April 2022 - Earthrise, Surela, and More!

I’ve been going through Earthrise and its sequels while updating the wiki, and it occurred to me: I started serializing Earthrise on Livejournal ten years ago. That makes the time ripe for a 10th anniversary edition, wherein I fix the handful of typos reported to me over the years, add backmatter with art, and maybe smooth out some of the issues with characterization that trip up new readers. Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother editing a book this old, but Earthrise is still a lot of people’s introduction to the Peltedverse, and it would only take a few sentences scattered here and there to foreshadow Reese’s change of heart better.

Re-reading also gives me the chance to add notes about the Earthrise (as a ship) which will be handy for Surela’s books, which I’ve already started adding to in a desultory way, while giving myself a break before tackling Zafiil edits. I’ve included a sketch I did of Surela, Saul, Lunet and Bippity Boppity, and Prudence. Been a while since I’ve tried to pay attention to fashion, but Surela insisted that if she’s going to wear peasant’s garb, it should be as outrageously in-your-face about being peasant’s garb as possible.

Working on this feels like a good change of pace, since I’m re-evaluating whether I want to run the unicorn Kickstarter this summer. While I’m still excited about it (and producing art for it), part of the goal with that one was to use it to produce a deluxe hardcover with lots of fancy additions, like color plates and embossed cover and fancy ribbon, etc. I’ve been watching reports about the shortages affecting the bookbinding industry and I’m growing less confident that I’ll be able to fulfill that Kickstarter in a timely fashion if I do it this year… and given that, I think I need to fill in my schedule with something else. Tenth anniversary Earthrise/Rose Point/Laisrathera re-issue sounds like a good target.

Other stuff I’m still chugging along on:

• Video stuff. Still arranging my livestreaming set-up. I’m just about done making title cards for all my video series, though, look how fancy it looks!
• Painting. I finished up the unicorn painting, I’ll post it once I figure out if I want to sell merchandise/prints of it.
• Zafiil. Waiting on edits on this still, but plan is end of the month, beginning of May.
• Deep Background Stuff. People eyeing the wiki have probably seen me working on genealogies, maps, and blueprints. (Thank you, wiki contributors, for helping me with other updates, and with graphics!)
• Real Life Stuff. Don’t want to go into details, but this is using up probably about 75% of my time/brainspace right now.

So that’s where I am. I’m actually excited about re-issuing Earthrise! It’s too bad I can’t get another Dillon cover. This one’s so pretty, though, that I’ll just keep using it for now. Unless someone wants to rec me a similar (affordable) artist. :)