Inverarity is not a Scottish village

I know I said I probably wouldn't bother doing chapter illustrations this time around, but I finally dusted off my old Poser software (actually, I went and upgraded it to the newest version), and pretty soon found myself fiddling with dials and morphs again. It's kind of addictive once you get started.

I've been using Poser since I first created that horrible cover for Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle. I have assembled an extensive library of figures, but I hadn't touched the Alexandra model in years. So I had to age her up a bit. This isn't quite the same figure as the one I used for AQATTC - I think I changed the base model sometime around book three, and now I fiddle with a few settings to make her a little older with each book. I'm always switching hair out - hair is a PITA in the Poser. Better artists just paint hair and clothes in Photoshop, but I can't do that.

I said before that no piece of art ever exactly matches the pictures I have in my head, and this is equally true of the images I create myself. But I admit I've been influenced by years of creating Poser images, so the "Alexandra" who is represented by a collection of props, settings, and morphs injected into a Victoria 3 base comes about as close as I can get.

Anyway, I should probably wait until I'm done editing my manuscript before I start trying to do digital art again. In the meantime, I have a bunch of new commissions done which makes me very happy. Some of them I may share before I start posting the story, and some would be, heh, spoilery.

I am working on Chapter 46 now. This is where a lot of stuff starts to happen. Not that nothing happens in the preceding 46 chapters... but it's building to the climax, while at the same time, a new setting and a ton of new characters are all introduced. And this is where I kind of just plunged ahead to get the first draft finished, and now need to unravel a bunch of silliness and plot holes and numbers and locations that change from one chapter to the next.

Optimistically, I would like to say my target is to get this done by the end of the month. That is not a hard and fast deadline, and I'm taking a vacation at the end of the month, during which not much writing will happen. But it is my hope (not a promise, but right now it looks doable) that I will be able to inflict the next draft on my beta-readers before the end of March.

In the meantime, here's Alexandra, age 15, with a little bit of an Uncanny Valley look because I did no Photoshop postwork.

I don't understand authors who say that their plot bunnies “run away with them,” or that their characters have “minds of their own” and won't do what they say. Stories are not living entities that can argue with you and change direction on their own. Fictional characters – no matter how vibrant and well-realized – are still just mental constructs. Everything your stories and characters “do” is a product of your own mind.

That's not to say my characters aren't “real” to me. Alexandra is sometimes frighteningly real inside my head – I know her better than I know many non-fictitious acquaintances. I know exactly what she looks like (the artwork I and other people have created comes close, but I have never been able to perfectly capture the mental picture in my head on screen or paper), I know what her voice sounds like, and I know all kinds of details about her that will probably never appear in my stories, because they aren't relevant. Like her favorite color (yellow), and her very first fight with Billy Boggleston (he tried to cut in line for the swings). I know that she read Twilight, and she thought that Edward Cullen was creepy, and she wished the bad-guy vampires would just eat Bella.



But anyway, Alexandra doesn't talk to me (which is a good thing, because I don't think she'd be very happy with me), or decide what she's going to do in her story.

That doesn't mean that my story meticulously follows the outline I've written, though. Because that's where writing discipline comes in – and I don't have a lot. Talent? Maybe. Discipline? Not so much. My chapters tend to multiply, like greedy amoebas swelling larger and larger as I feed them more words, until the one chapter I planned splits into two.

And for the first time, I have a new character who thinks she has a mind of her own: running amok, chewing up scenery, and demanding more lines every time she shows up. Now, she's still doing what she's told – she has a role to play in the story, and it's not changing. But she needs to behave and go back into my little mental construct-box and stop stealing word-count.

So, besides that little bit of teaser, do I have anything else for you? Why, yes, I do:

( Music and Art! )

I'll be in a secluded top secret location over the summer. Okay, not really. But I will be preoccupied with other things, which means no time to play with Poser and Photoshop. (But don't worry, I'll still be writing in my spare time.)

But here are some rough drafts of scenes and characters from AQ3. (Some people doodle on sketchpads; I doodle with pixels.) Enjoy!

( Sneak previews in mangled pixel form )
And that's it for teasers for a while. Have a good summer!

I'll be in a secluded top secret location over the summer. Okay, not really. But I will be preoccupied with other things, which means no time to play with Poser and Photoshop. (But don't worry, I'll still be writing in my spare time.)

But here are some rough drafts of scenes and characters from AQ3. (Some people doodle on sketchpads; I doodle with pixels.) Enjoy!

( Sneak previews in mangled pixel form )
And that's it for teasers for a while. Have a good summer!

I've begun doing chapter illustrations for Alexandra Quick and the Lands Below, using Poser.

Halloween

Familiars

Crucio