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!))

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: 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 Wednesday: Remembering and . . . Something Else

Just a quick update today as I have a million things to do for a craft fair this weekend, and still have to keep up with my PSP gig. So, point form.

• another short story, this time "Remembering to Fly," is available on Smashwords, and eventually in the Kindle, Nook, Sony and iBookstores. It's currently listed at 99 cents, but I may add a coupon to make it free, because it's really very short (around 1500 words).
• I am falling behind in my short-story-a-month goal. First "Brother Thomas's Angel" turned into a novella and then I got busy with other things. So I have about 3 stories to write in May to catch up.
• I'm also falling behind in my writing 5 days a week goal, but I'll make that up as soon as this craft fair is over (they have a tendency to take over everything for a while, no matter how carefully you plan ahead).
• I have now caught myself back up on White Foxes, Full Moon and am about to write brand-new stuff and get this thing finished. I'm also probably going to change the title to distinguish it from the short story that I expanded into the first part of the novel. For now, I'll use Reindeer Girl as a working title, until something better presents itself.
• I'm no longer writing about anime/manga and folklore for Mania.com. My last articles should be up early in May if they aren't already. They're cutting back on freelancers, and while they're happy to keep publishing my stuff, they won't be able to pay me anymore. And while I love writing and anime and folklore, I can't afford to work for free. So.
• Still haven't heard back about the reviewer job I queried about.
• Applied for another freelance gig, but I won't say what it is until I know if I really have any chance. My application was good, but we'll see.

And I think that's it for today. Back to working on letterpress and bookbinding stuff for the craft fair. An update on that tomorrow or Friday, I think.

Writing Wednesday: You Know, Stuff

Not much to report, really. I finished part 2 of "Brother Thomas's Angel," bringing the whole story up to something like 24,000 words. I think it's done, and I'll be sending it some first readers just as soon as I do the copyedits. If anyone reading this thinks they'd be a good first reader, let me know. I can't pay, but I can offer editing in return, or maybe some kind of barter.

I'm also seriously considering publishing "Brother Thomas" under a pen name (as I may have mentioned before). Not because I want to hide authorship (I wouldn't be blogging about it here, if I did), but because most of the fiction I have published under the name I use in real life ("Niko Silvester," if for some reason you didn't already know that) is either YA/kids' fiction, or it's nice, melancholy, not-too-horrifying fantasy. "Brother Thomas's Angel" isn't too, too much darker than some of what's out under my name, but it does have a lot of things some people would consider offensive (especially if they're homophobes, Christian fundamentalists, or uptight about sex). In other words, I'd be a little worried about someone picking up "Brother Thomas" and expecting to get something along the lines of "Hollow Bones."

Depending on feedback, I may or may not add another part. It's a bit weird, because usually when a story is finished, I know. It's very clear. But with this one, I'm just not sure. So I'll see what my first readers say, let it sit for a bit, and then decide. In the meantime, I'll work on a cover image. And start the next story, of course (actually, I will probably get back to working on White Foxes, as it's the next closest thing to being finished).

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. . .

Same Old Busyness

I see I am not doing so spectacularly well in keeping up with regular blogging. As usual. I am working on about six million things at once (also as usual), and I will have pics soon.

Things currently on my worktable:

• A pile of little monochromatic books in a rainbow of colours (a monochrome spectrum?). If that makes no sense, it will all be clear once I finish them and post the photos.
• Four SteamBook blank journals, in a larger size than the previous batch (of which there are now only two left, in my Etsy shop). Two are Quartermaster's Account Books and two are Timekeeper's Journals.
• Seven ATCs inked, but not yet coloured. Two have masking fluid on. Four are women with antlers (well actually three are women with antlers and one is a woman with antelope horns), one is a shark woman, one is a sea jelly and one is a caribou/reindeer.
• Some magnets of my art work that need to be cut out, photographed and listed in my Etsy shop. Four sea dragons and four flying fish.
• A linocut tryptich that I started ages ago and have not yet printed. They will be reductive, with potentially many, many layers of ink. They could take a long time to do.
• Comic book pages waiting to be re-scanned and re-lettered. I think I am putting this off because I still can't decide if I should letter them by hand or on the computer, and if on the computer, which comic typeface to use.
• Comic book pages waiting to be drawn.
• A chapter of White Foxes, Full Moon that needs just another page or two before it gets transcribed from my handwriting into legible type in a word processor.

And I'm going to stop looking around me now, or I will find more things to add to that list and if the list gets any longer I fear I will never finish the things on it.

[BFG] Dr Shallowgrave, Before the "Dr"

Writing again which is good. And it turns out the infamous Dr Sophia Shallowgrave, during her student days and thus before the "Dr" part, is a character. I hope she doesn't take over the novel like she tends to take over a conversation. This is Maring's story, and to a lesser extent Watcher's. But anyway, here's one of the things she said today:

I’ve already declared my advanced degrees to be in cryptobiology and alchemistry. Which sound like crackpot disciplines, but are actually more scientifically advanced than the stuff they call science in Europe or America. Really I was supposed to be looking for new species this trip. But there’s no reason I couldn’t do a monograph on a lost people, too.

So there's the possibility that I may have to actually write her monograph on the Hill People of Frisland. Shouldn't be too hard. I had to read enough of them in my anthropology student days.

Bees!

Here's the last of the three sets of artist trading cards I've been working on lately.

I think of the three specific bee images, the bumble bee (above) was most successful, while the honey bee (below) was least successful.

I used a conceit I'm rather fond of, which is to make them look like illustrations from an old natural science book. I did the same thing with Leonardo's Clockwork Scarab (which you can still purchase from my Etsy shop), and with a intaglio print of moths (which will soon be available in my Etsy shop).

I like science. Science is cool. Anyway. My favorite of the set of four, somewhat to my surprise, as it was my least favorite when I did the sketches, is this one, a little bee anatomy chart:

These have now gone off to their swap host in Germany, and I should soon be receiving little bee cards by other artists all over the world. Very cool.

Next up for ATC swaps, I have some nursery rhyme characters and some Norse mythology, followed by peacocks and mushrooms. I do love to keep busy.

And for non-trading-card art, I have several ideas in my head that will need to come out soon. I won't say much yet, as I want to see if I can make the sketches come anywhere close to what's in my head first, but a few hints: one is inspired by bird evolution and Gideon Grave, gentleman adventurer (a character from my Frisland stories); one by a line of poetry with an octopus in; and one by a scene from White Foxes, Full Moon, the Frisland novel I'm working on.

And I still have a number of book projects on the go. I have something I was asked to do for my sister eons ago, which I hope to actually get done for her birthday this year. Then I have "A Love Letter to E.A. Poe" to bind--it's a book of prints I did inspired by "The Raven." I just have to decide if I'm going to include the text of the poem, in which case I have some letterpress printing to do. It'll be in an edition of 3. And I've got some old zinc printing plates I'm going to turn into covers for blank journals. They've got fishes on them! These will be rather expensive blank journals, I'm afraid, but I think they will be very, very cool.

[BFG] Reject

Got a rejection for "Hollow Bones" from Clarkesworld this morning. The next couple of places I plan to send it currently have other stories of mine, so I'll wait to send it out again.

In the meantime, I'm editing "Perilous Child" for submission to a themed anthology, and transcribing chapter 19 of White Foxes so I can move on to writing new chapters.

Oh, and I'm finally going to start on that review copy of Shadow of Destiny for PSP, so I can review it for work. My PS3 and/or controllers seem to be behaving sluggishly today, as BillyZee tries to play Assassin's Creed. He's been trying to escape some guards for half an hour, over and over and still getting killed. I hope this isn't a sign that the PS3 is about to crap out, because it's the 60 GB model with full backwards compatibility, and I won't be able to replace it.

Addendum: I also got a rejection slip in the mail from Fantasy & Science Fiction for "Cobbleshore Knit." Perhaps not surprisingly, they use the exact same form rejections they did back in the 90s when I was submitting. I think the next place I planned to send this story still has another one, so I'll hold off a bit before sending it out.

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!

Counting Foxes

I only just now finished word processing chapter 16 of White Foxes, Full Moon (or whatever it's going to end up being called). It now stands at 47, 425 words, plus chapter 17 and the beginning of chapter 18 in longhand. Perhaps I'll get more done tomorrow. We'll see.

I also did something I meant to do ages ago and sent a nice letter and chapter one of The Coming of the Fairies (the YA novel formerly known as Taken, 1941) to a literary agent. I don't expect this particular agent is even accepting new clients, but I figured I might as well begin at the top and work my way down. Whatever transpires, I will report it here.

And in a little less than two weeks, the new school semester begins. Damn, but this summer has gone by so fast! As usual, I didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped. I will try to get a few more small projects finished in the next couple weeks, plus working away at my print book projects and at getting my little printing press up and running (much cleaning of cast iron with steel wool shall ensue).

Here's what my school week will look like as of the second week of September:

• Monday 13:00 to 15:00 AHIS3200 History of Photography
• Tuesday & Friday 13:00 to 17:30 PRTM3106 Intermediate Lithography
• Wednesday 13:00 to 17:00 PHOT2500 Lighting Workshop

I'll have Thursdays free, and I'm hoping to add Relief Printmaking to Tuesday nights (18:00 to 22:00), but it's currently full with a long waiting list. I'll still be working at the VRC, and I hope to get my hours in Monday, Tuesday and Friday mornings (well, maybe not Tuesday if I end up getting into Relief). It leaves me Wednesday mornings for either working on About stuff at home, or continuing to help organize in the printshop. That depends on a variety of things.

For Anyone Counting

I've started working on White Foxes, Full Moon again, though I've come to the conclusion that only the first section will have that title; I'm going to need something else for the whole thing. Maybe. I have 44,043 words so far, plus a final chapter I may or may not use when I get that far, and a chapter that is so far only in longhand.

It has been really really weird, and rather distressing to have not written anything besides school things and work things for something like a year. I imagine it must be something like a musician unable to play music. But then, I'm not a musician, so I really have no idea. Anyway, it's a relief to be writing again, though I don't know how long I'll be able to keep it up. I'm actually thinking of trying to do NaNoWriMo this year, if it turns out (as it well might) that I only have 12 instead of 15 credits of classes this fall. But that remains to be seen.

Now if only I could get working on Fey again. I actually have a couple of pages drawn but not inked.