Jul
13

Blogging Plans Awry

Posted in blog | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments
I had all these plans today to write up a post about character development and what aspects help to create a compelling character, but real life seems to have waylaid me. For one, I ended up spending a few hours at the vet with Tumbleweed today (lovely shot there for you.) Think she’ll be okay, but I gotta watch her for the next few weeks and make sure she gets her meds and then we’ll see. (It’s nothing major, but she just seems to be walking funny and a bit off her feed.) For the other, it’s Connor’s birthday today and I’ve got a whole bunch of family type things to arrange and do, so that’s cut into my blogging time. Once I get these first pass pages in next week I’ll have a little bit of a breather, but otherwise I suspect I’ll be rather scare on the interwebs… Read more
Jul
12

Word-Whore ~ Fox and Willow Thursday

Posted in blog | Tagged , | Leave a comment
So this week on Word Whores we’re talking about books or characters we wish we’d written. Which is difficult for me – and I obviously did pick some, but to be honest, I don’t really wish I’d written anyone else’s stuff. The reason I love those characters and books is specifically because someone ELSE wrote them and made them brilliant. Wishing I’d written them instead just seems to suck out all the enjoyment out of it for me, because even if I had written book x…it wouldn’t have been the book x by author y that I loved. It would have been book x, written by me. Which maybe doesn’t make any sense, but there it is. Anyway, check that out and of course new Fox & Willow up today as well! 😀… Read more
Jul
11

Popping the Culture

Posted in blog | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
So I’ve got my first pass pages for A Trace of Moonlight sitting on my desk – my last real chance at making any last edits, catching typos – the small stuff. They always say not to sweat the small stuff, but in this case small stuff can sometimes make a big difference. Pop culture is always changing – so sometimes a reference I’ve made in a book made perfect sense when I wrote it…and doesn’t a few months later. Case in point, the above passage is a rather snide commentary aimed at the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle. (The main issue was the the overall outcome seemed to be the same no matter what you did. To say gamers were upset would be an understatement of gross proportions.) Which is fine, except that a few weeks ago, Bioware released an extended ending DLC that attempted to give the player… Read more
Jul
10

Brave

Posted in blog | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment
Before I left on vacation I had mentioned I wanted to talk a little bit about the movie Brave. Spoilers ahead and all that, but I think the movie has been out long enough that most people have seen it (who wanted to.) The thing is, as a whole, the movie seems to have gotten a bad rap from a lot of critics, particularly because of the plot. A lot seems to have been made out of the fact that Merida is Pixar’s first female lead, and with that in mind, perhaps she should have…done more? The crux of the issue is this – the setup leads us to believe that Merida is a bit of a warrior princess type – she’s brash and headstrong, rides her horse, shoots arrows and is basically a tom-boy. (Incidentally, this EW article on the subject insisting that Merida might be a lesbian because… Read more
Jul
9

Almost Art

Posted in blog | Tagged , , | 1 Comment
A long time ago I could almost sort-of draw. And by draw, I mean I could copy pretty well. Not trace…just copy. I used to do Disney characters and the like, but I also spent a lot of time working off of the Froud/Lee Faeries book. (My father is cleaning out the old house, so I’m finding a lot of my old sketchbooks in the piles. It’s sort of odd, really. I haven’t attempted to draw anything for well over 20 years now.) The turtles there are a terrible mix of pastel, color pencil and marker, but not too shabby for someone who was 14 or 15 when she did it. One of these days I’ll scan or photo the better sketches and post them up here for fun (particularly the Faerie ones – I can post the originals too, for comparison…) In the meantime, I was also given a… Read more