It's been a long road, but I'm still here, and there's news

This was a thrill ... in fact, the whole project has been a blast. Mike Adamson's Tales Of the Middle Stars anthology has just been published, and it was by tremendous pleasure for me to provide the interior illustrations, while Italian artist Luca Oleastri provided the cover. I also edited the whole collection, which was another kind of pleasure, and seeing the book go on release today -- hardcover, paperback, and ebook ... well, as I said, what a blast. 

I can't recommend the book highly enough, and not merely because of my involvement. It's a luminous collection of stories that embody what I, personally, think of as "science fiction." This is SF as I prefer it ... as I fell in love with it as a child. In this work, there is an enduring sense of wonder even while this is fiction written from an adult perspective, about a tough, unforgiving universe seen through adult eyes. Please do check it out. 

In the last week, I've also invested a lot of time working hand-in-glove with Mike to bring his website up to date (ah, the old days when I used to write code for a living...! Way back when, before there were website creation programs that did the job for you. I just dated myself, didn't I?), and again, I'd like to invite you to go over and take a look. It's ostensibly a writing website, but it's one of the most visually exciting sites I've ever seen, with so much art, colour, and old-fashioned verve.

Mike also invited me to place a gallery page of my own on-site there, so -- how could I resist. The result is "The Artist" page, tucked away on the The Worlds of Mike Adamson, and I have to say, it's beautiful. "Thrilled" is an understatement. It looks like this:

...and by far the hardest thing about it was choosing a tiny handful of images to "speak for me" across more than a decade of work. I might go back and swap them out every couple of years, to give more pictures an airing.

The book and magazine covers in the right-side column are the publications in which I've appeared as a writer ... and on that score, I have a little news to pass along at last. 

What a great pleasure to be able to report that Falling will be appearing in ANALOG Science Fiction, probably some time in 2026. 

This one was a lot of fun to write, and for the first time I was able to "go play in the Jovian system," with  FIFO worker on the assignment to end them all. Fly in, fly out work is one thing ... but when the flight to and from the job is a year old, it's a life-changer. In Falling, the central character is out there for the best and worst of all reasons: money. Without it, everything falls apart, yet the quest to earn it is not conducive to family life. And yes, our hero is left a partner and child back on Earth. What's a mother to do?

This story had been in my mind in one form or another for some time, but I'd usually pictured it as taking place on Mars. The thing is that I've written so many stories set on Mars that -- 1) I didn't want to identify myself as "that writer who only writes about Mars," not to mention -- 2) I felt as if I needed a challenge. Get out of the familiar environment (which is almost a witticism) of Mars and make a foray into the Badlands. And they don't come much "badder" than Jupiter. So...

Much research later, Falling found itself completely restructured. The central character changed from being a detective assigned by the department on Earth to investigate a murder in the industrial south of our neighbouring world to being an engineer working with the heaviest heavy industry imaginable. And the stage on which the story plays out shifted from the aforesaid Martian industrial wasteland to the upper atmosphere of a giant world that really, seriously, wants to kill you. Result: a story with which I was extremely happy. 

And the cherry on the cream is that this one will be appearing in ANALOG Science Fiction in a year or so. It's always a thrill!

Next: back to the very serious job of editing, with two major projects ahead of me for Mike and after both books are delivered, he and I will be collaborating on a novel...

And on a personal note, visitors to this blog might be wondering where I disappeared to, about nine or ten months ago, vanished without trace. Was it my own health breaking down again? No, not this time. In fact, it was my husband. The "indestructible" Dave turns out to be far from indestructible. We've known for about the last eighteen months that something wasn't right, but in September 2024, it was time to go to the doctor, face a battery of tests, and find out what it is, and how bad.

Well, it's not good. In October last year, they gave him two years to live. 

Let that sink in. Naturally, I had bigger things to think about than a hobby with art. There were things to do, challenges to be defeated, a new way of thinking to be embraced. Nine months later, here we are. Dave is still with us, but ... but ... but ... You know how it goes. The future is in flux; nothing can be guaranteed, we take nothing for granted, and I don't (can't) make promises about what I'll deliver next year. Will I get back to doing art? Possibly. Maybe. The truth is that my art lies very much under Dave's shadow, and anything remotely like CG work will bring back so many memories, it may be so exquisitely painful that I just can't do it. Short answer: I don't know. I'll continue to write; this I can promise, because that's something I've done since childhood. But few visitors to this blog come here to read. 

Future art might be about embracing AI because I have no access to computers powerful enough to do CG work. Or it might be about sketchpads, pencils and paint. Who can say? For the moment, my time belongs to my dear husband of many years, and every day is precious. Wish us well, and cross your fingers. Science may come to the rescue with a cure, in the nick of time. I always did say that Dave had the luck of any ten people all added together. Okay -- let's see that luck work for him, for us, again.

Story time: An Eagle's Flight

Yeeeees, there's a story burbling around in my feverish brain. I'm giving it the working title you see right here, An Eagle's Flight, but it could wind up called An Eagle Flies, or Where Eagles Fly, something along those lines. Don't hold me to the title you see here. But --

-- view this one full sized, and you'll see that this is the same character as the warrior on the cover. Call him Orel (at this point; the name might change later, along with the story title, though I doubt it for reasons that will shortly become clear). This is where the story begins: the reluctant hero, a man trying to outrun his own reputation ... thrice decorated by the Queen of Zarabia after extraordinary feats in battle. But those feats came at a dreadful price. Orel doesn't sleep, he dreams ... he feels possessed by the spirits of the warriors he's killed in the service of the Queen. She's old, and she dotes on him; she's like his grandmother, which is saying a lot. Orel is not native to this country. He's from the east, and arrived as an orphan boy just old enough to walk. He knew only his name. In the common tongue of  Vennia, Orel means eagle. Queen Isabeau gives him his ticket of leave from the regiment and a heavy purse, so  Orel can take his cats and his horses, take to the backroads in a Vardo like those belonging to his own people ... and find himself, get his heart and mind back into synch. But --

-- yep, it was always on the cards. He hasn't been on the road more than five or six months -- just long enough to watch springtime turn to autumn, and start to feel like a human being again (not because he's sleeping better or not dreaming, but because he and his ghosts have made their peace) -- when he runs into a couple of old comrades from the regiment. Gianna and Lynos have just left the service, and have taken soldiering work in the pay of a local thane, who advertised that he wanted border scouts. This was what they signed up for, but Count Radriq double-talked them with a binding contract ... they didn't read the fine print. Now, rather than just scouting up the source of trouble on the borderlands between Zarabia and neighbouring Kedd, Orel's old army mates are expected to root out the trouble. Since it's big trouble and they're massively outnumbered, they're up against a rather nasty wall. If they renege on the contract, they'll never get this work again, and it's all they're trained for. They're stuck, like flies in amber. So, when they meet Orel by chance, obviously they're recruiting. Or at the very least begging for help. The problem is this dude:

His name is Jevenni and he's baaaad. This Keddish warlord is building himself a rogue empire, and the bricks of its foundations are piracy, highway robbery, pillage, people-trafficking, whatever it takes. He has no scruples, and in this last twelve months has become the bane of the local thane's life. Count Radriq wants the Keddish land pirates gone, and he's holding Gianna and Lynos to the letter of a contract they signed too fast, in ignorance. Enter Orel. Help! So...

...they talk him into it, naturally enough. He's not the type to abandon friends in need. There's a couple of things he suggests: they must hire a good lawyer from Queen Isabeau's own staff, get him here, and have him reduce Count Radriq and his documentation to legal confetti. A lawyer from the capital will cost a great deal of money, but Gianna and Lynos know just where to get it. Jevenni has stolen wagonloads of valuables from the nobles of Count Radriq's fiefdom, and generous rewards have been posted. If they can recover even a tenth of what the warlord has taken, a lawyer from the city of Enashla will settle Radriq. Now...

 ...we launch into several episodic misadventures which are the meat-and-potatoes of true quest-fic, and it all leads eventually, inevitably, to this place: the land pirates' stronghold, in the ancient, ruined city of Ul-kedd-innu. To the horizon, the dead city lies smashed as a result of war, earthquake and plague more than a century in the past. Now, it is bleached bones and granite slabs. Jevenni has carved out his citadel in what used to be the palace and fortress, on the highest point, overlooking the fields of rubble-strewn desolation. According to everything his men divulge -- when captured and made drunk as lords -- he's so complacent, he doesn't post guards. In fact, it's a point of honour that he refuses to post guards: sentries and troops would only acknowledge that he is vulnerable in the heart of his own domain -- Jevenni would deny this to the death. With this information, Orel, the much-decorated veteran, favourite of the Her Serene Majesty, browbeats Count Radriq into providing a detachment from his household cavalry. But the force will hold back in the forest, waiting for a signal and letting the three specialists go in by stealth ... on the understanding that one man can pass where an army couldn't, and a specialist in creating havoc might bring the whole edifice tumbling down before the enemy knew it was happening. Under cover of darkness, in we go --

...long story short: subterfuge, stealth, swordfights and a liberal dash of strange sorcery, and by morning, the land pirates have scattered like roaches. Jevenni is extremely dead, and dawn finds Orel on the crenelated roof of the old fortress, right above the warlord's lair. Under the free, open sky, he is once again making peace with his ghosts and his father's old gods. The eagle -- for this is his name -- is trying very hard indeed to fly high and free, but will his flight carry him away from trouble, or right to the next battlefield? No one knows. Both Gianna and Lynos are injured, though not badly. They sent up the signal flare; the count's cavalry came in fast to scour the ruins for prisoners, and now Gianna and Lynos are only looking for the warlord's cache. They find it -- but in any case, they have actually fulfilled the contract. They no longer need a lawyer from Enashla. They take a portion of the spoils for themselves, as is only fair, and for himself, Orel takes enough to buy him the time, peace and quiet to begin again...

...and the story ends with a full-circle moment, right back where it began. At dawn, Orel hitches up his horses, stocks the Vardo, and is on the road again, headed away from anything remotely like a battlefield. In his ears, the ghosts' thin voices continue to whisper, but he has made his peace with some of them, and believes the others can be persuaded in time. The new sun is warm on his face, the open sky and moors lie ahead in the west, with snow-crowned mountains ringing a horizon so vast, it looks like the whole world. Now, perhaps the eagle can fly free after all. 

So ends this basic plot. In the writing, the details will change; names will change; a map will be sorted out, and the episodic parts will be tied down into a tight-knit structure. But this is more than enough to get my muse quite excited, and I think I'll enjoy writing this one. The art is not new. These are all 2019-2021 renders, featuring G8 Dae as Orel, G8 Rex as Lynos ... and I can't remember the G8 Female character who appears as Gianna, but she's in the DAZ library somewhere. That's the good old Millennium Horse, plus the DAZ Cat, many, many foliage and furniture props, and the old Gypsy Wagon from Renderosity. Everything here was rendered in Iray; a couple were painted comprehensively in Photoshop afterward. I was messing about with images and ended up, by chance, with these open in Irfanvew, in sequence ... the story just popped out at me! 

An alien hunk, a cyborg, and ... sheer whimsy

It's been a fun day with the Huion pen tablet, as you can see! I'd have to call this "hybrid art" ... mostly it's painting, some is CG, some elements were generated by various engines, and in one instance (and I'll leave it to you to figure out which!) I took the shortcut of using PNG overlays, which I bought from Rendo a few years ago, for this exact purpose, so it's absolutely appropriate to use them: it's what they were bought for, and sold for. 

The Cyborg is the only piece out of the three that I won't claim to have had much of a hand in. It was generated by the whacked out weird Dreamlike.art, I just rebalanced it, touched it up, in Photoshop. I have no idea what it is; I just include it here because in waaaay too much playing around with Dreamlike in the vain attempt to generate a picture element I could actually use, this is the only thing so far that wasn't weird, deformed rubbish with a smashed-in face that looks like it's been hit by a shovel. Some of the faces Dreamlike puts onto figures are beyond horrific...  Not my scene.

The hunky green alien is 50% painting, 50% compositing. 60% me, 40% the machine. Think of it as a "rogue Vulcan" ... you ever wondered what they're like if they let their hair down? If they ever do...

This is possibly the last chance I'll have to post art for a week or so. Dave starts his vacation tomorrow, and although the Limestone Coast trip is history (mechanical problems ... the van is currently standing in a workshop, due for inspection, and we're not even sure we'll get it back. I think we will; hope we will. No guarantees, but ...) we'll still be getting out and about. I've waited half a year for this. Insert eyerollemoji. 

But all vacations come to an end (too soon), and like the man said in the movie -- I'll be back!

Illustration experiments: Consulting Mage at Home, and the Queen of Summer

 

Today's experiments are about illustration. Only the Queen of Summer is new; the other two -- Consulting Mage, "Abelard at Home, with dragonling and cats" -- were done about eighteen months ago, and yet again, I discover I never posted these. What a brain. Insert eyeroll emoji.

Am starting to feel my way back into art, and enjoying both Krita and Photoshop a great deal -- more than I used to. In fact, it's about time I bought myself some extra brushes for Krita. I've been wandering around at DeviantArt, and seeing what other artists are doing. Even when they're working in Krita, which many are, they're using brushes I don't have: watercolour, oil colour, that kind of thing. I feel like I'm ready to take this to the next level, so ... next step: brushes. 

Not much to add for today. The trip I mentioned, to the Limestone Coast, is cancelled for the fourth consecutive time in as many years! Twice, it was covid lockdowns, a third time it was flooding in the area which closed the roads ... this time? Well, it's difficult trying to do a van-camping road trip when your van is the workshop! Yep. Mechanical issues. So we're at home for the whole vacation -- day trips only. That's okay, although I could sigh a bit, if I let myself. We haven't been away for longer than day in a year and a half. Argh.

So ... next, Krita brushes, plus raytracing in Studio 4.whatever, to achieve the flat canvases for painting over. You want those hunky heroes, that guy candy? I think it's about to happen!