mcahogarth

Surela Novel Preorder is Up!

Go lock in your copy now! It's at all retailers, not just Amazon: https://books2read.com/shieldmatron1 

Though there are two other books planned in this series, I'm glad I wrote this one to end neatly. My family's lost its health insurance and most of its income, so I'm spending most of my time job-hunting... That means, for the foreseeable future, this book and the forthcoming holiday book (also up for preorder: https://books2read.com/peltedholiday ) are the only things I can commit to.

If you're the praying kind, my family could use them. (Or if you know anyone who's hiring a remote technical writer, let me know.) ❤️

Cut Scene: Stone Moon, Silk Scarves

Perhaps on my mind because the Jokka books were the first ones to come off of their KU exclusivity period and I've restored them to wide sale (and had to redo the epub of Bloom in the process, because it was messed up). Here's a bit of history from 2003!

This is an actual cut scene, not something I wrote after for fun to fill in the gaps... back when I was writing Stone Moon, Silk Scarves, the novella that would lead to the novel A Bloom in the North, my original idea was to alternate perspectives between Hesa and Pathen. I discarded it because up until that point, all the Jokka stories had been in first person and I preferred that (though you'll note that when I finally wrote Bloom, I did alternate, I just did it by section).

This was the first scene, originally, of the novella.

***

"Hush," the old Jokkad said, resting a finger against Hesa's lips. "Great talker, you. Now you will listen."

Hesa's ears fell and it quieted, eyes resting on the face of the emodo Jurenel, he who had taught it all it knew, who had lifted House Laisira out of poverty. The eperu couldn't decide what won its silence: obedience to the Head of its Household, or horror at how stark the hollows between nose and eyes were, the crevices beneath high cheekbones. The stench of the barbflower potion brought water to its eyes.

"Better," he said after a few labored breaths. "I leave you the House, Hesa. Run it with the aplomb you do all your other affairs."

"I can't," Hesa hissed, eyes widening. "Ke emodo, I'm neuter. We're not allowed--"

"And who would you put in charge, then?" Jurenel grinned, stained yellow teeth glinting in the firelight. "Darsi? Metter? Name me a single Jokkad in these rooms who will do."

Hesa's ears drooped further.

The emodo smiled and patted Hesa's slim hand. "Of course you can't. Promise me you'll take care of my House."

"I'll do my best," Hesa said softly.

"Good," Jurenel said. "Now go." When Hesa lifted its head, he stopped its words of protest with one of his hardest stares. "I will not allow you to watch me die," he said. "Your memories must be of the strength of the House, not of its failure. Do as I say."

"Yes, ke emodo," Hesa said, voice fluttering. It stood and stumbled to the door. That Hesa had the will to close it on the firelit form surprised it.

Several breaths, long ones . . . they shivered in Hesa's mouth and did not settle easily in its body. The healers brushed past it, passing back into the Head's room. Hesa didn't even notice that one of those warm bodies had not left until he spoke.

"Ke Hesa?"

"Fine time to be formal, Darsi," Hesa said, voice breaking on the words.

Darsi sighed and took it by the arm. "Come away. I have something warm for you to drink."

Hesa allowed the male to lead it up to the second story common room, the one infrequently used by the rest of the family because of its stifling warmth. Darsi drew a chair back for it and pushed it onto the embroidered cushion. The aroma of firebark rose from the pot over the flames. With the calm of exhaustion, Hesa watched him draw it forth and stir before pouring out cups for them both.

"Not long now," Darsi said, his voice low.

Hesa dropped its head into its hands, spirals of gold curls falling forward over its eyes. "I'll miss him."

"We all will," Darsi said. "Het Kabbanil will be poorer without him." He paused, then chuckled. "Literally, too. How will they take advantage of Laisira's flair without him to lead the House?"

"Oh, he's solved that problem," Hesa said drily.

"He told you who our new Head is?" Darsi said, leaning forward.

Hesa sipped from the cup, let the fire erupt around its teeth. "Oh yes. Me."

"You!" Darsi's jaw dropped. Then he guffawed. "Well, that makes sense, I guess. He was a strange old man, never cared much for what others thought."

"Maybe you're not taking this seriously enough," Hesa said. "I can't possibly do this, Darsi. I'm eperu. Neuters don't run households. They never have. They can't. It's wrong."

"Yes," Darsi said. "But I certainly can't do it. You know me and numbers. And I'm the best of the lot." He wrinkled his nose. "We're tailors. Weavers. Embroiderers. Artists, Hesa. And that's the easy part!" He shuddered. "I could never be as mean to our trade partners as you are."

"It's not being mean," Hesa said, exasperated. "It's getting the best prices. It's called bargaining, Darsi."

"And you've been doing it for years, and no one does it better," Darsi said. "Do you really want any of us to be doing it?"

"No!" Hesa exclaimed, then covered its eyes. "Darsi! I don't want anything to happen to Laisira, but now is not the time to hitch the House to bad fortune. Especially now with the Empire's flags flying from the towers. I can't do it."

"But you will," Darsi said, leaning back with his cup.

Hesa glanced at him, purple eyes narrowed.

"Because no one else can," Darsi said.

Hesa dragged its hands down to its cheeks and let an unsteady breath out of its mouth. It only looked up when one of Darsi's hands gently pulled its wrist from its face.

"You hate when I'm right," he said, massaging the eperu's palm.

"You're going to be the one in charge as far as everyone else is concerned," Hesa said. "You like acting in those ridiculous midsummer spectacles? Fine. This will be your best role ever. I'll train you what to say--ah!" Hesa waved its free hand when he tried to talk. "Do you want the Empire's eyes on us? I'll train you what to say and you'll say it, and I'll keep doing everything I used to do, plus all that Ke Jurenel did. But this is the only way it will work. Don't you know the capital crimes?"

"No eperu Heads of Household, no relationships across sexes, and never owe the Empire money. I know, I know." Darsi grinned. "I didn't think you had such subterfuge in you, Hesa."

"Well, now you know better," Hesa said.

A shadow fell over them both and Hesa looked up into the face of the healer.

"He left with little pain," the healer said.

Darsi made a small sound. Hesa barely heard it.

"We will take the body. When will you have the funeral?" the healer asked.

"In three days, at the temple of the Trinity," Hesa said.

Random Game Art

Trying to get back in the habit of daily art by drawing things that don’t matter as much to me…So have some random World of Warcraft characters 🙂

Worldshapers' Podcast

If you want to listen to me ramble about worldbuilding with a genial and interesting host!

Poem: Ocean's Daughter

Still going through old files, found this poem from at least twenty years ago? Something like. 

OCEAN'S DAUGHTER

Ocean's daughter, born in fever-red --

The forever-magic glows brilliant in your veins.

Conceived for heaven's singing, you were bred

motherless, to the hungry ice, chilblains

upon your hands, and head.

Broken questions did you ask the sky,

which, hungry, replied not but to devour.

Traversed the vert and golden swards; you fly,

returning to the stalwart seas that scour

the staggered cliffs, and sigh.

And sit there, upon the cliff a wind-torn, muddy brown;

with fire-hair drifting over shoulders bleak.

Oh, you were meant to sing, but not to make a sound!

Full lips and eyes, tide too high to speak,

and lowered lashes: stormy frown.

Ocean's daughter, born in fever-red --

The forever-magic sups on darkness in your gaze.

Would that your magic had not tapered, bled,

and vanished into the midnight morning's haze --

and the gulls had left, unfed.

Ancient Taylitha Sketch

This is one of the first sketches (ink drawings) of Taylitha I can find, from 1990 (that makes it 23 years old, good lord). Even back then she was the put-upon everywoman of the crew.

For those of you interested in such things... this would have been inked with technical pen (not the disposable kind, but the metal-tipped kind). You can tell becasue of the precision of the lines--no bleeding even on the poor printer paper I was using. Look at the tiny dots around her eyes, and the shading under the stool legs (don't ask me why she has wooden chairs).

Note also (bemusingly) that the uniform at this date had a collar that open in the front, and the tunic wasn't split. And apparently you folded back the sleeves and they were white on the underside. (This part, at least, survived into the modern dress uniform, which has white cuffs and boots). Apparently there's also a belt for the pants, on the floor there. Funny thought...!

The Rest of Surela 1 Done/Uploaded

You'll find it in the google doc, and if you've been reading up to this point, jump to 1234 to read the end of the book. Don't forget to tell me what you think!

I have some stuff to handle and will be offline for a week or so (including email, chat, and DMs). I'll leave some content scheduled, though, so hopefully you won't miss me, though. Hopefully I'll be back soon.🙂

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AVjTOSX-8rS7z62CcEoLlqSLV_RQ5ICAe4wNjSZMmJA/edit?usp=sharing 

Doe and News

Want to keep all of you up to date on what’s going on, so here’s a quick rundown as we head toward the end of May:

• I am still quasi-serializing the remainder of Surela’s novel, a chapter every weekday. Writing is going steadily enough now that I’m anticipating a June release date. You can read along if you want to with this link (and if you want to jump to the last update, search for ‘1234’): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AVjTOSX-8rS7z62CcEoLlqSLV_RQ5ICAe4wNjSZMmJA/edit?usp=sharing
• I wrapped up the Kickstarter last week, so if you haven’t received a book yet, it’s on its way. (If you backed for an ebook, remember to check the project updates to get the download link.)
• After Surela’s done, my next target is to finish up the Peltedverse holiday book’s anchor novella (about Lesandurel and Araelis). I don’t anticipate that taking me too long. I hope. It keeps growing. But that should be done by July.
• Payment went out for the audio edition of Haley 1, and we’re looking at June for that release. It’s going to be great, the narrator is fantastic.
• I am still working out the many, many issues with shifting my workflow from combo PC/Mac to Mac-only. In general I don’t regret focusing on a single platform because it’s made many things easier, but I admit I expected the Mac to still be the industry leader in design and graphical software and instead it’s either on par with my PC or worse in some ways (mostly in terms of wrangling hardware). I’ll find workarounds but for now a lot of things I was in the process of doing have gotten harder. (Some, to be fair, have gotten much faster—the “manuscript to finished book package” pipeline is nearly frictionless now.)

Periodic reminders:

• Supporting me on any of these various platforms nets you a pass into my discord server. Come by any time. I need to set a role for you to keep the server from forgetting you after you log off, so if you show up, ask me or one of the moderators to give you a role. Perma invite is here: https://discord.gg/VQpTujSRQg 
• I have an etsy storeif you want to pick up a signed/doodled book for your collection (https://www.etsy.com/shop/StudioMCAH), and a zazzle store if you want a random print, mug, or notebook. (https://www.zazzle.com/store/mcahogarth)
• I haven’t been youtubing much because getting all my cameras set up with the new computer has been unexpectedly annoying, but I did do livestreams of half the book doodles from the last Kickstarter and those are online: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4Bsfc38KFtQRBssDLMQWjw

I am excited to be so close to wrapping up the last two Peltedverse projects I had planned for this year. That’ll give me four books out in 2023: Haley 6, which came out in February, to the Court of Love, which just came out, then Surela’s novel in June/July and the holiday book in November/December. That means I can use the entire back half of the year to do whatever I want! No pressure to get anything done for release… anything I write I can schedule for 2024, or pop out in autumn if I feel like it. I can even mess around with serialization or another Kickstarter if the project lends itself to either. It’s going to be sooooo great. I loved the books I wrote this year, but the whole “have some releases ready for this year” deadline situation makes for stress no matter how much fun you’re having.

Close this with an image I found while moving/organizing my hard drive. This is an old piece but I’m still fond of it. It’s called “The Keeper.” More trips down memory lane later this week!

Quasi-Serializing the Rest of Surela's Story

As a way to keep going (because this is where the outline gets adventurey and I always get nervous writing actiony things), I've started quasi-serializing the remainder of Surela's novel by posting chapters as I finish them up. If you'd like to continue reading in this style, just hop on over to the Google doc and search for 'traitor's choice' to start part 2.

I'll be posting new things as I'm happy with them (every few days?). Easiest way to find out is to check the #announcements channel on the discord. :)

Enjoy (and thank you for keeping me on track)!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AVjTOSX-8rS7z62CcEoLlqSLV_RQ5ICAe4wNjSZMmJA/edit?usp=sharing 

Catching Up

I keep forgetting that I’m in the middle stages of moving my entire workflow to a new ecosystem and this is one of the reasons I’m moving like molasses (the other being that we’re heading straight into the last few weeks of school and Every Event is happening). But to catch up, here are some news and reminders:

• Court of Love is out (and at all retailers, not just Amazon). If you haven’t picked it up through the Kickstarter, you can get it now. And if you’ve already read it, reviews never go amiss! https://books2read.com/courtoflove 
• The Peltedverse holiday collection, Sleigh Bells and Starships, is up for preorder everywhere, so grab that as an advance holiday gift for yourself! https://books2read.com/peltedholiday
• I’m also in a space marine anthology this month, so if you’re looking for action (or just want to read my story), go grab that: https://books2read.com/spacemarines 
• Reminder that I am leaving KU in June, so if you are using Kindle Unlimited to catch up on my backlist you have less than a month! Go vacuum up everything while you can!
• An audio edition of Haley’s Cozy System Armageddonis in the works! Hopefully in the bag by June. The narrator’s got the adorbs dialed in, I can’t wait to share it! Stay tuned.
• It looks like the audio edition of Amulet Rampant is on indefinite hold; the narrator has family duties. If he’s able to resume work, I’ve told him we’re ready to finish off that book. (And if you’re the praying kind, I’m sure he and his family could use them).

I’ll have some interesting art shares for you in the next few weeks as I clean up my hard drive, so you have those to look forward to. In the meantime, have some yummy photos from Mother’s Day brunch. Daughter made these sourdough cinnamon rolls, and they didn’t last half a day…! Here’s the recipe if you want to stash it: https://www.theclevercarrot.com/2017/12/how-to-make-sourdough-cinnamon-rolls-step-by-step-guide/ 

Book Doodles!

The first ten from the Kickstarter. I'll be livestreaming these all week until I'm done with the 40! I've been doing them on youtube at 6 PM EST (so I'm about an hour out from starting tonight's).The first ten from the Kickstarter. I'll be livestreaming these all week until I'm done with the 40! I've been doing them on youtube at 6 PM EST (so I'm about an hour out from starting tonight's).

Catch it here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4Bsfc38KFtQRBssDLMQWjw

Magnolia Mother

I decided to do a piece of art for fun (!), unrelated to any current project, and with a media I haven't messed with seriously for decades (color pencil). Here's a Le'enle mom with baby then, and magnolia flowers. I really like her!

I'm wondering if I should bother with prints or stickers or what have you. Do you want a copy of this in some way? Let me know. :)

Publishing Schedule 2023

As per usual, I evaluate my progress partway through the year to see if I’m track for my goals. This year, in particular, I was worried about lost time, but… it appears nothing’s changed. I’m still on track for five books this year. Here’s the schedule for 2023:

• January: Haley 6 (done)
• March/April: To the Court of Dragons Kickstarter and release
• July: An Exile Among Stars (Surela 1)
• Summer/Fall: Undecided non-Pelted project
• November: Sleigh Bells and Starships (Pelted holiday collection)

I’ll be writing for the two remaining Pelted releases until summer (the rest of Exile, and the final novella for the holiday collection), and scheduling their preorders by July. Then… I’ll have the rest of the year to faff around and write whatever I feel like! I’m excited about that, because I have a bunch of non-Pelted projects that all look interesting to me. (Maybe I’ll get to more than one of them?) But five releases in a year sounds good to me, so even if I finish only one I’ll be happy.

Related scheduling, about Kindle Unlimited: if the experiment continues along its current trajectory, I’ll be quitting it early, in July. That means all new published work will be released wide, starting with Court of Love (already at other retailers), and I’ll start moving my existing work out of KU in mid-summer. Something might change, but I don’t anticipate it doing so; if I suddenly start making boatloads of cash, I’m going to stick with the boatloads of cash option. This is, however, unlikely enough that I’m already deciding which stories are going to get pulled first, in what order, and when.

If you are using KU to burn through my backlist, you’ve got two months! Hop to it! *grin*

Alpha Group Read: Surela's Novel, Part 1

This is an alpha read opportunity, because Part 1 and Part 2 of this book happen two years apart, and Part 1 is the most fraught in terms of connecting with the existing timelines. It starts at the end of Laisrathera and runs concurrent with the end of Princes' Game... so help with continuity on this one *early*, while I'm working on Part 2, would be really helpful.

I realized yesterday that when this trilogy's done, it'll be the logical thing to hand someone who liked Earthrise/Rose Point/Laisrathera but doesn't want to engage with Princes' Game. Surela takes up the Chatcaavan War and the entry into the Fallowtide from a different perspective, more adventure than extreme violence/pathos. So there will be an alternate pathway for readers who want things to stay PG rather than R into the final war storyline.

But back to this novel... if you want to read it just for fun (or to participate in the group commenting), jump on in! If you'd like to help me beat into shape, there's two ways:

• I need this one to work for new readers, so any places you think I need to clarify things, tell me; and
• Check me on continuity.

If you're wanting to help with the latter, I recommending reading the handful of scenes from Surela's POV in Laisrathera, and her half of the short story "In Self-Defense" from To the Court of Love. You can also check out the timeline section of Surela's wiki entry, which breaks down what she's seen throughout her life: https://peltedverse.org/wiki/index.php/Surela_Silin_Asaniefa#Timeline 

If you're interested in chat, discussion on this one is happening in the #peltedverse channel of the discord server, in the 'Surela!' thread.

Anywhere, here it is! 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AVjTOSX-8rS7z62CcEoLlqSLV_RQ5ICAe4wNjSZMmJA/edit?usp=sharing 

Cover Art, Court of Love

Since the full piece isn't visible on the book, here's Giliriel and Arianhrod, and the events of the multiple stories in the frame around them. I did most of this one with a 4/0 brush, which is four sizes than a size 0. It is... not big, and not possible without the magnifying lamp, so go go Cyborg Jaguar.😄

Patience with the Journey

It is a thing I return to, and that becomes more urgent the older I grow and the more work I’ve made: what it means, to have such a consistently released body of work, representing decades of personal change. Write one book every five or six years, and you don’t have to answer for much. Write three to five books a year, year after year, for decades, and suddenly there’s a very clear progression on display for anyone willing to dig in.

What does that mean?

Artists have little by way of model for engaging with their older works: the most perennial stories are those that portray an embarrassed creator, dismissing their prior pieces as unworthy or callow and holding up the current piece as the more proper representation of the artist as she is; or the oblivious creative, who doesn’t realize she’s rewriting the same stories over and over—in that version, it’s the audience that’s embarrassed for the artist, who doesn’t realize she hasn’t been saying anything new in decades.

In the past, my philosophy has been unformed by anything other than a desire to honor readers who love the works written by a younger me: regardless of my feelings about my work when it felt less polished, or more unapologetic about its enthusiasms, those stories spoke to people, and for me to disown them was to reject their fans, or slight their taste. But that was a thing built from my empathy for others, and never addressed my personal feelings.

I suppose the real seed started germinating three years ago, when I was asked to put together the gallery exhibit for my high school alma mater. So many of the stories I’m writing now saw their genesis, as rough as it was, in my high school notebooks… my oldest canonical characters were brainstormed in middle school, and while they evolved a great deal Teen Me would recognize them instantly. Given that, what did I want to say to a hall full of teen girls? What else except ‘sometimes the ideas you have as a child are as worthwhile as you think?’ and ‘the themes that engage you as a girl may carry you through the rest of your life?’

What an outrageous statement that is when we have two equally untenable stories about that too, either ‘you need to grow up and leave your childhood things behind’ and ‘children are only ever interested in frivolous things.’ How much more challenging is it to say otherwise? The things that really matter will always matter, no matter how old you are, and no matter how young you are, you will recognize them. The only thing that will change is your experience of them.

Last month, while my father was in the hospital, I started listening to the audio edition of An Heir to Thorns and Steel… mostly because moving that series onto bandcamp reminded me that it existed, and checking the upload made me want to keep listening… and I did. I listened to all three books while juggling daily hospital visits with school commutes and other responsibilities… and when he died, I listened to it again while walking endless circles around my neighborhood in the dark, with dry cheeks and a constriction in my chest. Morgan’s books are some of the hardest I’ve written, anguished and uncompromising, and I wrote them at a time in my life—almost 17 years ago—when I was struggling with health issues that were consuming me and the people around me. All that pain is in it… and in that pain, like lances of light, the constant reminder that God is most luminous when we are weakest.

I replayed the final book a third time as I walked, not knowing why I needed to hear it so badly until I understood—abruptly and stunned—that Younger Me was talking through the story… to me. So clearly that the story peeled away and left her naked, in that space between past and present, and between two people. God is real, she was saying, through every chapter. Even in your darkest moments, God is real, truth is real, goodness matters, and the light triumphs. It triumphs in glory, redeeming all your grief and suffering.

Many people offered me comfort, and I honor them for the love that inspired their efforts. But none of them could reach me the way the me of the past could, by reminding me of things I believe, and have always believed. She didn’t know that her trials would end; she wrote to defy pain its victory over her, even if only in the moment. And I didn’t hear the words as a promise that suffering ends, because Young Me and Old Me both know that suffering only ends in the grave. It’s that she was frozen in that eternal now, where she didn’t know if she would ever be free and still she chose to believe in hope and goodness, that struck a consonance with the me of the present. In both our nows, we were desolate, and Young Me reminded me that I had chosen meaning over hopelessness, and that that choice still mattered to me, and that because I made it then and made it now, I was making it always, over and over, eternally.

In the past I have looked back on this series and thought it too raw and too mired in its extremes, darkness and brightness both. I no longer think of it as too anything. It was exactly what it had to be, and exactly what I needed. And it proved my point to the teens I spoke to at that gallery opening: the themes that fascinated me as a girl continue to fascinate me, because they continue to be relevant. How do you live up to the challenges love brings you? What do you do when confronted with trials that might break you? How do you love God in a vale of tears?

How do you live a life of meaning?

We can choose to be embarrassed by our younger self’s fumbling with our themes, or we can see them for what they are: the beginning of a lifetime of striving toward answers, knowing that we never fully achieve them. And sometimes our earlier reactions are truer, because our younger selves were less easily embarrassed by their enthusiasms and hungers, and those passions can reveal things that rationalizing obscures and experience can warp. Young Me can say, unashamed, “Life can be so bad you want to die, but God wins,” in a way that Old Me would try to refine or complicate. The polished version isn’t better. It’s just different, a facet on the same stone, cutting away toward the clear perfection at the center.

We do write the same story, over and over, and it can be a needful thing if we recognize that we’re always finding new perspectives on the same themes. It’s only boring if we never grow… and sometimes not even that, because you never know when the way you’ve said it this time is the way it will reach someone, the way nothing else in my oeuvre comforted me the way Morgan’s story did though so many of my stories confront the paradox of suffering.

I will never be done with the difficulties of living a life of light in a fallen universe. My stories won’t be either. And I no longer worry so much that my older work might grapple with those themes in a way I wouldn’t today. That’s a sign that I’m learning the most difficult and important lessons we can in this lifetime. And part of that is knowing that sometimes, the way I answered those questions in the past can be a more perfect response to the present than any reaction I might have today.

By many measures, I’m in the prime of my working life, with decades of experience behind me, artistic and personal. Many writers don’t begin writing until retirement! I can look forward to—I hope—many years before me of art-making. I wonder what piece I’m creating now will give guidance and comfort to a future me… and what readers will make of my arc when I have fifty years of published work behind me rather than twenty-five. Now I can hope that there will be something in my oeuvre for everyone, regardless of where they are in their journey, or what answers make sense to them. This, at last, is the beginning of what I was seeking: a healthy way of engaging with your earlier work and considering your future work… not as things divorced from you, but as an unbroken whole. Which is, in the end, another theme repeated in all my work, from the oldest to the newest: ‘we are never done until we are complete, and never complete until we are gone.’

All the moments that led to this moment are in this moment now. All the work I’ve ever made is in the work I’m making now, and will be in the work I have yet to make. A gift, I think, from a loving God, a hint of transcendence, of the artificiality of time. How good it is that it might be so.

May we be worthy of the gift.

The last short story for the collection...

...is done! Check out the draft if you're into that... the group read comments on this one are already good: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j2m-kUdjBfYR8b_u8Y0lRMpSPmLC4RDKtBxhwutqBe8/edit?usp=sharing

More Ai-Naidari Words: Sickness and Health

In this case, I found this page from a year or two ago that I never got around to filling in, and here we get to some conlang process stuff. Typically when I want to make new vocabulary, I do it at my computer with the spreadsheet open so I can search the lexicon for similar words. But real languages have homonyms (words that sound alike, and sometimes are spelled alike) and synonyms (lots of words that have similar meanings), and a language that has engulfed several others will naturally have many of both.

In order to simulate that, I took my printed lexicon to a coffee shop and made do with what I could look up by hand… a process that is necessarily imperfect, because I can’t search every page, and sometimes I alphabetized something incorrectly, or defined the word slightly different. It’s very easy to think ‘Okay, did I make a word for ‘clean’? No? What about ‘pure’? or ‘clear’?” and search for all those things. With the paper copy, you make do, and if you don’t find it, you make up…!

I figured this was a golden opportunity to add some necessary confusion and density and complexity, and so it was.

My target for this session was words for sickness and health, because those are important topics for Kherishdar 5. That required me to ask what the Ai-Naidar believe about health and how they describe the various ways bodies fail. Interestingly, there’s evidence of old ways of treating disease mingling with newer ways, which is why there are multiple words for diagnosis. Here’s the list:

• A new word for ‘break’, because I couldn’t find the one already in the lexicon (fesh) comes from toril: tor, which is both the number 15 and ‘to break’ in the sense of something ‘not being functional.’ This gives us the word for deaf, which means nonfunctional ears: torfoni.
• There was already a word for blind (halet), and mute (duini). But we also get haaletris, which means anosmia (the inability to smell)… literally, ‘empty nose’. (I had no word for nose. Now I do: etris). Similarly there was no name for being unable to taste, so I found one, yuthojet, which means tasting numbness.
• I wanted words for what you do to take care of sick or hurt people, something like nurse or minister, and for that I stumbled onto the word for whole (it) and wholeness (iteth) and to make whole (itet). Nursing someone back to health from physical injury/sickness is metitet, then, to make the body whole again.
• Figuring out words for diagnosis and prognosis was… an adventure. I had to ask… what do they think diagnosis and prognosis are? And came back with the idea that originally it was a prediction of the course of someone’s fate, which led me to some old words: rol, to predict, and then an entertaining split: an older word, marol, prediction, and a modern word, rolijz, which is also a prediction but in a sciency context. So prognosis is sometimes referred to as qormarol (the prediction of your life’s breath), and sometimes metnotsil (the future of your body), with the latter being more modern and the former more poetic. Diagnose, on the other hand, is a solely modern word, a verb/noun, metqare, which is to grasp the pattern of the body.
• Physical injuries are norvak (n/v). Sickness and diseases already had words: mosehh is an unspecific, unnumbered noun for sickness, whereas poq is a more modern word and can refer to anything that impedes the body’s function.

There are a bunch of words and concepts I don’t have yet, but this was an interesting grouping, and it led to there being two words for break, one of which is also a homonym (tor being both a word and a number).

It’s been a while since I’ve paid attention to Kherishdar and particularly the language, and it was comfortable to come back. If there’s anything you want to hear from them, let me know… they’re pretty close lately.

Newest Short Story

Still working on stories for the next collection... if you'd like to read this one in advance, it's up!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-077-IhDQqVuyyXAWoL5kVF37jmKBjrAJGKU2taUg2g/edit?usp=sharing 

SCHEDULED: Is a Cinnamon Bun

Someone asked me which characters would go in the 'cinnamon bun grid meme' and I had no idea what they were talking about, so I looked it up... and was amused. But I also thought it would be more interesting to ask my readers... so I am! Where cinnamon bun is (sensibly) a sweetheart, what characters would you fill in which square?

If you're on Discord, tell everyone your thoughts in #coffeebar!

SCHEDULED ART POST: Kediil

I set these up a while ago so you'd have some entertainment in my absence, so enjoy!

This week is Kediil, done in an Art Nouveau style, sort of? At least that was the plan. I think her hand is fun, obviously, since it's the part I spent the most time on. She's blowing leaves since she was an herbalist/healer.

Kediil's story is in Clays Beneath the Skies, if you missed it!

Life Happens

Hello, aletsen! I've been putting off this post in the hopes that matters would resolve, but they haven't so: my posting will be erratic for the foreseeable future due to family concerns. I appreciate your prayers and well-wishes, but I don't have the spoons to reply to anyone personally, so I will say in advance: thank you! if you wish to send any winging my way, just hold 'jaguar and family' in your thoughts.

If I get a moment, I'll try to schedule some content for you, but I can't commit to it. I'm still on Discord in odd moments between duties, so that's probably the best place to find me, and even that's no guarantee.

Hopefully things will resolve soon. I'll keep you informed when I'm able. In the meantime, as always, thanks for your support. Especially now. ❤️‍🩹

The New Computer

I think I may have mentioned in one of the recent updates (or maybe on the Kickstarter project blog?) that my PC has been making unhappy noises, and in fact, I can no longer count on it to boot up if I make the mistake of turning it completely off. When I mentioned this to Spouse, he suggested we get ahead of the inevitable failure by getting a new computer now and while I was dithering about this, took care of it for me.

So I now have a new computer!

It is a Mac.

I have been running a dual-OS system since I bought Vellum, which is my ebook-and-paperback layout program, and exists only for the Mac. I regret nothing about the investment into a cheap Mac mini (bought off eBay!) to run Vellum because it has saved me tremendously in time and money—it’s the reason all my books now have paperback editions simultaneous with my ebook editions, requiring no special Kickstarter campaign to drum up the cash to pay a graphic designer. But it’s meant that I’ve had to kludge together a workflow across platforms based on legacy systems for the PC that I’ve had, in some cases, for 20 years. (“Your copy of Photoshop is so old we have to trick the software into thinking the servers that used to check the license are still operating. That’s not going to last forever.”)

Gamely, thus, I have plunged into attempting to switch over to the new system, with the attendant learning curve. If you wonder why I’m so quiet, it’s because I’m attempting to port everything over (or find alternatives for them) while juggling other things. Let me tell you more!

The New Scanner – One of my biggest priorities was ensuring the new Large and Fancy Scanner still works. It does, in fact work… sort of. The scanner utility will scan for me, but if I try to open it from inside any piece of software, it fails. This is obviously a scanner driver problem, but we have the latest driver… so for now, I am experimenting with the utility, which will scan and then open the resulting file in a program you designate. Which brings me to…

Replacing Photoshop – I did all my scanning in Photoshop, and all my editing not only of those scans, but of all the book covers and interior illustrations, with their billion layers. I’m not willing to shell out the amount Adobe wants, so I’ve been looking for alternatives and it turns out Affinity (which I already got involved with several years ago when I bought and then forgot Publisher) has a Photoshop competitor, Affinity Photo. Using it, I am not only fighting my lack of familiarity with its interface, but also my lack of familiarity with the Mac interface (why are the buttons to close windows on the left!!), but so far I think it’ll be “good enough.” And no, I don’t want freeware. I want to buy a license from someone who will be forced to answer my emails if I run into problems! What good is being a business of my own if I can’t write off the ability to pay other people to fix my problems??

Replacing Office – Turned out to be easy, because I don’t have to. I did try (pluckily!) to use Pages for a while, but looking at decades of accumulated Word files made me nervous and the last straw was discovering that Numbers, the Mac spreadsheet program, didn’t correctly open my accounting files. Buying a license for Word/Excel/PowerPoint was pretty cheap and took care of that headache.

Consolidating Files – Which brings me to the biggest headache, and thus the biggest opportunity in the whole endeavor: combing 20+ years of documents out of my old computer’s four (!) hard drives and reorganizing them logically.

I’ve been thinking about this for over two years now. The amount of detritus that I’ve been passing from computer to computer is immense, and even includes backups of my old student accounts from college UNIX servers (did you know that old-style mailspools were stored as single, enormous text documents? Lordy, I do). I realized there was no way I could gracefully share or pass on my business to anyone else, whether they be assistant or heir, because of the mess, and I told myself I’d fix it and never did.

And here I am now! So I have been laboriously picking through the flotsam, tossing out junk and saving lost lambs into their proper places, and the intention once I’m done is to turn this new, streamlined, single-point-of-data into the source for my daily backups to cloud and external drive. I’d say about about a third done and weirdly… I’m enjoying it? It’s a little like housecleaning, and a little like finally tackling that looming project that was looming like a looming thing, and a little like treasure-hunting. Sometimes the treasures are fun, like the specs I sent the artist I was thinking of hiring to do the covers for the Jokka novels, showing the relative heights of all the characters. Sometimes they’re heartbreaking, like the shared folder with the friend who died, that demonstrated that she and I had been at work on an art book project. But all of it is necessary and I’ll admit it would have taken a step as extreme as ‘switch platforms’ to get me moving on it.

There are other issues I’m going to have to resolve, certainly, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that the Mac solves some of the problems I had with my PC:

Microphone Volume – It’s a known issue that the same microphone, plugged into a PC will record at a ridiculously low volume; but plugged into a Mac will record at normal volume. There are dozens of hacks to fix this but they’re all bad and rickety and stupid. I was already experimenting with recording on my old Vellum Mac in order to get around this problem; having one computer means I don’t have to mess with it. If I want to record, I just hit the ‘record’ button and the output is no longer a hushed murmur I need to apply a billion filters to boost.

Printer Woes – Here is where I mention that earlier this year I had to move my label printer from my PC to my old Mac mini because for no reason I can discern, my PC stopped correctly printing to it. I’d ask it to print, and it would tell me it was jammed. I would turn the printer on and off, and then it would advance three or four labels and then print the last label I tried to print out and the new one, and if I was lucky, it would print it centered on the sticker and not half-on, half-off it. I did all the expected stuff (including reinstalling the driver) and got nowhere. I plugged it into the Mac, and it was fine. I was on the verge of tossing that label printer and ordering a new one, so that saved me $200. Still no clue why the PC decided to mutiny that way.

Video Editing – If I use my phone to record video, the file format it exports isn’t readable to the movie editing software I bought several years ago. If you follow my Youtube channel and wonder why my output has basically stopped, it’s because the contortions I have to make to get my phone’s video to a piece of software that can gracefully edit it required too much brainpower and I didn’t have it to spare. Now my desktop can read my phone videos natively. No more shenanigans. Which brings me to…

Integration with my phone – I switched to an iPhone when it became clear that Apple has locked up schools, platform-wise, and my family at large was already in the iPhone ecosystem. The moment I thought ‘but I won’t be able to accept a Facetime from my dad or daughter’, that was the death knell for my Samsung. At the time, a lot of the proprietary Apple apps simply wouldn’t talk to Android, and I needed to stay in contact with them more than I needed to have any specific type of phone. So I switched, years ago, and while the initial learning curve took some time, after a while it stopped mattering because—seriously—it’s just a phone. As long as it does the stuff I want it to do, I don’t care what OS it’s running.

But this decision, made years ago, means that I can now do things like answer texts from my computer. Which in the past would have sounded unimportant to me, until I started getting texts about health emergencies. If you have a reason to need to be able to read people’s texts no matter what you’re doing, it’s nice not to have the phone soldered to your hip. My computer also now notices the notes I make on my phone, which means they no longer disappear into an abyss after I make them. I actually see them now! Good stuff.

Tags and Searching – I only lately noticed that the Mac prompts you for tags when you save a file. Any file. And that the search function in the Mac is so much faster than the one in windows, that using those tags might actually be helpful.

Icon Size – And finally, a dumb, small thing: in Windows, you can set the icons in a folder to one of several set sizes (small, large, larger, etc). But on the Mac, you get a slider in the corner, and you can zoom them to any incremental increase you want. This sounds unimportant, except that I have thousands of scanned images and not-so-great eyesight. I can now look in one of my sketchbook folders and increase those icons to large enough to actually see what the pictures are… and if I can’t see a specific picture because it’s particularly low contrast or hard to make out, I can move that slider up until I can.

I expect to be at least another month in getting everything sorted out, though, because I’m rarely home lately, and I am chafing at the friction it’s introducing into my workflow while I’m trying to get the Kickstarter collection finished up. But I’m already glad I did it. ‘Just pretend that your old machine went up in flames, it’s toast, gone forever,’ my spouse told me, ‘and instead of thinking ‘what can I rescue’, think ‘what can I do now that I don’t have to worry about all that legacy stuff that was holding me back.’’

And you know, I never would have thought it, but… it’s kind of refreshing…!

So that’s the story. More as I figure things out!

Art Post: Prince and King Riding

I have been working on this one for three days! And it's as done as I think it's going to get. Here's Morgan, Amhric, the various genets, drake, horse and hunting cats, escaping from Suleris in Book 1 of Heir to Thorns and Steel.

Art Book Question

I'm getting closer to done on the Blood Ladders art book (while juggling the Kickstarter stuff), and it's time to make a decision about the size of the book. 

On one hand, I can make it a 6x9 hardcover, which means it will be the same size/shape as the novels in the series. But it's an odd size for an art book.

My other choice is 8.5x11, which is a nice big space for each piece of art, but... if you shelve it next to your Morgan novels, it's going to look awkward.

Which do you prefer?

News and Fun Stuff Coming

Posting this from a coffee shop because the internet died in my house and estimated repair isn't until mid-to-late week (fun!), but the Kickstarter is doing well and wraps up this Friday, so that's great news.

I'm also turning this old Kickstarter gift I found into a retail-ready hardcover. And of course, an ebook, for those who want to flip through it. How fun will this be! 

I'm going to rescan some of the older pieces, see if I can get cleaner files. And I've added some extra backmatter, including "The Choice," the vignette about Marne and Sihrit that is currently only available as a (superbly performed) bonus track on the author's cut of the audiobook on bandcamp. (If you missed that one, I highly recommend, it's at the end here: https://mcahogarth.bandcamp.com/album/on-wings-of-bone-and-glass-blood-ladders-3) You can buy that track separately if you want it.

Anyway, it was my plan to have this done faster but I guess I'll get to it when I can, especially since I have family stuff going on taking up most of my evenings. But I wanted to show you bits because I am excite. :)

Kickstarter is Live!

Go play!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcahogarth/to-the-court-of-love?ref=391nyf 

Group Read: Teachers and Students

The final story I wrote for the collection prior to the forthcoming Kickstarter! Go enjoy everyone's comments. :)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GEHGnW-odfwpVuyCmyeOz38ZXVC0BKwOkc4BZGFnS_g/edit?usp=sharing

Kickstarter Warning: Prep Your Engines!

Here's the first of your notices: the next Kickstarter is tentatively coming next week, and appropriately I'm going to kick it off on Tuesday the 14th, because it's for 'To the Court of Love', the next Peltedverse collection. It'll run for ten days, so we'll wrap up on the following Friday. Here's the preview link, and you can use it to have KS notify you when it launches. Just search the page for 'notify me on launch', or just check the top strip.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcahogarth/1170712734?ref=cbyw8l&token=ebfe5e10 

Audio Catalog, Now Available!

After many technical and legal difficulties, I have finally gotten my audiobook catalog onto Bandcamp, including these full series:

• All of the Stone Moon Trilogy, starting with The Worth of a Shell
• All of the Blood Ladders Trilogy, starting with An Heir to Thorns and Steel
• All of the Godkindred Saga, starting with Flight of the Godkin Griffin
• All four of the Kherishdar Books, starting with The Aphorisms

Additionally, I have these partials:

• The prequel and books 1-4 of the Alysha Forrest books (so, Alysha’s Fall, Second, Who is Willing, Sword of the Alliance, and Either Side of the Strand). I’m only missing Faith and In Good Company.
• The first two full novels and half of the third of Princes’ Game (starting with Even the Wingless)
• A Standalones album that has 11 shorts that are part of ebook collections I haven’t done full audio editions of… things like "Broken Chains," some of the Jokka shorts, some of the Alysha shorts.

I also have a continually updating “From the Author’s Mic” album where I drop my various behind-the-scenes and ‘how to pronounce’ guides. There are a handful of audiobooks I haven’t added because I’m dithering on whether I want to get them re-recorded, including Claws and Starships and the Her Instruments books… but other than that, what’s there is everything I’ve got!

Because Bandcamp lets me keep so much of the money, I’ve priced them lower than most retailers would set the price: $10 for novels and $5-7 for novellas or chapbooks. Some other cool stuff about the site:

• When you buy from Bandcamp, you own the album. You can download the whole thing (or stream it if you prefer from their app/player). No more ‘I think I’m buying this from Audible but it might disappear tomorrow and I’ll have no warning, because it’s actually a rental.’)
• Bandcamp lets customers pay more if they want. So if someone wanted The Aphorisms (at $5), and wanted to pay $6 or $10 or $100, it can totally be done.
• There’s an option to allow people to buy your entire catalog at once for a discount, so if you wanted all 21 audiobooks you could get them in one fell swoop for 35% off. That’s all of them for $120 or so, I think.
• Bandcamp has ‘Bandcamp Fridays,’ where they don’t take a cut of the sales: all of it goes to the artist. The next one is February 3rd… today! You can read more about Bandcamp Fridays here: https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays-update 
• Bandcamp not only lets me set prices, I can also give discount coupons and freebies. I can even set albums free, or ‘free but you can choose to pay’ (which I did with my ‘From the Author’ album).
• I can also let people buy tracks separately, so if (say) you wanted to buy the bonus track from the end of On Wings of Bone and Glass, you could pick that one up and not bother with the rest of the album.

I’m not sure whether my audio catalog will make it to other retailers in its entirety because of technical issues—Findaway, my other distributor, has slightly different audio requirements that would force me to edit every single file before uploading—but Bandcamp will always have my full catalog, and I’ll put new audiobooks there first. So if you’re an audio listener, this is your bookmark.

I want to thank all of your for your patience while I swam through the morass. I’m so glad to be on the other side of it, and able to offer these to you at last! And for fun, please check out the From the Author album, where you can listen to the ‘How Do You Pronounce That’ audio I recorded last week, just to kick things off. It should be free! https://mcahogarth.bandcamp.com/album/from-the-authors-mic