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Course Change

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 Been growing and changing very quickly, so quickly that I can hardly keep up.  I had a pile of unfinished stories from past years. Some of them are very short, only a page or two. Some of them are thousands of words long. I've accumulated these stories since I was a teenager, the way that an artist will have pages and pages of unfinished drawings, doodles, sketches, and other visual ideas expressed onto paper. For a long time I have felt like I had to go back and finish certain pieces from this pile. And there are a few pieces I tried to go back and finish repeatedly. Two in particular come to mind: one is a post-apocalyptic story about a mermaid, and the other is a story about a girl who can transform into birds. These stories are both really good, I think. Or they would be, if I could finish them. But, you see, I can't. Because I'm not the person who began those stories any more.  One of the results of growing as fast as I have, and doing the healing work that I've b
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The cruel death of thought balloons in modern comics

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One of the things I love to study is comic books. It's one of my favorite story-telling art forms, and the little details are endlessly fascinating to me. As I was doing some house cleaning today while Grace took a nap, I listened to/watched this awesome video about thought bubbles.  I love this discussion. I'm adding the knowledge here to my toolbox, for when I take one of my short stories and turn it into a comic book. Makes me want to draw a comic even more. :) But, first things first, and I've already committed to doing a few things this year, so I'm not committing to any specific comic book yet.  
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Howl's Moving Castle Scratchbuild by Studson Studio, and why I love it.

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Studson Studio does incredible work, and I think this one is my favorite so far. So well done. An incredible tribute to a Studio Ghibli design.  I'm a writer (although I have done some of the same kind of thing that Studson does, on a much, MUCH smaller scale) but there are principles in all of art that are the same. I watch and connect with people in lots of different creative disciplines, because I learn things that apply to my writing in all of them, and it feeds my soul. I love to see the process of a creation going from artist to artist. Howl's Moving Castle started life in a novel, which was then adapted into a film, and now another creative has made it into a model. I love to watch a creation be loved, and not just loved, but embraced and then added to in a way that honors the work done before. There's something beautifully connective about that.
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Norse Fantasy with a Historical Flair

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  Ancient Norse culture is really interesting to me. Setting pop culture perceptions aside, there's this (to me) bizarre mix of honor and brutality in what we frequently call 'Viking' culture that is completely alien to my way of thinking. The values are different from mine. The perception of fairness, of justice, and of proper living are all different, so different as to be alien.  I've been working on a fantasy story inspired by the flavor of Norse mythology. I can't really call it a Viking story though, or even a Norse or ancient Scandinavian story, because I've made up quite a bit. There is a god that one of the characters referenced on the first page who, as far as I know, does not appear in Norse mythology. This god is a god of passage, a psychopomp, like Charon of Hades. She carries the dead into the afterlife in her shallow-hulled, misty ship that can traverse river and ocean and the black waters of death, through to the after life.  She's only menti
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Small Good Things Are Better

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When I'm trying to do something big... say... write a novel, it can be too big and I just don't do it. This is the case with an epic trilogy that I have been poking at for seven years. I've completed many other small projects since the seed of that epic space trilogy came to me, and if I tally up the word counts for all those other projects, it's very clear that I could have written that space trilogy. But... in the past I have tried to take it all on at once, at least mentally,  as a trilogy . Which, to say kindly and in an effort not to shame my past self, was a mild sort of insanity. :) You may have been in that kind of mild insanity too. If you did, I believe you had valid reasons for it, as I did.  But... valid reasons or not, it didn't get us the results we wanted. At least, it didn't work for me. To date my space trilogy is still not finished. I forget that it's okay to do small things. In fact, I think the only things I really can do are small things
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Artists Don't Have To Believe In Themselves To Have Success - Brad Rushing

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 Great video I found yesterday from a working artist. TL,DR: Just do the work.  I like that.
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Rogue Story Season 1 Episode 2: Blackwater by Will Ariel

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  Illustration by Poppins . She's creative, easy to work with, and delivers on time.  These episodes (short novels, or novellas) are really fun to do. No spoilers, but this adventure is going to be insane.
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