I made money yesterday.
It was less than two dollars, but who’s counting? I still think it’s cool.

Somebody bought one of my tshirts on Zazzle. This happens maybe once a year if I’m lucky — I’m not actually trying to sell any of that stuff, it’s mostly just things I made for me and my family.

This is the design that caught someone’s eye this time:

My youngest daughter was particularly happy to hear about the sale… that was one of the tshirts I made for her, and she helped me with it.

While I’m on the subject of my zazzle tshirts. This particular shirt gets me a lot of comments when I wear it to cons…

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…is complete at 117 418 words.

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When I finished working on Sails of Everwind today, I hit the wordcount function, and it told me I had 111666 words.

I hope there isn’t anything significant about that.

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Sails of Everwind just passed the 100K words mark, and so is at an estimated 100+%, which breaks my progress bar.

I guess now would be a good time to remove the 8K or so words right at the beginning that I have decided I don’t want… that’ll give me a little more working room before I break my progress bar all over again.
(I’m close to the end, but not that close to the end. I’m guessing the first draft will run… 115K? Something like that.)

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Since nobody actually reads these postings at my home blog, which has progress bars in the sidebar, I assume nobody noticed when, a month ago, the progress bar for Scent of Spring hit 100%. That doesn’t mean I’m done, but it does mean I’ve got a complete set of pencils (I’ve got all the lines drawn) that I would really, really like some feedback on before I start coloring everything.

The reason it took me a month to make this announcement, is that I was doing website alterations that I hoped would make beta-reading Scent of Spring a little easier. So not only does Scent of Spring now have a working website, the site also keeps track of if you are logged in or not, and will only show you the penciled pages if I’ve told it you are one of my beta readers. There is also a page tagging system that will allow you to easily find your place if you have to stop in the middle, and there are comment boxes located directly below each page, so that people can comment as they read.

Keeping in mind that I don’t pretend to be a professional artist, and that I’m very new to this whole Sequential Art storytelling gig, would anyone be willing to look over and comment on a 140 page mannerly romance (sort of Jane Austin-ish, but not set in England) webcomic?

Here’s a bit of sample art:

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I guess its been a bit since I posted.

Mostly I’ve just been keeping my head down, working on stuff that I haven’t much wanted to talk about until it’s done and it isn’t yet, and dealing with life as it happens.

I did drop by OVFF on Saturday, though. I arrived around 1:30-2 and left a little after nine. During that time I didn’t manage to get into a single filk circle, but I saw lots of old friends, and spent some time talking with and getting to know some people I didn’t know before, and listened to a couple concerts. It’s all good.

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I had a bit of a slow week writing-wise, but I think I had a pretty good excuse. My husband had a vacation week and decided that it was long past time that the we did something about the last room in the house that still sported the all-white paint job done by the former owners. It was time, he declared, to redo our bedroom.

I figured just having the room that I live in torn up would be hard enough on me, so I told him, “go ahead, but you’re on your own”. However, after painting a very beautiful sky on the upper walls, he began working on the lower walls, and realized he didn’t actually know what he wanted to achieve, and he didn’t like what he’d done. He asked me for advice, and in the end I pretty much took over shading the bottom half (he’d already done three layers of sponging as a base).

This was the result.

Click on the thumbnails to see larger versions of the images.

It’s not a very big room, and most of what I did will be covered with furniture. So why bother? I dunno. So we will know its there, I guess. Boyd’s sky, on the other hand, I will be seeing a lot of, as it not only covers the uppers walls, but the ceiling as well.

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Sometime earlier this week I was thinking about digital paperdolls. (I think it was something someone mentioned on livejournal friends list?) So I started poking around the web to see if there were any freely available paperdoll scripts running around, and I found a hosted one, and I set it up, and wasn’t much impressed with it.

Sooooo….
I decided to build my own.

The Black Flag website now has a “Make Your Own Pirate” page in it’s extra stuff. (Or, if you prefer, there’s the even fancier “Pirate Colorizer” version.

I don’t know why I would want to have one. (It’s not a paperdoll, it’s an avatar builder!). But um, I did it all myself, and um…. it’s kinda fun?

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Lissa’s blood counts were looking so healthy when she went in to the doctor yesterday, that they’ve increased the dosages on her medications again.

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As many of you may know, I’m in the habit of making up songs –which I then sing over and over until I drive my kids crazy.
But they approve of this one:

The Talon March (just vocals) – from the Brotherhood of the Black Flag virtual soundtrack. Mp3 (656 kb)

(They tell me, though, that it’s not a very good song to have stuck in your head while at school. Suddenly breaking out with a “Boots on, head high — Mess with me and you will die!” while poking around in your locker, does not endear you to your teachers.)

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Not much to say. There’s a flu going round the house. Lissa got it, but her fever never got quite high enough that we had to run her to the emergency room. I got it — but I almost made my wordage for the week anyway. Boyd’s having it over the weekend and probably won’t miss any work. The timing isn’t quite so good for my college student, though, who has it right now, and likely won’t be recovered to make his Monday (heaviest day of his week) classes.

I finished page 120/140 of the Scent of Spring pencils. I’m so close to being done this stage. It’s very exciting, but also a bit frustrating, because the drawing doesn’t get any easier as I near the end, the way the writing always seems to — so this final bit feels like it’s going sooooo sloooooow, when it’s actually progressing at a perfectly normal pace.

And, In My Head Theatre has been running a scene from somewhere near the very end of Song of Asolde, ie, book five or six, when I’ve not even started working on book three yet. :sigh:

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As zeborahnz (on livejournal) figured out, the reason why the second, earlier walk was darker, was because the moon had not yet risen.

And the reason it was nonetheless easier to see the path, was because the fading light, while dimmer than that of a full bright moon, was more evenly distributed. On the previous night the moon had been shining through the trees, painting splotches of light and shadow slantwise across the trail like a coat of camouflage — fooling the eye, and making it almost impossible to tell what was really there and what wasn’t.

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Cute little puzzler for you all:
1) I take my daily walks along a paved bike path that heads out of town in a northwesterly direction.
2) I go sometime between sunset and bedtime.
3) Today I went for my walk nearly two hours earlier than I did last night.
4) Today’s walk was darker.
5) But I could see where I was stepping more clearly.

Can anyone out there figure out the explanation for points 4 & 5?

(I’ll post the answer tomorrow.)

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I passed the 50K word mark on Sails of Everwind today. As I’m not sure how long the story will actually be, I can’t know where halfway point will be. But 50K is half of my target wordcount, so I’m going to celebrate that, whether the story itself is halfway done, or not.

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I live on the very edge of a small town in an agricultural community, and when the wind is in the right quarter it brings with it, fairly strongly, the smell of cow. And by-product of cow. When I went for my evening walk today, the wind was in just that quarter. This did not bother me.

As my husband and I were strolling along the bicycle path, we encountered one of our more odorous and less popular neighbors: Mr. Skunk (or perhaps Ms. Skunk, I didn’t exactly get close up and personal in order to check). I spotted the skunk, and the skunk spotted me, and I grabbed Boyd’s arm and we backed up and waited for the skunk to go about its business… which, as soon as it had decided that we were not a threat, it did with great dispatch. Still, it’s an evening walk… along an unlit bike path… with trees and foliage on either side making shadows in the moonlight. I was only about four feet away from the skunk when I realized it was there. This did not bother me.

What made my eyes water and my head throb and left me gasping for breath, was the pleasant perfume wafting from my neighbor’s house and filling their yard, and the street, and the next door neighbors yards and about an eight of a mile worth of bike path and woods in all directions. I suspect scented dryer sheets.

The smell chosen for its aestheticly pleasing qualities was the one that made me sick.

Life can be so very ironic.

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Lissa had her regularly scheduled (quarterly) spinal tap yesterday and everything looked fine.

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My husband informed me during our evening walk that he had come up with a great short description of my Ice Wolf books: Andre Norton meets Errol Flynn.

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Because of something said on my lj “friends list”, I spent a good chunk of yesterday rereading the rough draft of Dicing With Flames (Song of Asolde, Book Two). Nobody else has ever read it, because I’m waiting to do revisions until I’ve finished writing the first draft of Sails of Everwind (Ice Wolf, Book Two — but I’m trying to write it so that it can stand on its own if need be), and in the meantime some of the places and many of the minor characters are still called ????.

Song of Asolde is a standard fantasy quest epic. It’s got elves. It’s got prophesies. It’s even got plot coupons. You wouldn’t believe how many times I have been told how awful it must therefore be, by people who have never read it. I was even told, on one notable occasion, that I shouldn’t hang out with the real writers, I should stick with the Dragonlance fanfic writers, where I belonged.

Clearly Song of Asolde does not appear to be designed to win the hearts of agents, please the critics, advance my reputation as a writer, and all that jazz. But I like it. And although the world in general may mock, most of the people who actually read book one seem to be looking forward to the second installment.

…So I guess I ought to stop whinging, and get busy drafting Sails of Everwind, so that I can get back to it. (37 620 words of Sails so far… it may be going slowly, but it is going. Real Life may be able to get in my way, but it can’t hold me back completely!)

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Just trying out the new cross-poster to see if it works.

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