February is over! As most of you know, I got placement with Bookbub on February 8th: my deal was Earthrise, free.
So, January of this year, I gave away 128 (free) copies of Earthrise, and sold 36 copies of Rose Point, 31 of Laisrathera, and 75 of Rose Point Holiday (which had just come out in December). I also sold 23 copies of Mindtouch, 14 of Mindline, and 9 of Family; and 13 of Wingless, 7 of Transcend, 5 of Amulet and 8 o...
2017-03-04 16:15:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
More color for those of you who are missing spring.
2017-03-03 21:36:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
Some color for those of you laboring without it.
2017-03-02 21:22:33 +0000 UTC
View Post
More content when I am healthier. -_-
2017-02-27 00:54:17 +0000 UTC
View Post
And y'all get the news first! More or less! Here's the link, which will take you to all the retailers so you can pick the one you like best.
This story's about friendship, and leadership, and second chances, and figuring out how to work with obnoxious personalities without saving them. It's also an action story, and a (quasi) military SF story, and (of course) set in the Peltedverse. You can read it as a standalone, or read...
2017-02-24 20:43:25 +0000 UTC
View Post
Putting together something for y'all, and for the mailing list (lots of new people have joined it!)... but finishing that up will be my treat to myself for finishing the novella edits, so no cookies for jaguar until then.
(Many of y'all will have seen this thing but I'm putting it together in a more useful format! And maybe I will do more art for it too.)
2017-02-21 23:01:17 +0000 UTC
View Post
The WOES of the perfectionist artist. >.<
(The foil is my pile of kosher salt for salting the paper, not a snack. Though come to think of it, a snack sounds great about now!)
2017-02-20 20:12:46 +0000 UTC
View Post
When last we left our fearless Jaguar (ha!), I confessed to the lack of a plan. And in fact, compared to years prior to this one, I still don't... because for me, a plan comes with schedules and tasks and to-do lists and I am still not feeling that motivated. I blame the allergy shots, which make me feel like I'm having a low-level allergy attack all the time. I spend a lot of time napping in the jaguar ...
2017-02-20 17:08:33 +0000 UTC
View Post
...a father, so I thought I'd try for the set.
2017-02-18 13:00:49 +0000 UTC
View Post
No idea, but I've painted two layers onto this thing and now, in accordance with the instructions on the bottle, I am waiting 24 hours.
I have left the picture uncropped so you can enjoy squinting at the detritus on my desk!
2017-02-18 00:00:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
We are now at the painting stage. Or we were, until I discovered that I had (again) painted on the wrong side of the paper because this particular manufacturer puts its watermark on the opposite side that most do.
I can start over, or I can go to the art store tomorrow and buy watercolor ground and see if I can rescue it. I've never used watercolor ground, so that's my plan instead.
For those of you curious about such things: the paper we put paint on is usually treated in some way so th...
2017-02-16 23:35:54 +0000 UTC
View Post
Working on the cover for the novella. I spent a day on these profiles, and I'd say 75% of that time was me trying to decide what Mike Beringwaite should look like and making sure Alysha was on model.
(Another 10% of that time was spent digging through my closet for information on Fleet insignia/collar tabs so I could fill in Alysha's collar. I have since scanned all that and put it in Evernote so I NEVER HAVE TO DO THAT AGAIN.)
I've always liked this stage of drawing, when I've "decided"...
2017-02-16 19:00:32 +0000 UTC
View Post
I thought this sketch might be relaxing to ink, and it was! Now I hope it is relaxing to color, and here it is. Download and enjoy. :)
(For those who like "the lore"... the Le'enle go through four life stages: Seeker (child), Teacher (young adult), Creator (middle age), and Guardian (elderly). In their middle-age, then, they are expected to help God create stars and planets and terraform them with magic, though they are barred from creating species, because only J'mi-en (God) can ma...
2017-02-15 20:29:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
2017-02-15 00:41:23 +0000 UTC
View Post
Listening to old Mike Oldfield albums today (Amazon, Songs from Distant Earth) made me want to revisit the Le'enle. Alas, not much time to sketch today so I didn't get too far.
2017-02-14 19:26:12 +0000 UTC
View Post
The Alysha novella should be done this week! First Readers who'd like to help me find errors should wave their hands at me. Familiarity with the existing Alysha stories would be helpful, particularly "Second." I'm planning to publish by the end of the month.
And now back to work on the cover...
2017-02-13 18:48:30 +0000 UTC
View Post
Politeness is the art of choosing among one's real thoughts. ~Abel Stevens
Whoever one is, and wherever one is, one is always in the wrong if one is rude. ~Maurice Baring
I couldn't decide between the two of these so you got them both.
2017-02-12 17:22:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
Here’s the free download numbers, then, for the promotion that ran Wednesday (as of 9:30 AM EST this morning):
- Amazon: 35089
- Apple: 4266
- B&N: 2656
- Kobo: 0 (!)
Follow-on sales have either... started? Or people are picking them up just to have the set before they start reading? Not sure.
- Rose Point (Book 2, all vendors): 152
- Laisrath...
2017-02-11 17:45:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
I decided to go back and clean up the Chronicles of Prydain fan art a little. I liked Taran's face, so I left it as-is, but Eilonwy needed a lot of work (I like her now!). And Gurgi is impossible! Described in the book as neither man nor beast but something "in between" and so hairy people can't often tell he's a person instead of a walking shrub (complete with sticks and leaves caught in his fluff). How do you draw that? Everyone does it differently. I did my best! It's not how he looks in my h...
2017-02-11 15:30:38 +0000 UTC
View Post
Starting my experiments with art styles for the illustrations. Yes, Marda looks like a lilac point Siamese. :)
2017-02-10 19:46:54 +0000 UTC
View Post
First scene of chapter one! I am writing this one slowly, stopping to think about things like "should I be doing spot illustrations" and "what should I name this particular thing". I feel the sort of leisurely confidence you feel when you know when you sit down to work on something it's really gonna go, so it's okay to linger in the preparation stages.
Anyway, enjoy! :)
***
When Marda woke, cozy under a quilt and two afghans, her first thought was that she was so deliciously warm s...
2017-02-10 15:00:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Thanks to yesterday's chat, I now have a name and theme for the YA school! Accordingly I am working on the map.
2017-02-09 18:58:27 +0000 UTC
View Post
So final download numbers from yesterday's promotion: 28,417. Today there's some follow-on downloads... it's at 2200 or so right now, and when I checked I was still #1 in the free SF and free space opera categories, so it might hang a bit... until Bookbub pushes today's SF deal, anyway!
Will all 28,000 of those people even open the book? Certainly not. But if I get even 50 new people out of that promotion, it will have been worth it. I am keeping my hopes minor, because ...
2017-02-09 15:30:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
...and Earthrise went from giving away 1-2 copies a day to giving away 22,000 in less than eight hours. I'm almost a little scared to stop checking it for the rest of the night, but it's my policy to stay away from work and email and such after dinner... so it will have to wait.
Here's where I stopped, then, with the graph at 22,856. Earthrise is the #1 free download in Amazon's science fiction section, and the #2 download in the entire free kindle store. (what) This is...
2017-02-08 23:32:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
This is my mental state right now watching the number of Earthrise downloads increase.
2017-02-08 19:42:46 +0000 UTC
View Post
No lunch bag today! Daughter was sick yesterday, so she's taking the porcupine bag with her to school today. Instead, here's a doodle of my priest from WoW. Whom I miss, but Legion is not my WoW. *sad nostalgia*
REMINDER! Tomorrow is Chat Day! There's less of a "come at this time" since I'll be at work for most of the day, but I will arbitrarily designate 4 PM EST as a gather-point. I'll be in JaguarHolt off and on all day, though. I hope to see you all there!
2017-02-07 12:14:57 +0000 UTC
View Post
If all is going well, I sketch what I'm working on. Alysha's novella is 75% done, so I have sketched her, signing in the water to her Naysha crewmate.
2017-02-06 19:00:36 +0000 UTC
View Post
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do. —Eleanor Roosevelt
2017-02-05 17:52:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
Other people post howling wolves. This is what I got. (And yes, if you get near them they really will put their heads back and bark out the most astonishing noises!)
Photo taken from my car, which I'd stopped alongside them. They were just about two arms' lengths away. I'm probably lucky they didn't peck my eye out. >.>
2017-02-04 13:20:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Coracle is the MG/YA setting!
Anyway, here are the heads of the various roles of the order. (The equivalent, I guess, of the heads of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, etc). These are older men and women, but still in their prime; it's not a job for either the very young or the elderly. (At last! Middle-aged people get some screentime! You're either a young hero or a crone/geezer dispensing wisdom in fantasy. Middle-aged people are usually dead or home about to get killed by the wars. -_-)
I...
2017-02-03 15:00:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
