Call of the Creator: Fantasy Writing from a Christian Worldview

Since I issued my "draw something every day" challenge to myself, life has been doling out the stress from multiple directions, and it has definitely gotten a grip on my psyche--and this has taken a toll on my drawings. Sure, I've been able to stick with the idea of drawing every day (well, except Saturday because I was out of the house from 7:30 am to 11 pm helping my kids' choruses with a competition they were attending), but like I predicted at the beginning, masterpieces, these have not been. It started with my Veranna piece. While I was pretty happy with how Veranna turned out, the dance mistress, Devna is not great work. And without the context of the booing audience and flying rubbish, the scene lacks the impact I went for in the story. But it was meant to be quick, and thus the focus on only the major players. Mind you, this is just a sketch of the final idea The final will use a real font After that, I worked a bit on the Geek Girl design, which w...

Here on day 2 of the "Draw Something Every Day" challenge, this one has a semi-strange inception. I was talking with some on-line friends about how writers conference attendance is heavily dominated by female conferees. Fun for a guy looking for a mate, I suppose, but perhaps intimidating otherwise. Anyway, that got me thinking about how the population of Geek Girls is also on the upswing. So that led to the pondering: what's the right t-shirt to be the uniform for that club? Hence, the image above was born. I foresee the silhouette overlaying chunky letters that form a pretty exact square that say "geek girl." I haven't found the right font yet, though, so that's why you see no lettering involved. We shall see where this and the other other drawings that crop up over this challenge lead.

Veranna is ushered from the stage by the dance mistress when the crowd turns ugly... On my way to work today, I was thinking about some of my artist friends who have been working full-time in the art industry since we graduated college in the late 90's, and how I admire the way their craft has grown because of it. I've been what you would call "all over the map" in terms of what I have been doing with my days since college, ranging from game animation, to full-time parenting, to managing files for a sheet music company, to writing novels and novellas--so needless to say, drawing has taken a serious back seat. I don't love that truth. So in an effort to limber up, I've decided to challenge myself to draw something every day for the next 30 days. Some of them I'll post here, some I might throw onto Facebook only. But I thought I would give you the method behind my madness as I begin. Now, there are destined not to be masterpieces, but just little sk...

One of the thorny things about social media is just how wide open it leaves you to making a fool of yourself. Take today for example: a friend of mine posted on Facebook about a book she had just read and was very pleased to report it defied all the stereotypes of self-publishing in terms of story. Unfortunately, all I could respond to was the cover of said book, having not read it, and I was direct about the fact that I thought it was a shame that the cover on the book was not as professional as what my friend said was inside. This wouldn't have been such a big deal, except the author of the book was privy to my friend's posts. So moments after I called the cover "unprofessional," the author chimed in, wanting to know what was wrong with it. I winced. Now, to give myself a little credit, I don't think I was mean or unprofessional in the way I worded my thoughts on the cover, and I did get into specifics with the author. Hopefully that particular spec-fic enth...

Whew. The last 10 days have been, in a word, insane. On April 30th, my husband and I became first-time home-owners through a fairly complicated loan process called a 203K loan, which is a federal loan that lumps home purchase and renovation into a single closing. The loan type exists to make it possible for home buys who can't simply pay cash for a house that needs rehab in order to be livable. (As I understand it, you can't finance a home in any other way when the place has no plumbing due to vandalization, needs electrical work, and generally needs overhauling.) The house we bought isn't much to look at right now, but when we're done, we hope to have a cozy little place to call home that we can enjoy together for the long haul. While I am excited to finally quit renting, the purchase has reinforced my hatred of wall paper. Then on May 1st, we rolled out the registration for Realm Makers: 2013, the first-ever symposium to address the creation of science fiction a...