Color

Just a WIP of the color I'm doing for this sketch. Li'l Loki is so cute. :3

Miniature Lokis

Miniature Lokis, because I can. Just quick sketches.

Art Dump

fluffy (noun) a short piece on the interactions between two characters in love.
See also phlurffy.

phlurffy (noun) a short piece on the interactions between Phineas James Bardwell and Brandy.

literal fluffy -- in which the author of the characters goes insane and draws them as furry creatures. 

Respectively we have here Phineas, the Captain America-esque superhero with the power to build and fix things, and his love. Brandy, the apprentice supervillain with the ability to create and manipulate matter at will. Sort of like Phin's power, but on Tony Stark genius level.

"We pulled the plug. It's so simple, it's complicated!"

Sevens, from Midnight Aster's novel Deep Six. I'd recommend it, but it's not published.

There we go. Quill's art dump of the week. Or something. 

(Writing? This was supposed to be a writing blog? I know not of what you speak.

...my writing is on hold. I'm planning out my urban fantasy. November you'll have lots more of me ranting about my writing, because NaNo starts up again.)

Brandy and Cleo

The two leading ladies of Sparkly Viking Vampire Aliens(c).

Brandy, the super-villainess in love with the superhero who takes after Captain America.
Cleo, the alien bloodsucker in love with the chick(en) magnet Fowler.

Jack Frost

Jack Frost.

I wasn't going to have a Jack Frost, despite Aster's fangirling. I had Loki and that was quite enough for me. Another mischievous character of legend was just going to be another pain in the neck.

The pain in the neck is sitting next to my printer trading spells with Loki.

Yep, I caved when Jack presented a perfect solution to some of the problems I was having with Rayle and Azos' story. Here he is: Jack Frost, an ice pixie who's defied the laws of magic and nature several times over and survived to age fifty, though pixies usually fade and wither before thirty.

Sheer will and strength of magic have brought him this far and he's ready for a rest. He wants immortality, and he wants life, but he doesn't want the constant pain of keeping himself alive, the drain on his energies.


This motive of his fixed my entire plot. -squishes Jack-

Picture done on GIMP. Trying out a new technique of painting. Took me all day. >.>

Art of Azos

So thiiis is the conceited little pretty-boy we've been reading about! Azos of the Golden City, ladies and ... I don't actually know if any gentlemen read my blog, but if you're there, here he is, gentlemen! As a sort of random note, Azos' tattoos are only on his left cheek.

The red bird behind him is the bird part of the Phoenix. Azos has two Aspects, like most of the Fai: a human and a non-human. Switching between Aspects requires a physical tie between the two. For the Phoenix before Azos, Luke, it was a feathered bracelet. For Azos it's a red headband with a phoenix feather in it. For selkies, it's their sealskin, for werecats the full moon. Djinni, elves, and pixies all choose their own tie, like the Phoenix.

Done digitally in GIMP with a tablet and a lot of patience.

"Lord" Azos

The rain sheeted down, darkening the skies of the Golden City and drenching the solitary figure on the streets. Saminique Taro pulled his high-collared coat tighter about him, ignoring the water.

“Sam! Finally!”

Saminique whirled around as a hand touched his shoulder. The person recoiled, stepping back.

“…Lord Azos?” The last time Sam had seen the Phoenix, Azos had looked a lot less like a drowned rat, but there was no mistaking the feather and flame tattoo on his left cheek, or the red headband with its sadly-drooping phoenix feather.

Azos nodded. “Sam, I need your help,” he said in a rush.

The Phoenix and the others of the Pantheon of Seven were supposedly the mortal incarnations of the gods, the rulers of the Golden City and the rest of the human world. The people respected them. Worshipped them as gods. They had a golden temple all to themselves and the Chende Guard to defend them and take care of whatever they might need.

So why was Azos out here in the middle of the night in the pouring-down rain asking for Sam’s help?

The urge to say “It’s none of my concern” and walk on overwhelmed Sam. He wasn’t part of the Chende Guard anymore, and owed no specific allegiance to Azos. And being outside of the law nowadays…he didn’t even have to oblige the Phoenix as a citizen of the Golden City.

Azos looked up at him with wide amber eyes, waiting for any answer. His normally shining garments of scarlet down feathers and gold were wet and plastered to his body, torn and splotched with mud. He may have been five hundred years old, give or take a few decades, but he looked very much like a lost young man right now.

Sam had never been able to turn down people in need, even if they were conceited Phoenixes with delusions of godhood. “All right, Lord Azos, what do you need?”

Azos glanced nervously over his shoulder, shifting from foot to foot with a bird-like hop. “I need a safe place to stay.”

A safe place to stay? “Why aren’t you at the temple?”

“I’ll answer all your questions when we’re safe,” Azos pleaded. “Just hide me. Quick. The Chende Guard--I barely escaped from them at the temple, they’ll be after me now--”

With a long-suffering sigh he slipped off his coat and tossed it to Azos. “Put that on. Gold isn’t exactly inconspicuous.”

"Does this--"

"Yes, I'll help you. Hurry up about it."

Azos pulled on the coat gratefully. “Eternal thanks, Saminique,” he said.

Sam gave a curt nod and began walking again, without waiting to see if Azos would follow. The Phoenix stayed right at Sam’s heels. Sam ignored him, focused on the route and the various consequences taking in the Phoenix might have.

Later he would curse himself endlessly for having missed the sight of two men armed with spears step out of an alley right before jumping them.

------

Playing with some ideas for a beginning of Rayle and the phoenix story. Introducing Saminique Taro as a major character. He was previously the mentor of a steampunk novel, but this steampunk...erm, morphed into this dark urban fantasy with Rayle and Azos. Yerp. Enjoy.

Phoenix

"I don't want to die." He dropped to his knees, looking anguished as he brought his hands together, begging. "I don't want to become just another voice in the collective consciousness."

Chende curled her lip at the feather-bedecked young man in front of her. "I can't interfere with the Phoenix cycle. It's like tadpoles changing into frogs."

"I don't want to be another Dustin," he muttered. "Expendable. Just--please help me, Chende."

She stroked the seal-fur bracelet she wore, like she always did when she got nervous or unsure. "I don't know, Azos."

"We're friends, aren't we?"

"Yes, but..." Chende pulled her cloak tighter around her and glared at the wall. "I'm not one to interfere with magical processes. If the Phoenix cycle breaks down, who's to say what could happen to the seal-cloaks, or to the weres' ties to the moon?"

"Please, Chende. Just try?"

"You don't know what will happen if I help you get out of it! You could die anyways!"

"Better than being a voice in the mind of the next Phoenix for all eternity." He gazed up at her, his uncanny yellow birds' eyes wide and pleading.

She waffled for a bit longer. "All right, Azos! I'll help you. Now get off my floor."

----------

This is an excerpt from Rayle's story. How a steampunk morphed into dark urban fantasy with a mystery element to it, I will never know.

ART

So this blog will be sort of an art and writing blog now. Yippee!
Have a random girl. :3

Steampunk

Look, goggles.

Finishing novels

"Oh my gosh the world is ending and it's beautiful." ~Midnight Aster

That's what my friend said about finishing novels. And for me? It's not the triumphant "YAHOOOO I finished a NOVEL! WOOT!" (I don't think anything in the world could make me say "YAHOO" and "WOOT", but that's kind of beside the point.)

Anyways, I wasn't triumphant when I finished. I was crying.

I spent the month of July furiously scribbling plot ideas, character sheets, outlines. I spent August caught up in the glorious whirlwind of words and dialogue and adventure. I went from Asgard to Jotunheim and back again with my characters. I watched Runi die at the hands of a vicious warlord and I saw Loki attempt to sacrifice his life for his brother.

I fell in love with a cranky prince, a struggling young king coming to grips with his new responsibilities, and a snarky trickster who's far more loyal and self-sacrificing than he would ever let you know.

And then it ended. Only fifteen minutes before midnight on the last day of August, I typed six innocuous letters.

T H E E N D

The king was home, the trickster safe, the prince ... still cranky, but working on it.

I had to say goodbye.

It was hard. It was so much more difficult than I thought it would be to give up this story. It was a happy ending, with an overflow of snark and a lot of drunk Norsemen. But it was over. And it felt so terribly final. 

I was crying when I wrote those final letters. I hugged my characters and wailed that I would miss them. Odin was at least sympathetic. Loki said, "Quill, you planned an entire series for us. Get a grip."

(As a side note, I didn't win NaNo, but I discount that because HAY. I finished a novel.)

I moped all day yesterday after finishing because I was finished because nothing I could think of to write was Loki. I had a steampunk story I needed to work on, but I picked it up and put it down again because it wasn't Treacherous Ice.

This is Rayle.

Then late that night I was considering a few wacky ideas I'd had way back to compete with Aster's sparkly vampires of space. I remembered Rayle--eight years old, blue fluffy hair, adorable big blue eyes, pointed ears, the ability to become invisible. She's also cocky beyond belief, obnoxious, unbalanced, a kleptomaniac, and has a history of murder. 

The picture is Rayle. Knowing her, she's probably hiding a knife behind her back. 

 She tormented poor Caesar for a while--called him pathetic, threatened him with a knife, annoyed him--and then decided that Saminique Taro was all hers. She follows him around everywhere now.

Ideas are flooding in.

The point of this long rambly post is to say that 1, finishing novels isn't quite all it's cracked up to be and 2, I have a new project. Yay.