work on them instead).
• There are probably about six other things I've forgotten.

I also found out I'll be teaching 3 multi-week classes and one weekend workshop for Extended Studies at NSCAD this fall. Full courses are: Introduction to Letterpress, Youth Letterpress, and Pop-Up Books. Weekend workshop is Pop-Up Cards. Go here for more info.

And finally, I put the Nautilus Specimen book up for sale on Etsy. I almost put the price much higher, as I'd be quite happy to keep it. But then I have bills to pay, and I can always make another one for myself later.

Milk Sister: A YA Novel of Fairies and Family

While I'm still not 100% sure this is the right cover, I do rather like it, and I wanted to get Milk Sister uploaded this week, so I decided to just use it. I can change it later if I get ambitious.

You can get the ebook version right now, in various formats for just about any ereader, from Smashwords for a mere $2.99. It'll be available on the Kindle store once it's done processing.

Maddy has always been able to see things that other people can't, but she didn't know it might have something to do with the mother who died giving birth to her. Now her father has decided to move back to Scotland, and for the first time in her life, Maddy has a chance to learn about her mother's family and the strange circumstances surrounding her own birth.

Maddy was born on a fairy hill--the same hill that the the 17th century writer Robert Kirk wrote about in his book The Secret Common-Wealth, and just like Kirk, Maddy's mother may not have died there. Like Kirk, she may still be alive, living in the Otherworld, and Maddy may even be able to see her.

If Maddy can rescue her mother from the fairy hill, maybe her father won't be so sad all the time. But what if her mother doesn't want to be rescued? And who is the mysterious dark-haired boy who calls Maddy "milk sister?"

This is the second novel I wrote (The Coming of the Fairies was the first, though it really only qualifies as a novel because it's "middle grade"--or maybe YA. It's a little over 30, 000 words), and (I think) much better than my first. It uses a lot of the research I did when writing my Master's thesis and originally I hadn't intended for there to be so many fairy folk in it. In fact, as originally conceived, I was going to leave some events rather vague so the answer of whether or not the fairies were actually real would be left up to the reader (which is more or less what I did with The Coming of the Fairies). But the bloody fairies took over, and I think it's actually a rather better book for it. If you go through my blog archive, you can read a blow-by-blow of the writing process (look in past Novembers--I wrote the first draft for NaNoWriMo).

Also, my serial novel Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective, written under the pen name Calliope Strange (chapters available on Kindle) is also appearing a chapter at a time in the very cool steampunk magazine Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders. I believe it will be online for free soon, but you can also purchase it right now in e-format and hardcopy, here.

It's worth it for the super-cute illustration of Aeryn and Madman alone.

Latest Covers

Warning: Contains writerly stuff. If you're here for bookbinding or letterpress printing or pictures of Nova Scotia wildlife, you might want to skip this entry.

So a few days ago, I posted the last of the Frisland cycle of short stories to Smashwords and Kindle. The penultimate story, "Raven's Wing," I had started but never finished, so I finished it. Here's the cover:

The image is one of a pair of lithographs with Celtic raven imagery that I did a few years ago. I think it makes a rather handsome, if minimalist, cover. Actually, a lot of my covers are minimalist, as most of them will only ever be ebooks, since they're for short stories.



The very last story, "Great Skerry," got a photographic cover:

The photo was taken near Burgeo, NL, which was one of the inspirations for Cobbleshore, where many of the Frisland stories are set.



Now that they're all done, I'll be publishing a collection of all 11 stories in ebook and paperback, but first I want to get novel #2 done and out, plus The Coming of the Fairies in paperback. In case you missed it, the cover for that looks like this (I think it looks less good as a little ebook cover, so if you want to see it looking better, click on it to make it bigger):

So the last few days I've been working on getting The Secret Common-Wealth, my second YA/middle grade fantasy novel (also about fairies), formatted and ready for e-publication. Originally, I had planned a watercolour cover, but I'm not so sure my limited skills are up to the task (then again, they might not have been up to any book covers, but I did them anyway). I started playing around with scanning hand-bound books and adding gold-looking text, and ended up with this:

Which sometimes I like, and sometimes I don't. My biggest issue is, I think, that there aren't any of that sort of fairy in the book. No sparkly little winged women, no matter how fierce. The fairies in this book are Scottish sidhe, tall and elegant and amoral. (Also, the image really belongs to my comic, Fey, which I write/draw as nico.) But when I first made the little fairy woman gold, it looked so cool. Anyway. I don't want to take weeks to finish the cover, like I did with Coming, so I think I'll use it for now, and maybe work on it and make it better between now and whenever I manage to finish the paperback formatting.



Next on my list of writing to finish is chapter 4 of Aeryn Daring & the Scientific Detective. Then the third and final section of "Brother Thomas's Angel," which may very well bump it up from a novella to a novel, which is perfectly fine with me. Next to edit and make a cover for and publish is The Madness of Kentaurs (or is it *A* Madness? I always forget), and of course Frisland Stories.

Still Alive

Oops. I seem to have forgotten to post much lately. Anyway, the news in short, with writing, letterpress, book arts and everything all mixed up:

• Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective will be serialized in Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, beginning with the June issue, due out June 20th. I believe they may have a print edition in the works as well as the online magazine. AD will continue to be available chapter-by-chapter on Kindle, thanks to Doc F's very writer-friendly non-exclusive rights contract.
• I just finished binding more exhibition catalogues for the lovely Sandra Brownlee, a local textiles artist. That's one of the things that has kept me busy.
• Last week I did a super-basic lunch hour bookbinding workshop for Extended Studies at NSCAD, for a huge turnout of around 25 people. It went well, I think.
• I will be teaching more Extended Studies classes at NSCAD in the fall. So far, the tentative lineup is Intro Letterpress (adults), Intro Letterpress (teens), Pop-Up Books (adults) and a weekend Pop-Up Holiday Card workshop (adults).
• I'm still listed to teach the credit Intro Letterpress for NSCAD in the fall, but it is in serious danger of being cancelled as of this coming Friday. If you or anyone you know wants to take it, please sign up right away.
• Paperback layouts for The Coming of the Fairies and the print version of Aeryn Daring chapter 1 proceed slowly, but are coming along. Ebook formatting for The Secret Common-Wealth is coming along quickly, but the book still needs a cover.
• I need some summer income. If you know of any writing/proofing/editing jobs, illustration jobs, or other work you think I might be able to do, please let me know. I work hard and I work fast.

Smashwords is Anti-Serial

Yesterday I happily uploaded chapter two of my serial novel, Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective (written under the pen name Calliope Strange), to Smashwords. This morning, I learned that Smashwords doesn't allow serials.

Here's the relevant passage from the Terms of Service:

9d. You further warrant the book represents a complete work:
• this is not a work-in-progress;
• the uploaded file is not a partial sample or sample chapter, or is not a collection of sample chapters
• the uploaded book represents a complete story with a beginning, middle and end;not a short serial

I suppose I can understand why; they don't want unhappy customers who've bought a chapter or two of something, only to find that the rest of the work never appears. On the other hand, serials have a long history and it seems a shame not to allow them to flourish. The age of ebooks seems perfect for the serial: bite-sized bits of fiction to read on the morning commute, which over time add up to a complete work.

I'm also publishing this book on Kindle, but I haven't found any similar restrictions in their Content Guidelines, so unless they tell me I can't do it, I'll keep posting them there.

So what now? I'm glad I can keep publishing on Kindle, but I want the chapters to be available on other platforms, too. But I've got a few ideas. First, I can publish each chapter on my own website (once my website has actually got some substance), as well as selling the printed version on Etsy and ArtFire (and on the website). Or I can find an online publication that might want to publish it as a serial. Then, once the whole work has appeared, I can publish the whole book on Smashwords, Kindle, and wherever else (plus a POD print version).

So here's my To Do lost for Aeryn:

• get website up
• add individual chapters in various formats for purchase via PayPal
• format and print cheapo print versions
• print deluxe versions, complete with letterpress covers and colour insert

Any suggestions are welcome, too.

Writing Wednesday: Sharper Pearls

So yeah, I didn't quite get around to posting the final sea things cards update, but I'll get to it soon. I also have some pictures of our resident porcupine wandering around in the front yard to share. But it's Wednesday, so it's writing update time.

I got my story "Sharper and More Fragrant" added to Smashwords and Kindle (it's up now at Smashwords, from whence it will be distributed to various other venues; the Kindle version should be live in the next day or so). This is the story that eventually led to the novel I'm back at work on, formerly known as "White Foxes, Full Moon" (which title I'm now using solely for the short story that I later expanded into the first third of the book), and which is now probably going to be called Reindeer Girl, Fox Woman. Maybe.

I also formatted and posted "Cobbleshore Knit" but it's still in conversion. It should be completed by later today at Smashwords, and in a day or two on Kindle. "Cobbleshore Knit" was originally written with a completely new character, but I re-wrote parts of it once I realized the drowning man was actually Torin Danickson, the young man who captured the selkie girl in "Sealskin." It's a standalone story (at least I hope it is), but obviously connected.

And that puts me nearly halfway through the stories that make up the Frisland cycle. Unless I write more. I'm trying now to complete a half-written story that connects "Hollow Bones"/"Remembering to Fly" with "Great Skerry" (and also, in a background sort of way, to "Fox Point Dragon").

Phew. Sorry about all those titles all at once.

In non-Cobbleshore news, but still in Frisland, I should soon have the second part of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective written (under the pen-name Calliope Strange). The cover is nearly done, too, largely because it's the same as the cover of chapter one, but in a different colour with a different flying machine image. I'm lagging a bit on the printed versions, as they require an entirely different sort of formatting, and also because I want to include an image in each chapter that will be full-colour in the deluxe (letterpress-printed cover) version and greyscale in the cheapo (photocopied cover) version. And I have yet to draw them.

And in completely non-Frislandish news, I have a new story in my head called "A Pearl Beyond Price." It's a fairytale thing with sentient dolls (creepy), weird sex (really creepy), and possibly incest (really, really creepy). All the creepiness means it gets to be by Nic Silver, instead of by Niko Silvester, because despite the fact that Nic and Niko are both me, Niko writes nice things and Nic writes weird shit. Nic Silver also wrote Brother Thomas's Angel.

Writing: Angels, Anime and Steampunk

So my actual writing of new fiction isn't going spectacularly well. This past week was long and busy with letterpress rather than writing. But, I do have a few things to say (and didn't say them on Wednesday because I was out much of the day and got home very late and very weary, and the same thing happened on Thursday). I have managed to write a couple thousand words on "Brother Thomas's Angel"-- part two. I can't tell how long this part will be, but I'm starting to have some of the other characters' voices come clear, so it's possible that one of them may take over for a part 3 once the angel is finished with his bit. I'll figure that out when the time comes.

Another bit of not-so-new news: I've been writing a couple of columns for the media/pop culture site Mania. I'm doing a "Creator Spotlight" series on anime and manga artists/writers/etc and I'm doing articles on the sources of anime and manga in folklore and myth. Here's what's posted so far:

• Creator Spotlight: Moto Hagio
• Creator Spotlight: Kazuo Koike
• Folklore and Mythology as a Source for Anime and Manga
• Laputa, Atlantis and Floating Islands: Ancestors of Ghibli's Castle in the Sky

The next two are submitted and should be up this week or next.

And finally, the first chapter of the serial novel Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective (under my steampunkish pseudonym Calliope Strange) is now up on Smashwords and processing at Amazon Kindle. Apple iBooks will follow in a few weeks, as well as Sony eBooks and a couple others. For now, you can find all the various formats on its Smashwords page.

Writing Wednesday: Novella Length!

Heh. In case you were worried, this post is not going to be novella length. Actually, nothing is novella length at the moment, but the story I've been working on for . . . a month? maybe, is getting pretty close.

According the the SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America), to which I do not belong, the official lengths for stories is as follows:

• short story: less than 7500 words
• novellette: 7500 to 17, 000 words
• novella: 17, 500 to 40, 000 words
• novel: more than 40, 000 words

Personally (and I am aware I am currently firmly in the "nobody" category as far as writers go), I prefer the term "long story" to "novelette" because it's more obviously related to "short story" which it is essentially just a longer version of. I'm also pretty sure most other bodies with any claim to being "official" specify that a novel should be at least 50, 000 words unless it's YA, in which case it can be shorter. But what do I know?

Anyway, there's no real reason for this rambling, except that I just finished transcribing "Brother Thomas's Angel" from my longhand notebooks, and it's just under 13, 500 words. So approaching, though not yet at, novella length.

But the thing is, though the story is finished in the sense that it has a beginning, middle and end, the characters grow somewhat and the central problem in their lives has reached some resolution, there is still more to tell. The problem that *seems* to be the central one (but isn't, exactly, though it is a big one) does not get resolved. And I think the secondary main character (the angel of the title, who may or may not really be an angel) needs to narrate.

So the story is finished for now. Until I start writing the next bit. But I think I need to write some more of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective first.

But before I do that, I have an article about anime and folklore to finish up and hand in.

And for anyone wanting to read about bookbinding and letterpress and the beasties in my woods, I apologize. I'll post about the stuff later in the week.

Writing Post Not On Wednesday Again: Finished, Sort Of

So this time I didn't write about writing on Wednesday because I didn't have much to report. I had a rather unproductive week, I'm afraid. But since then I've finished the longhand draft of "Brother Thomas's Angel."

Incidentally, I don't really recommend writing longhand. Some writers, like Neil Gaiman, for example, write a longhand draft first and then do initial edits as they transcribe that draft to a word-processed one. That's what I always used to do. Until I had to write some stuff under deadline and simply didn't have time to do it twice. And I discovered that I don't write any differently when I compose on the computer. But besides simply writing speed, there's also physical health to think of. I essentially have permanent tendonitis in my right wrist from many, many years of madly scribbling longhand. I've been writing since I could hold a pencil and make the shapes of letters, and it's hard on the bod. My wrist has a noticeable bulge on the top where the tendonitis has formed a ganglion. I could have surgery, but it doesn't bother me much most of the time. When I refrain from doing everything longhand. Typing has its own problems, of course, but they're generally not as bad, and are more easily preventable.

But anyway. A draft of my latest story is done and I'm working on transcribing it. I'm not really sure how long it is, but I'm almost at 2000 words, and I still have a long way to go. It may be a novella.

On the print front, I submitted a few stories to magazines recently and got a couple rejections back (not unexpected ones). I'm still waiting to hear back about two stories.

And in ebooks, I haven't put anything else up yet, but I'm working on covers for a trio of short stories based on the Sleeping Beauty fairytale and for part one of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective (the serial novel based on my in-limbo comic The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring). The individual parts of Aeryn will probably get simple typographic covers and then when the whole novel goes up it'll have a more elaborate cover and will also be available in print from White Raven Press. And it'll be under a pseudonym. Not because I am trying to hide authorship, but because of the way it fits into a larger body of ongoing work that includes printmaking, metalwork, bookbinding and whatever else.

And I think that's it for fiction. For non-fiction, you can read my latest article for Mania, "Laputa, Atlantis and Floating Islands: Ancestors of Ghibli's Castle in the Sky," here.

Word Counting

Testing out a little word count widget, to see if it'll help motivate me to write. . .

White Foxes, Full Moon

The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring: A Serial Novel

Something to put in the sidebar, perhaps. . .

Flying Fish!

Flying fish! I painted these as one long strip, to be cut up into four cards afterwards. It'll be tiny on the blog, but here's the whole thing:

When I drew these, I started by drawing some sketches from reference photos (thank you, Google Images). Then I used the poses I liked best, and changed some of the details--especially in the fins.

I came up with the colours in the same sort of way. I looked at a lot of pictures, then came up with my own colour scheme.

The result is Grave's Flying Fish, Cheilopogon gravesi, discovered by Gideon Grave on one of this adventures. Their geographical range is uncertain at present, but I'm hoping a thorough search of Grave's notes will provide some clues. It seems unlikely that it was a native of the waters around Frisland, but it is a possibility.

This last one is my favorite, because it ended up having the best composition when the four cards were separated. I also think it best captures the semi-transparent nature of their "wings."

I've now mailed these off to their swap coordinator, as hard as that was, but I'll be making greeting cards, and maybe a t-shirt with the full strip of fishes.

Busy Getting Nothing Done

It seems to be the story of my life: I'm busy pretty much all the time, and if I'm not actually making or writing something, then I'm reading or doing research. Even when I play videogames, I'm working, because I work for a gaming website. So I've been busy all weekend, and have crossed almost nothing off my to-do list. I really need to write some articles. And get some product made for the Halifax Crafters spring market, which is in a few weeks.

To be fair, I didn't just waste the weekend. I did organize my stock of existing product to get some idea of what I need to make. There is a batch of half-done tiny pocket journals, and I will have to do a batch of Japanese-binding jewellery. And I came up with an idea for new product. One of the things I've been wanting to do is make greeting cards from my illustrations, but I haven't had any I liked well enough to use. But now (you'll see if you read on) I have a couple of images I like. So next time I'm in Truro or Halifax, I'll visit Staples for some of those pre-cut greeting cards that are made especially for inkjet printing on. My large-format Canon photoprinter does really nice prints, so that end is covered. I'm also going to do magnets. I just have to decide how many of each thing I'll be likely to sell, because I'm short enough on funds that I don't want to buy more supplies than I actually need.

I've mentioned ATCs before--that is, Artist Trading Cards. They're little trading card sized piece of art that you trade with other artists. Or you can sell them, in which case they're called ACEOs (Art Cards Editions and Originals). I made one a little while ago to trade with a fellow Etsy Steam Team member.


Leonardo's Clockwork Scarab was made in a hand-coloured edition of 15, two of which stay home (one for me and one for BillyZ), two are on sale at Etsy and ArtFire, one has gone to CreativeEtching, one will go to a trader partner in . . . Sweden, I think, and 9 are left to trade.


Doktor Valentine's Discombobulation Ray was an experiment in markers, which I'm not so good at. A last minute application of pencil crayon highlights saved the image, and it'll become magnets to sell at the fair, and later online. I haven't put it up for trade yet, as I'm rather fond of it, but if the magnets turn out well, I'll either sell the original on Etsy, or make it available for trade.


Aeryn Daring in Sepia was a less-successful experiment with sepia drawing ink. I'm not fond of how it bled, though fortunately it's really only noticeable up close. I also don't like how the paper texture is so visible--guess I'll have to buy the good watercolour paper soon. Otherwise, it turned out OK, and it's up for trades. I may do magnets from this one, but I haven't decided yet.









Valkyrie I'm very pleased with. It was an attempt to get away from the over-detailing I tend to do in inks, and just use a simple outline with basic washes. I think it's successful for what it is, and it will become greeting cards. Maybe magnets, too. I've entered her in a couple of mythology-themed ATC contests, and when those are over I may put her up for sale on Etsy. If the greeting cards turn out well.


The Fox & the Grapes illustrates an Aesop's fable and was an attempt to get myself to use more dynamic perspective. It's actually a detail from a larger image that has more vines and leaves and the rest of the fox's tail--I'll probably go back now and do the whole thing on a postcard. This is another one that will be greeting cards (and maybe magnets). I'm hanging on to it for a while, but will probably sell or trade it eventually.

We've had more spring birds showing up, despite the recent snow, but that's a post for later. Right now I have a big stew to make.

50 Books and 2010 Goals

Some of you may remember a few years back when I picked up a challenge (I no longer recall who the originator of the challenge was, or where online I found it) to read 50 books in the year and blog about it. That first year, I was single and working entirely from home, and I ended up expanding the challenge to 50 fiction, 50 non-fiction, and 50 graphic novels, and still beating it easily.

So this year I've decided to change things (though I'm not single anymore, and often drive for more than an hour to get to the printshop, which will cut down on my free time). I'll still aim for reading 50 books (and maybe, if it goes well, for 50 fiction, non-fiction and comics). But this year, I'm going to try to bind 50 books.


While I don't count books I've already started in my reading 50 books challenge, I think I will include books started in my binding 50 books challenge, as incentive for me to finish the projects I've started and not finished over the past couple of years. So yeah, this year I aim to bind (at least) 50 books, and I'll blog them here.

And as for 2010 goals, I don't usually make actual New Year's Resolutions, but I do like to start the year with some general goals. This year, besides the 50 books thing, my goals are:

• take White Raven Ink seriously as a business, including registering the name, working on marketing, developing product, getting the website finsihed, etc
  
• finish, or at least get a bunch more done, Fey: Drawing Borders
  
• seriously get back into writing fiction (and maybe even finish White Foxes, Full Moon), including submitting stories and further exploring the possibilities of POD, and writing The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring as an illustrated serial novel
  
• work on illustration, including furthering my skills in Photoshop and Illustrator--one of the projects I'll be doing is full-colour Photoshop illos for Aeryn
  
• work on organizing and cataloging my backlog of photographs
  
• get a portfolio together for Viewpoint Gallery and apply for membership
  
• apply for at least one show
  
• become more active online (one selected sites) in order to network and market my work
  
• make some time to play video games for fun (and not just for work)

Well, I think that's enough for now. Like I said, they're fairly general goals, but that makes them more feasible. 2009 was a pretty good year for me professionally (plus I bought a house!); I'd like 2010 to be even better.


Photos: Top - Copper Manuscript of the Hill People of Frisland. Copper-covered coptic stitch book with Japanese paper pages, hand-done calligraphy and illustrations. Photo and art by Niko.

Bottom - Sneak-preview back cover of an in-progress POD book project (and possible gallery show) called Taxonomy gastronomica (Silvester). Photos and design by Niko.

Like Riding a Bicycle

I haven't written much fiction at all in quite a long time, and that's not a good thing. I've sort of been making up for it by reading a lot, but reading fiction is not the same as writing fiction.

So I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year, hoping to kick-start myself into fiction writing again. With so many other things on the go, I'm not sure I'll manage the 50,000 words by the end of the month, but I'm at 1711 so far, which is just a little over the necessary 1667 a day to reach the goal and "win" NaNoWriMo.

It wasn't until I actually sat down to write this evening that I actually decided what to work on. I didn't really want to work on White Foxes, even though I really would like to finally get it done. I wanted something I could start and finish, not something I was halfway through, even though I'm pretty sure there are well over 50,000 words left to go in White Foxes. I considered writing the second book in the Kentaurs series (I wrote the first one last time I did NaNoWriMo), but I don't really know what happens yet--not even how it begins, except that Octavian goes looking for his brother Archer.

But then I remembered that I had been thinking about making The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring into an illustrated serial novel instead of a comic (hypothetically leaving me more time to work on the long-time-in-progress Fey comic). It's something I already had a beginning for (though in a very different form), notes for the near future of, and a general idea of where it was headed. I suspect it may grow into a series of short serial novels, but I won't know until I get there, I guess. So, 1711 words and it's pretty silly, but I'm having fun and it means that anyone who has actually been reading Aeryn on webcomicsnation might actually have something new to read soon. Cool.

I've attempted NaNoWriMo three times before now, in 2003, 2004 and 2005. The first two times I did really well, ending up with The Secret Common-Wealth (a faery story) and The Madness of Kentaurs (an alternate-world fantasy), both YA novels and both well over 50,000 words. The third time was the year I started at NSCAD and I realized almost immediately that it was a really bad idea to try to do end of term projects, and write a novel. The end of term projects alone almost did me in. So, I know I'm capable, at least.

Here's to hastily written novels!