Happy Holidays

 Well, merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone. I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays so far, especially since we've finally got some decent snow for skiing and the like. I've been spending my time reading the mountain of books I got for Christmas, and working on a new short story.
I got the idea for this one while looking at my lizard, also named Bink. He's what is known as a bearded dragon--a long, squat reptile with a head like a horned toad and little spines sticking out around his and ribs. Normally, it's hard to distinguish him from the log he sits on, since he barely moves, but occasionally he'll get a sudden desire to move and run up and down the length of his tank. I was watching him do this the other night, and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe he isn't what he seems. Minutes later, I was at my desk with my journal and a pen, the following story unfolding itself beneath my fingers....

...and no, the real Bink is not six feet long.

My Sister's Lizard

   It was an interesting day when the lizard escaped.

            That the lizard escaped in the first place was, A: a catastrophe, since my sister loves that thing, and B: a miracle, since the lizard was six feet long and about the width of a large bobsled. How anyone could lose something that size in a three-story house (four, if you count the basement) was nothing short of incredible. Yet lose him we did.

            My sister’s the one who’s supposed to look after Bink. She got him as a baby at a pet store; a tiny, scaly runt of a thing with a skinny body and a head that was way too big for the rest of him. The storekeeper told us he was a bearded dragon, but I think even he had doubts. Don’t even ask how my sister came up with his name. I think it was a character from a book she read or something like that.

            Upon arrival at our house, six years ago, Bink underwent an incredible series of growth spurts. He kept shedding his skin (which my sister thought was gross), leaving pale, papery impressions of himself scattered around his tank. He more than doubled in size the first week that we had him, and within a month, we were buying a new tank that was four times the size of the old one. He kept on growing, and soon even the dog was afraid of him. We had to feed him mice (which, I’ll admit, was indeed disgusting), and he seemed to have an unusual taste for anything spicy as well. We would feed him bowls of dried chili peppers doused in teriyaki sauce, and he would eat them in huge gulps until his spiny belly was swollen and he could barely move. He would then sit back on his haunches, puff out the scaled sac at his throat, and burp out a cloud of noxious pepper fumes. It made our eyes water, but he always looked disappointed.

            Thankfully for our financial stability, Bink’s growth spurts panned out when he was six months old, and his voracious eating habits mellowed out. For five and a half years, he mostly sat in his tank, eating his mice when we gave them to him, pooping, and burping chili. He was actually a pretty boring pet…that is, until the day he escaped.

            We probably wouldn’t have found out for days, since we’d been packing lately for a big trip to Wyoming, and we were about to leave for a week. Just as we were about to walk out the door, my sister suddenly remembered that she’d left her phone in her bedroom. She ran upstairs to get it, and then promptly returned empty-handed, her face ashen.

            “Bink’s gone!” she exclaimed.

            That threw us all into a panic. Marcy (my sister) got it into her head that the cat had eaten her lizard. I countered with a lecture on weight ratio and how Lavender—our slightly overweight calico—would need iron-capped teeth and protective plates of metal lining her gullet in order to ingest something as big and spiny as Bink. My argument won, not surprisingly.

            Mom and Dad were both very convinced that Bink was still somewhere in the house, hiding somewhere, too afraid to come out. That struck me as improbable as well, since he was six feet long and pretty hard to miss, but we were running out of ideas, and we had to start somewhere.

            And so the hunt began.

            Our house is old, not to mention cluttered, thanks to my mom and my aunt’s annual garage sale, so my parents’ idea that Bink was hiding somewhere in the house could have been true. My parents started in the basement, while my sister checked the first floor and I searched the second, all of us checking every conceivable hiding place for the missing lizard.

            I crawled under dusty beds, pawed through closets that I’d swear opened into another dimension, and slid bookshelves away from walls, and yet I encountered no sign of the lizard. In half an hour, I was so dusty I could have been sitting in the attic for centuries, and I’d inhaled enough dust-bunnies and mothball funk to give me some form of asthma. When at last I was on the verge of giving up and offering to buy my sister a snake as a replacement, I stumbled back to her room to give her closet one last look. As I was walking by the lizard tank, something caught my eye, and I almost cried out in triumph before I did a quick double-take and realized my mistake.

            For a moment, I’d thought I’d found Bink. There was something pale, scaly, and big hunkered down behind the rocks in his cage, sitting absolutely motionless with its long length wedged between the wall of the tank and the rocks. I looked closer, and realized that it wasn’t Bink, like I’d initially thought. It was another one of his sheds.

            Unlike the broken, scattered ones he’d left when he was little, this one was perfect. It had every little detail; from his horn-rimmed eyelids; to the weird bump at the end of his tail that the pet shop people had claimed was a bite mark from another male lizard; to the odd lumps on his back that they’d never even tried to explain. The nose was split open where he’d crawled out, and the glass around it was scratched where his scaled sides had dragged across the pane. The claw prints in the crushed walnut shells around the shed were bigger than I remembered, and I realized with a deep sinking feeling what was happening.

            Bink was having another growth spurt.

            I made for the stairs leading up to the attic as fast as I could. I’d dismissed the attic before, since Bink had been too small to push open the door before. When I got there, the door wasn’t just pushed aside—it had been demolished. Wood chips were scattered everywhere, and the remains hung at a cant on twisted hinges. Amidst the rubble, I found another shed—this one about three times as large as the last one, with a strange triangular bulge near the shoulders where the weird lumps used to be. I dodged inside, this time following a series of gaping rents in the floor that had been torn there by the passage of some gargantuan beast. I could see where Bink’s claws had dug into the wood—three claws per foot, which was too few to belong to a bearded dragon—and there were large, arched slashes cut into the flooring that seemed to trail the leading tracks. I followed the wreckage through a tumbled-over pile of boxes and the carnage of what used to be an overstuffed couch, all the way to the tiny window at the far end of the room.

            The window, like the door, had been utterly destroyed, this time taking a huge chunk of the wall off with it. As I clambered through the hole, I noticed another shed, and this time, it looked nothing like a lizard.

            The vertigo of being at the uppermost story of a three-floor house seized me momentarily as I edged out onto the gutter, but I quickly overcame it as I heard the sound of tramping footsteps crunching across the tiled roof of our house. Throwing caution to the wind, I scrambled up, following the trail of wreckage that Bink had left along the side of our house. I made it to the roof, and took off in a crouched shuffle across the tiles, some of which had been torn from the roof and crushed beneath Bink’s sharp claws or his spined, sweeping tail. I scuttled up and over the peak of the house, and on the other side, I froze, my mouth gaping open in awe.

            There was Bink, no longer an awkward lizard with a flat body and gangly limbs, but a great beast of prey. His long, arched neck was supple and graceful, and his torso was slim and powerfully muscled for flight. Four scaled legs like those of a dinosaur supported his massive body, and his long tail kept his balance at the edge of the roof by curling around his legs and hooking onto the tiles with the leaf-shaped blade at the tip. His head had grown long, horselike, and ridged with spines of bone, and his jaws were huge and lined with teeth like a shark.

            The most magnificent part of all, however, was his wings. The weird little bumps on his back had turned into the most beautiful wings a creature on this earth has ever had; they were at least as big as he was, with long, bony fingers stretched between webbed membranes like a bat’s, which caught the sunlight and glowed red with hundreds of tiny blood vessels.

            He spread those incredible wings even as I watched, his hind legs bunched up beneath him and his neck curled down in preparation for a jump. A half moment before he leaped, one of his great golden eyes rolled back to meet mine, and I could have sworn I saw the scaled corners of his mouth lift in an amused, draconic smile. An instant later, his powerful legs launched him into the air, and his massive wings snapped downward and bowled me over backwards with the sheer force of the air they displaced. As a parting gesture, he gave a loud bellow and stretched open his jaws, sending a gout of red fire shooting into the sky and nearly burning off our T.V antenna. A minute later, he was a gray dot on the horizon that could have been a pigeon winging away to the north, which soon disappeared inside a cloud.

            I never did see him again, though I never stopped looking.

THE END

As an end note, I'll add that the print-ready copy of Centaur Ranch is up on the lulu marketplace. The e-book's there as well, and the keywords for the search engine are: 'Diddle', 'Centaur Ranch', and 'Centaur'.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/sophia-koch/centaur-ranch/paperback/product-20600729.html 

Happy reading!

Nighthawk Warriors

Sorry about the delay, the first Science Olympiad competition was yesterday, and I was gone from 6:00 in the morning until 6:00 at night.
I recently drew an idea that came from flipping through a bird field guide and deciding that I wanted to draw a nighthawk. Once I had the bird done, I added the inevitable touch of fantasy, and drew a little figure riding on its back with a tiny riding harness tethering it to the bird. I began to come up with little facts about the two of them, and soon the paper was filled with the scrawled beginnings of a whole new story....

I haven't come up with a name for the rider yet, but I know that he's a young boy of about seventeen, with a reckless streak and tendency to get in trouble. The nighthawk's name is Clip, and the two of them were partnered when Clip was just hatched and the boy was five. The long, hooked spear the boy's carrying is designed for aerial mounted combat, shaped to snag an enemy's armor and either pull or push them off their mount. The nighthawk warriors are nicknamed the 'sky tigers', and live amongst clans of the tiny Fey folk that inhabit our world without our knowledge. The clans often disagree, just like humans, and there's constant feuding between them. The nighthawk warriors are their elite fighting force. The most important time of the year for them is nesting season, when the nighthawks raise their young. The humanoid partners will stand vigil for months during this time and protect their birds.
My intention is to introduce a couple human characters who get shrunk down to the size of the Fey folk and thrown into the hidden world. I've yet to get much farther than that, and since this story is third or fourth on my list to work on, it may be awhile before I get to developing it further. I'm looking forward to it, though.

The next chapter of Centaur Ranch is up, and the e-book is online for anyone who missed the first chapters. I'm setting a deadline to get the printed copy up, so it should be ready by my next post. Merry Christmas, and let's hope we get some decent snow.

New Book Out!

Sorry for the delay in posting, but I've been working on finishing up my latest book, and have now got the finished product posted online as an e-book. It's only 99 cents if you buy it for your kindle, but I haven't got a print-ready version yet. I'll have to work on that. For those of you who haven't been following the regular chapter posts I've been putting up, here's a brief introduction to the story:

Twelve-year-old Diddle Johnathan Pren has led anything but a boring life.
Plagued with his father insatiable curiosity, Diddle is lucky so far that his exploring of dusty crawl spaces or clambering about in rotted barn ceilings hasn't killed him, yet still he dreams of more. He dreams of the day that he can strike out on his own and discover the wonders of the world for himself.
His chance unexpectedly comes when a letter arrives in the mail inviting him to his infamous uncle Avon's ranch for the summer. Diddle has no choice but to go.
Upon arrival, Diddle finds that there's more to his uncle's farm that what meets the eye. Plagued by demons, sink devils, and the mysterious thing-in-the-dark, Diddle must uncover his uncle's mad schemes, and stop them before and ancient evil is unleashed upon his world.

I painted this cover illustration using water color. I'm not usually partial to water color, since it never seems to stay where I put it, but I'm proud of the results nonetheless.

If you can't find it on Facebook, here's the link to where I think you can find it on lulu.com. If it doesn't work, the keywords are Centaur Ranch, Centaur, and Diddle:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/sophia-koch/centaur-ranch/ebook/product-20549724.html 

Here's for all the sci-fi fans out there.

It looked like a worm at first glance.
Upon closer inspection, however, Jack realized that the creature had legs--tiny, feather like limbs that churned at the water like spinarettes to propel the little creature along. Its body was three inches long, and was divided into segments that seemed to fold and unfold like an accordion as it moved.
Jack though it was dark brown in color, but when he looked closer, he saw that it was, in fact, transparent. The chitin armor that covered it was clear, and through it, Jack could see its long, squishy brown stomach and the blackish, coiled spaghetti structure of its intestines. There were several pea-sized blogs that could have been its heart or kidneys, and a long, brown tube that extended towards the head end of its body.
Its head, Jack was only able to identify by process of elimination. It didn't appear to have any eyes, a nose, or a mouth, but that end wiggled a little more than the other, and Jack watched as it accordion-jumped after a beetle-like insect in the water. The beetle seemed panicked, though Jack couldn't see any reason for it to be, since the worm-thing didn't appear to have any way to eat it. Perhaps the beetle was simply afraid because the worm was bigger than it.
The worm was faster, too, and it managed to catch up with the beetle with one final jump that propelled it a full six inches through the water. The beetle made a panicked clicking noise as the worm closed in on it, and made one last futile attempt to twist out of the way.
It was then that Jack discovered that the worm did in fact have a mouth.
The tip of the worm's 'head' suddenly stretched open to the size of a penny, revealing hundreds of tiny, pinkish-gray needles that lined the creature's maw in a circle, layered in inward-facing rows that pointed down into its gullet. The beetle struggled as the teeth bit into its shell, but within seconds it was dead, and the worm had only to suck the remains of its prey down into its stomach, where Jack saw its innards turn from brown to black as its digestive juices began to work.
Jack fought back an urge to throw up, and instead used the heel of his boot to crush the see-through worm into a jellylike smear on the ground.
Unfortunately, that proved to be a near-fatal mistake.

I never finished this story, nor does it really have a beginning. I got the idea at a fly fishing convention, where one booth was displaying river creatures caught in the Apple River in tanks and water-filled trays. Amongst the numerous crayfish, boatmen beetles and dragonfly nymphs, there was also a bunch of worm-like invertebrates that I'm pretty sure were cranefly larvae. They were partially see-through, and it reminded me of some ghost shrimps I saw at Wal-Mart that I could actually see digesting their food. I expanded on it, and the result was this.
As to Jack's near-fatal mistake, I'll say only that the worm-thing was merely a larva.

The Flying Cats

Here's where the name for this blog came from--the flying cats.

I drew these two for a short story I wrote last year for an English class. I'm not including the story itself here for two reasons: 1-It's not really that short, and 2--it seemed a lot more complex than most of my short stories, as if it needed an entire book to really get to the heart of everything. The main characters--Bandit (black and white cat) and Minerva (gray cat)--had distinct personalities that I realized I would enjoy using in a full-length book, and the way the plot was beginning to unfold, it couldn't really be confined to ten pages and still sound like it should have.
The original story was called "The Cats of London", since that's where it takes place. Bandit believes himself to be the last of his kind--an ancient race of cats that retained their wings even after the domestic ones came back to earth and abandoned the skies. Bandit is surprised to find that there are others, and that they've banded together against the scourge of abnormally large rats that have begun to infest the city.

That's about as far as I've gotten, but I think I will eventually focus on this one, once I've worked my way through the dozens of other ideas that seem to pop into my head on a weekly basis. It's not very high on my list of priorities, but I figured I'd share it since I found the picture.

As usual, the next chapter in Centaur Ranch is up. If you haven't read the first chapters, I'll be publishing the whole thing on lulu.com soon, so look for it then.

Teaser

I will offer no explanation for this segment, save that it comes from a larger story that I'm currently working on. As to what happens next, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you to wonder about that, since I'm only partially sure of that myself and the story's still in a somewhat skeletal stage, where all I really know is the characters and the eventual outcome of this adventure. I'm pleased with the beginning, though....

By definition, it is impossible to expect the unexpected. Yet somehow, I had a feeling something was about to happen that spring, though I had absolutely no clue what that something could be. I almost think sometimes that I wanted something to happen, and that maybe, through some inexplicable power that I'm not even aware of myself, I pulled a few fatelines that set this whole crazy mess in motion and almost ended in the destruction of an underground government of supposedly mythical beings.
Or not. I'll never know for sure. All I can do is record everything that happened during that month,and maybe even publish my accounts in the Overworld in case  there's someone out there who will believe me. If there isn't, that's perfectly fine with me. This can be a work of fiction if you like, and I'm sure every law of space and matter will agree that it's impossible for such a story to be true.
Remember, though, that with every lie comes a little hidden truth. Nothing in this world is truly arbitrary, and there is a reason we once feared the dark.

It was 2011 and I was twenty-two years old. 

Some changes...

All right. Due to the sheer amounts of extracurricular activities and lack of time to post that I've had lately, I've decided to make some changes.
First of all, I've decided to start posting on Saturdays, instead of Fridays, because that's about when it gets pushed back to anyway. Second of all, I will henceforth be posting every other week until such time that I'm not completely inundated with homework and places I have to be on time (probably until November or so).

That being said, I hope you continue to read my posts, and I hope you've enjoyed what I've put up so far. And now for something new.
One of the things keeping me busy lately has been the new addition to our family; she's small, furry, four-legged, and she likes to bite. Her name is Zoey, and this is her story...
(And, for the record, the real Yuki hates the real Zoey's guts).

Have you ever wondered why you're afraid of the dark? 
Why you leaped into bed to avoid the darkness beneath, or why dogs bark in the middle of the night when staring at nothing? Have you ever wondered why doors sometimes slam or pets disappear, and why places that are abandoned seem chilled and eerie?
The cats know. They know about them.
The Bible calls them devils, the Greeks knew them as servants of Hades./ They are the ones who wait, silently, for those whose time has come. They're very small, and sometimes completely invisible, but they're there...waiting.
The cats are the ones who keep them in the shadows. They stand watch in the darkness, and we oftentimes find them staring at nothing or pouncing on something that doesn't exist. The Egyptians understood why. They revered cats as guardians of the underworld.
That is their job: 
To keep the ones who wait in the shadows. 
To keep them waiting.  

Our story begins with Zoey, an energetic young guardian-in-training who's been apprenticed under Yuki, a belligerent but widely renowned Senior guardian who's serving out a community service punishment. All seems well until a new transfer student moves in with Zoey's family, and the cats must work to protect their secret under the student's suspecting gaze. To make matters even more interesting, there's been a curious outbreak of dark creatures in the household, and it's up to Zoey, Yuki, and some unlikely allies to find out why.

This is actually an older drawing that I came across while rummaging through a sketch pad buried in some unexplored region of my desk. It's part of the series of dragons I was posting earlier (Torgadon and two-headed dragon), and will be added to that collection in the Doodles and Art tab up above.
The creature itself looks as if it was evolved for flying long-distances, with its large, gliding wings and light build. The little leaf-shaped fan on the tail would serve as a rudder when flying, and the wiry muscles around the shoulders and wing bases would be designed for holding the wings in a gliding position for long periods of time without tiring.
I'm not entirely sure what my idea was with the rider on its back. I designed her armor after the dragon's chin frills, and I gave her a long broadsword since that would be the easiest weapon to use when lying on your stomach fighting atop a large animal.
I haven't yet come up with a name for this creature, but a friend of mine thought it should speak in a Brazilian accent.

A Modern Myth...

The dragon and the Black Tree

Throughout history, people have struggled to understand the world around them and the forces that control the universe. One method of understanding the world has been through the creation of myths, and one of the most common myths told is how the world came to be. In modern times, explaining things through myths has become something of a thing of the past, what with all the newly discovered technology and methods of research that we have. I guess that's why we need fiction writers.
Anyway, here's my modern creation myth...

In the beginning of the world, there was a great being--a dragon--who had seen the birth and destruction of three other worlds in the course of his lifetime. Ours was his fourth, and he was growing tired.
To help him hold this new world together, the dragon called forth from the core of the earth a great tree--a tree of incredible power, its heart a smouldering bed of coals and its roots still intwined around the center of the earth. Its great, black, leafless boughs stretched to the heavens to support the sky, and its tangled roots held the soil of the earth in place. The dragon was at last able to rest, and he settled down at the base of the tree to sleep for an age.
But all is not well.
The Black Tree is a being of fire, and more than anything, fire longs to burn. The smouldering heart of the tree needs only a breath of air to turn into a raging inferno, and should that happen, the dragon and all the rest of the world would be consumed in flame. Without the dragon, there will be no fifth world, and so existence will end. There will be only black.
So beware.

Ruby

This is Ruby the bantam cockatrice, the latest in bored doodling technology.
For those of you who don't know, a bantam is the poultry equivalent to a miniature pony. On average, they're about six inches tall (as compared to the fourteen or so-inch 'standard' chicken), and the hens lay eggs about the size of a ping-pong ball (takes a lot of them to make an omelet). The roosters, however, serve absolutely no purpose other than the fact that they're entertaining. Like standard roosters, they place great value in intimidating all other creatures within their domain and establishing themselves as king of the coop. Unlike standards, however, they're too puny to do anything about it. It's a little sad sometimes.
The cockatrice is a version of the basalisk. Both are fictional creatures, and both are said to be capable of turning anything that catches their eye to stone. The cockatrice is fabled to have the body of a chicken and the tail of a serpent, and the birth of one involves a long list of impossible factors such as the hatching of a cockerel's egg that I'm not going to list here.
So, combine the feared monster of ancient myths with a six-inch bundle of angry frustration, and you have Ruby.
Ruby will be a character in a more recent novel that I've started. He's owned by a witch named Myrtle, and is her official guard, greeter, and errand-runner. He's highly territorial, but is only capable of paralyzing victims who meet his eye for a day or so. As usual, I managed to cut off his toes when I was drawing him and the tips of his wing when I was scanning him, and had I moved him just a little up and to the side I would have had him centered perfectly.
Keep an eye out for him in the future, and as always, enjoy the next chapter of Centaur Ranch.

The Book Revealed

All right! The secret's out. I figured out the name of the As Yet Unnamed Story a few weeks ago, but I couldn't post it for fear of spoiling this:  


 Without warning, the door suddenly flew open seemingly of its own accord and smashed into Avon’s nose with a resounding ‘crack!’, sending him toppling over backwards to sprawl in an undignified heap on the floor. Diddle jumped to one side in surprise as an arm with nut-brown skin followed the door, followed closely by a shining black hoof that lashed out at Avon in a vicious kick, barely missing the man and hitting the ground right between his legs.

Avon squeaked in terror and shuffled backwards on the ground, still clutching his nose between his fingers and his eyes wide with terror.

            “Get back inside, monster!” she shrieked in a high voice, stumbling to his feet. When he released his hands from his nose to haul himself upright, Diddle saw that the force of the door hitting his nose had given him a nosebleed, which dripped onto his clean white shirt and left bright red stains in the flawless linen.  It seemed like a bad time to laugh, so Diddle bit his tongue and instead stepped over to Avon’s side so he could see the animal inside the stall. What he saw left him both shocked and horrified at the same time.

            A centaur.

            She was huge, towering at least three feet above Diddle’s head and a good foot and a half over Avon’s. Her horse half was big, sleek, and heavily muscled, and her black coat and tail were glossy and well-kept; matching the midnight-black hair bound up in a ponytail atop her head. She wore only a faded blue sleeveless shirt that covered her human torso, and a small pendant necklace bound by a woven hemp cord around her neck. Her arms were long, and as strong-looking as her horse legs, with powerful hands that she kept crossed across her chest as she glared at Avon. Her human face matched the rest of her—nut-brown skin, a powerful jawline, and dark, black eyes that stared with such fierce intensity at the two human intruders that Diddle couldn’t help but shrink back a little.

She was intimidating, and not just because of her size. She had the unmistakable air of someone with a temper, and who would be quite willing to punch someone’s face inside-out if they gave her half a chance. Diddle realized that she could have easily stamped one of her sharp, black hooves right through Avon’s chest if she’d chosen to, but something had stopped her, and she instead settled for creating a deep depression in the hard-packed earth where the terrific force of her foreleg had slammed into the ground. Avon seemed to realize how close he’d just come to death as well, as he was shaking all over even as he raised his voice in an attempt to override the centaur woman’s quiet air of power and strength.

Centaur Ranch. 

 Centaurs have always been my favorite mythical creatures. Maybe it's leftover from when I was a typical eight-year-old who wanted nothing more than a pony, but nevertheless, the case is so. Figuring out what they can do is interesting; for example, how do they sleep? Do they move their arms when they run? Does having two stomachs mean they can eat grass? Their personalities are fun to develop, too. Be sure to stick around for the next chapter, and the past five chapters are up in case you missed anything.  

All right, I'll admit it--keeping up with the blog has been getting harder of late. Cross Country and marching band started in August, so now my day is split between running my legs off, marching my legs off, or working.

I do, however, have some actual news to report.
For anyone in the River Falls (WI) area, there is an upcoming art fair, called Art On the Kinni:

It takes place on September 8th (A ways ahead, but it's good to plan), and it's a one-day show for anyone who likes art and enjoys wandering through parks. If you've got a free weekend, feel free to come by and browse through the fair. After all, that's half the fun.

The new chapter in the As Yet Unnamed Story is up, and I apologize for anyone who hasn't read the first chapter, but I am going to  have to start taking off the earlier chapters as I post because the file is getting to be too big.

Happy Summer!

Death wandered the aisles of Macy's, searching for a new cloak. He picked up a pair of neon blue skinny jeans with one skeletal hand, turning them over distastefully.
"I hate modern fashion," he grumbled to himself. "Give me the old days when a man wore a tunic and a pair of tights."
He thought for a moment.
"Well...maybe not the tights," he amended.

If, for whatever reason, this makes sense to you, hit share.

The Red Box

I've been a bad blogger of late, but I've been trying to finish up a project I've been thinking about doing for years, finally started a month ago, and put off until this weekend. But at last, I may present to you...the Red Box!

This project started out as a plain white box with chipping paint that sat in the corner of my room underneath a fish tank. The fish tank tended to slosh a lot, which was hard on the poor box, and when I finally got rid of the fish tank, the box was a real eye sore.
I cleaned out the box and sanded down the worst of the chipping paint, and then gave it a layer of primer. When that was done, I found some leftover enamel paint--which happened to be red--and used that to give it some color. I made the mistake of getting some of said enamel paint on my hands, and so I ended up walking around with red fingernails, looking like I'd recently murdered someone. It's gone now, thank god.
I could have left the box like that (I painted the hinges and handles black), but the main reason I got the box in the first place was to paint it and make it interesting. And so began the decorating process.
Enamel, I've found, makes a great surface to doodle with pencil, and I was able to draw out the plans for my design. Since acrylic was all I really had (And I didn't want to mess around with enamel anymore), I used that to paint the design. I was pleased with the result, which actually looks like a tree.

If you've been following the As Yet Unnamed Story, the next chapter's up, and as always, feel free to leave comments below.

 I've been working on editing the As Yet Unnamed Story, and I found one spot that really bugged me. In it, Diddle was just arriving at Avon's house, and was just beginning to get an idea on just how much of a lunatic his uncle is. The dialogue seemed really stiff, and not much really happened, and I've been searching for some way to revise it. God only knows how I came up with this...

...Whatever Avon had been about to say was abruptly cut off as something gave a loud ‘pop’, followed by a soft hissing sound. Something small and round materialized at Avon’s feet right between him and Diddle, causing both of them to hurriedly step back. A single spark sputtered from the object, flaring like a firework and giving off a smell like burning metal. Then the sparks died, and all that was left was a black glass marble.

            Avon frowned, leaning over and squinting suspiciously at the marble. There was nothing remarkable about it, and there was nothing else there other than a small starburst of burnt black on the otherwise perfectly white polished floor.

            Finally, Avon’s mouth curled back into a pleased smile, and he straightened with a laugh.

            “Looks like the professor’s powers are diminishing,” he said aloud to no one in particular, his beetle eyes glittering and his mouth still twisted in a gloating smile. Diddle was about to ask what exactly his uncle meant by that when the floor suddenly burst into flames.

            A huge column of fire suddenly rocketed up towards the ceiling from the spot where the spark had landed, clipping the chandelier up above and physically blowing both Diddle and Avon backwards with the force of the explosion.

            Diddle hit the ground with a ‘thud’, causing his eyes to swim, and he saw Avon sprawled across the bottom steps of the stairs just opposite him. Between them, the column of fire was twisting and writhing about in unnatural, jerky motions. The top seemed to be collapsing in on itself, and a vague shape was beginning to form at its base, as if there was something trapped inside.

            Another explosion—this one directed outwards—nearly took off Diddle’s head. He managed to duck at the last second, though he could smell burning hair and he could feel the back of his neck getting lightly roasted. Fortunately, the second blast didn’t last long, and Diddle was able to look up without fear of having his eyeballs toasted in his head.

            Avon had managed to duck as well, Diddle saw. His uncle was curled in a trembling ball on the other side of the room, his knees drawn up to his face and his arms wrapped around his head. Only one eye was visible, poking through a gap between his knee and his elbow and wide with terror as he stared at the apparition that stood between him and his nephew.

            “B…balefire!” he squeaked, his voice tiny. Diddle really didn’t blame him.

            It would have looked like a person—roughly six feet tall, with broad shoulders and powerful arms—save that it was made completely from what looked like living coals. The surface of its skin looked like half-cooled lava, with a charred black base spiderwebbed with trails of glowing red that seemed to be constantly changing—flickering and twisting as if they were alive. The creature’s head was smooth and rounded, and Diddle could see little of its facial features save for a pair of glowing black eyes. Diddle had no idea how that made sense, but it did. It was as if the creature’s eyes were made of black fire.

            The apparition barely seemed to notice Avon, or Diddle for that matter. It was looking around at its surroundings, its eyes flickering as it took in the huge room and the scattered fires that it had started on the walls and on the stairs. Its gaze eventually fastened on the door that lead into the next room.

            “No!” Avon screamed suddenly. “Not the oak doors!”

            He needn’t have worried. The balefire didn’t bother using the doors. It simply raised one hand and sent another column of fire blasting through the wall next to the door. Burning wood and sawdust insulation flew everywhere, peppering the white marble floor with even more scorch marks and setting sections of the stairs on fire. For a minute, Diddle couldn’t see the balefire through all the thick, black smoke that had filled the room, and instead found himself seized by an uncontrollable coughing fit, his eyes streaming with tears. He could hear Avon doing the same over the crackling sound of the new inferno that had started in the hole the balefire had made in the wall.

            The smoke eventually cleared, yet Diddle found that he still couldn’t see the balefire. He did, however, see Avon, who was scrambling like crazy across the marble floor towards the hole in the wall, his eyes wide.

            “It’s heading for the kitchen!” he said, his voice panicked. “Somebody stop it!”

            Diddle didn’t really care what happened to his uncle’s house, but he didn’t want to lose sight of the balefire. Heaving himself to his feet, he set off eagerly after his uncle, his feet slipping on the polished floor—now even slipperier because of the bits of ash and wood scattered like ball bearings across it.

            The fire in the wall was beginning to spread outward, but Diddle found that he could still dodge through the gaping hole in the wall so long as he covered his face with his arms to protect it from the heat and smoke. Running blindly as he was, he accidentally bumped into Avon on the other side. Avon didn’t seem to notice.

            “My tapestries!” he wailed, clutching at his hair and staring with wide eyes at the now-burning swaths of cloth that draped the room. Diddle could see two or three that were as yet unburned, most of them depicting various kingly figures either slaying monsters or standing in dramatic, heroic poses. These, too eventually caught on fire as well, and soon the walls were completely consumed in flame.

            The balefire itself was standing at the far side of the room with its back to Diddle and Avon, just behind a long, mahogany table that took up most of the room. The flickering oranges and reds that made up the creature’s body were at the moment accented by pools of deep blue and green that were spilling through a series of tall, church-like glass windows that stretched towards the ceiling on both the northern and southern walls, making the balefire look as if it were made of rainbow-colored flames. For some reason, it seemed to have stopped, as if there were something in its way. It took Diddle a moment or two to realize why.

            “Back!” shouted a voice—powerful, female, and totally in command—causing the balefire to flinch and take a step backwards as a person emerged from the doors that led from the next room, a bucket held in her hands. A drop of water sloshed from the bucket and plopped onto the floor, causing the balefire to hiss angrily and back away even more. The woman wielding the bucket smiled grimly and advanced, her eyes locked with those of the balefire and her mouth set in a grim line.

            She wasn’t an overly tall person, but she was taller than Diddle and comfortably plump about the middle. Her hair was dark brown—going on gray—and was kept curled in a neat bun atop her head with a mesh hairnet to keep it in place. Her face was pleasant—though fiercely set in determination at the moment—with a rosy complexion and laugh lines around her soft blue eyes. She was wearing a simple gray dress, with the sleeves rolled up and her arms white with flour from cooking. A well-used apron was tied around her waist, the white cloth stained from long use mixing ingredients or standing over a smoky fire. Somehow, the heavy wooden rolling pin sticking from a pocket in the apron didn’t diminish from her somewhat intimidating aura at all.

            “I said get back, flame!” the woman snapped, brandishing the bucket like a sword. The balefire retreated again, whining and hissing piteously like a boiling tea kettle. The woman kept walking forward, pressing the apparition ever backwards towards the hole it had made in the wall. Diddle and Avon quickly scattered to opposite corners of the room, neither of them wanting to get between the fire and its escape route from the terrifying woman pursuing it. To do so was probably a form of suicide.

            With a final hiss of fear and disappointment, the balefire turned and tried to make a run for it. The cook leaped at the chance and heaved the bucket after the fleeing fire-wraith with all her might, catching it in the back with a large wave of soapy dish water.

            The effect on the balefire was instantaneous. With a rattling cry, it suddenly collapsed in on itself, its arms—now mostly black—waving feebly as its body began to dissolve beneath it. Billowing smoke filled the room, and Diddle could barely breathe, let alone see, as the smoke clogged his lungs and sent him into violent fits of coughing. Amid all the confusion, only he somehow managed to hear the soft ‘clack’ of something hard hitting the marble floor, and the grating sound of something rolling across  the floor. Dimly, he felt something tap gently against his foot....

Avon, I've found, is much more fun to write when he's thrown into the middle of a raging catastrophe of some sort or another. He doesn't exactly panic, but instead tries to assert himself in control of situations where he'd be better off hiding under the bed. 

The balefire I'm proud of. Usually, the term appears in stories as a sort of weapon--like normal fire or electricity. Here, it's a conscious being in itself. I won't spoil anything, but I will say that I'm happy I came up with it, because it helped get me out of a tight spot later on in the book. 

Thinking or Not

It's sometimes scary where my brain will go if I let it. 

There once was a girl who started writing a novel.

It wasn’t easy.

“Crap, crap crap crap…” she muttered, staring at the empty notebook and tugging at her ponytail. “Why can’t I come up with an idea?”

The large, black and brown-brindled tomcat on the chair in the corner snorted derisively and licked a paw.

            “Because you’re thinking,” he answered her, licking down the length of his foreleg and up his back. The girl gave him an annoyed look.

            “I’m thinking as hard as I can,” she grumbled back irritably.

            “No, you heard me wrong,” the cat said. “I didn’t say you weren’t thinking, I said you were thinking. There’s a difference.” He moved on to his hind legs, his back toes splayed so he could get between them with his tongue.

            “What do you mean by that?” the girl asked, annoyed.

            The cat finished with his toes and moved on to his butt. The girl rolled her eyes as he extended his leg upward and his head disappeared around his haunches. When he was finished, he eased back into a relaxed position, licking his chops satisfactorily.

            “That’s disgusting,” the girl said.

            “What, you don’t do it, too?” he asked innocently. The girl rolled her eyes.

            “You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

            “Nor do I intend to.”

            “Oh, come on! Stop being so cryptic! You mean I shouldn’t be thinking?”

            The cat sniffed and melted backwards into the chair cushions. His tail twitched lazily, and his eyes closed in a satisfied squint.

            “You won’t tell me?” the girl asked.

            “Didn’t I say so before?” he countered.

            The girl glowered at him, and turned back to her blank page. “Fine. Be that way,” she grumped.

            “I will.”

            The girl stared at the sheet of paper for a moment, tapping the pencil eraser against her forehead. Her mind was still blank, but she’d forgotten about that for a moment and was now contemplating what her life could have been had she not gotten a cat. Without really thinking about it, her pencil scrawled down a few lines on the paper:

            There once was a girl who started writing a novel.

            It wasn’t easy…

I guess that's true, though. I generally don't come up with ideas when I'm thinking hard about it. Sometimes, yes, but my best comes by surprise when the logical part of my brain is shut off and the somewhat crazy, creative part is allowed to run rampant. I believe this is indeed what a cat would say if it could speak. 

The next chapter's up in the As Yet Unnamed Story (I really need to come up with a name already). It's still laying out the setting and the characters, so bear with me. I build slowly, but when the action comes, it keeps going steadily until the end. I hope everyone's following and enjoying the story, and that they will continue to do so! In the meantime, if you're bored, scribble something down on a blank sheet of paper (works best if you're half-asleep). From there, there's no telling where you'll go...

           

Cover Page Progress...

Well, time for a bit of art.
The surface of my desk now looks something like this:

...And if you're a bit of a neat-freak, you'll be appalled to know that my floor is about ten times worse (I had to wade through knee-deep junk to get to my desk).

I've  nearly completed the As Yet Unnamed Story (Finished writing, that is--editing, re-editing, and editing yet again is an entirely different story), and have begun work on the cover image. This involves resurrecting some ill-used watercoloring skills that I probably haven't employed for three or four years now. My basic assessment at the moment: painting grass sucks. However, the penciled image that I came up with is my greatest to date, and I have an extra copy in case of a fatal screw-up. So far, my mistakes have been small enough to blot out with a paper towel, so I have hopes of pulling this off.

In the meantime, the latest chapter is up, introducing the professor Nero Arianrhod. As far as characters go, he's one of my favorites--absent-minded, intelligent, with his nose stuck in a book 65% of his waking life. If you've been following this story regularly, you'll find that the editing process is already begun, and some of the story towards the beginning has been gradually updated. I hope you continue to read and enjoy this story, and as always, feel free to leave comments or ideas at the bottom!

The Sign of the Suncat

My apologies for not posting sooner. There was a thunderstorm last night, and it wasn't quite worth the risk to turn on the computer, seeing as how we've already fried two in the past few years and actually watched a phone jump off the wall. While it would be interesting to watch the computer leap a few feet after being struck by lightning, I think fireworks are a much easier, cheaper way to celebrate the fourth of July.

On a different note, I now present to you the story of the sign of the suncat.The suncat itself is an ethereal being in a different world (set in our equivalent to the middle ages) that takes on the form of a cat made entirely of sunlight. To the (for the most part) humanoid inhabitants of this world, the cat is regarded as something of a deity, and has evolved its own legend that ties in with the recent history of this world....

The Sign of the Suncat

It is said that the suncat appeared after each great war, when the scale between peace and turmoil needed only a tiny tipping of the scales to go either way. Ever since then, the suncat has been used as a symbol of peace, one that even the most warlike leaders must honor when it is raised on the battlefield.
The kingdoms are dissolving, however. The Queen and her Esk Queen have engaged in a vicious war against the plant men of the south, and all the forests between the Royal Palace and the front line of the battlefield have been burned, chopped down, or trampled by the thousands of feet of the Queen's warriors.
That swath of burned forest is growing, for the Queens are slowly winning. Though powerful, the plant men are not fighters by nature, and are being slowly driven back to their final defense; the castle of the Redwoods. Should the battle reach here, the war will take a far more deadly turn. The great Redwood Giants, the oldest and most powerful of the plant men, would be awakened. Unlike their cousins, they are not peaceable creatures. They were sent into a deep slumber eons ago because of their endless need to destroy, and should they ever awaken again, they would not distinguish friend from foe from the innocent.

The Plant Men

The whole world would fall, and not even the power of the suncat, should it choose to appear again, would be able to save it.

The "Esk Queen" I came up with after watching a Cirque du Soleil performance. She would basically be a head adviser or second in command to the Queen, and she would be capable of silently manipulating the way the country is run if the Queen was not strong-minded. I'm basically trying to put together a political mess, with tyrants attempting to seize control from all angles with a few honest people caught up in the middle. If/when I finish my latest book, this idea is one of several that I'm considering working on.

As always, the latest chapter in the As Yet Unnamed Story is up. In this chapter, I finally introduce Uncle Avon and his servants, Betty and Aver. It's taken me awhile to get a bead on Avon's personality, and I think I've finally figured it out: the man's just nuts.
Enjoy!

The Birds

As many of us would probably agree, birds like to insult people.
Blue Jays, red-winged blackbirds, and grackles especially. When we stray too near their nests, they cackle and squawk at us, and it isn't such a leap to imagine that they're hurling vicious insults at us. This is my idea of what would happen if they could talk (An excerpt from the As Yet Unnamed Story):

            Diddle tottered unsteadily, the rotted beam beneath his feet swaying as a gust of wind howled through the missing wall of the old barn.

            “Curse it, Anajyrosima,” he muttered under his breath, clinging desperately to the wall. “You always choose the worst moments.”

            The wind seemed to laugh in response.

            Diddle waited for the beam to stop rocking as the wind faded, and then cautiously began edging his way forward out into the rafters of the barn. If the beam gave way now, there would be nothing to grab onto. Fortunately, the great weather goddess seemed to be in a good mood.

            Once he got to the end of the beam, Diddle found himself in the supporting triangle structures that held up the barn roof. They were in better condition than the beam and the rotted ladder he’d used to get up there, but he was cautious anyway. Below him, a pile of moldy straw that was almost as old as Diddle himself lay strewn in a towering heap across the floor, peppered with the occasional black pit where the floor had caved in.

            If Diddle’s mother had been able to see him, she would have skinned him alive and hung his hide on a pole in the front yard. She never seemed to understand why her son had to risk life and limb for the sake of satisfying his curiosity. It was worth the risk, though; Diddle had discovered a nest of giben birds.

            He’d caught sight of the male a few days ago; a huge, crow-like creature with a feathery crest on the back of its head and bright golden eyes. It had pitch-black feathers, peppered with flecks of gold that were densest around the hackles. They hunted in pairs—the female distracting the prey while the male swooped down to catch it—and they nested in the early summertime.

Diddle had traced these two back to their nest over the past couple days, and had lain in wait until the parents left. As soon as they were gone, he set about climbing the old, rotted walls of the barn, his goal a messy lump of willow twigs perched precariously on the beam in the middle of the ceiling. He was very close.

            The boards creaked in protest with every cautiously-placed step Diddle took, his back hunched so he could grip the beams with his hands. He must have looked strange from below; a small, wiry, scruffy-looking boy crawling around in the rafters of a barn like a monkey. He was glad there wasn’t anyone to see, since, strictly speaking, he wasn’t allowed on this property. It didn’t help that his neighbor didn’t really like him anyway.

            A sudden squeal of shifting wood warned Diddle just in time to jump away from the board he’d been about to set his weight on as it wrenched free of its notch and plummeted to the floor. It missed the hay pile, and instead snapped in two against an old milking stall. Diddle took a shaky breath.

            “That was me,” he warned himself as he proceeded, taking extra care to test each board before setting his weight on it. Finally, he reached the nest, which was built alongside an old pulley rope that dangled from the rafters, an old tire swing trapped against the ceiling to prevent the rope from pulling through. Diddle used it as an anchor as he kneeled down next to the nest and cautiously peered over the edge.

            “Beeeek!” cheeped an angry voice, followed by a chorus of tiny, indignant protest as all four inhabitants of the little nest caught sight of Diddle. The boldest hatchling rose up onto its tiny legs, flapping its stubby little wings and clicking its oversized beak. The half-formed crest on the back of its head rose threateningly, reminding Diddle of a pincushion. He laughed as the other three hatchlings followed suit and waddled at him with their wings raised.

            “You’re fierce, aren’t you?” he said, wiggling a finger at them. The lead chick snapped at his finger and tried to swallow it, but he pulled away in time.

            “You’ll have quite the glib tongue when you grow up, won’t you?” Diddle said fondly, resting his chin on the side of the nest. The hatchlings folded their wings, and a couple of them cocked their heads towards him as if they were listening. Diddle grinned.

            “I’d wager you can understand every word I say,” he said. The lead chick ruffled its wings, and then squawked a single word:

            “Mam!”

            Diddle’s grin dropped; they weren’t looking at him at all.

            “Idiot! Jerk!” shrieked a voice, right into Diddle’s ear. He yelped in surprise and tried to duck out of the way, but the owner of the voice was relentless and angry, and she attacked Diddle with her claws flashing and insults rolling from her tongue in a cacophonous barrage of gibe.

            “You fat-faced, slimy thief! May you rot in the demonlands and lose your eyeballs to the genies! May your ugly face be pounded flat by the demons! I’ve never seen anything more disgusting! You filthy, evil pilferer! Why, I’ll—”

            Diddle tried to kick the female giben bird with his free foot, but all she did was latch herself onto his ankle and claw at his pant leg while cussing and hurling insults at him with unbridled fury. The chicks were at it, too, cheeping out half-formed insults as they waved their stubby wings and hopped around excitedly.

            “Jeeeeerk!” one squeaked. “Eeeeevl jeeeerk! Maaaae oo rot en the deeeeemnlaaa!”

            Another squawk from the entrance to the barn threw Diddle into a panic; the male! Between the mother and the father giben birds, they’d likely rip him to shreds. He needed to get out of there!

            His eyes searching frantically for an escape route, Diddle lit upon the old pulley rope. It was old and frayed and didn’t look like it would hold much. He briefly glanced at the approaching male giben bird, and without second thought, he leaped for the rope.

            He managed to seize the rope in midair, his arms very nearly popping from their sockets as his body’s falling weight suddenly yanked on his shoulders. He fell for a few meters—his legs windmilling frantically and the rope burning his hands—before he finally managed to bring himself to a stop.     

            He quickly twisted the rope around his legs and tightened his grip with his hands, his breath coming in ragged gasps and his limbs shaking. Thoughts of splattering against the floorboards were whirling through his brain, fueled by fear and adrenaline. When he’d collected himself enough to think coherently, he risked glancing upwards at the giben birds. He was surprised to find that the entire family was staring down at him, even the babies. They looked like they were waiting for something to happen.

            Diddle heard a loud snap, and then the rope suddenly gave way beneath him as something up above broke.

            Ironically, it wasn’t the rope.

            The board that fastened the rope to the ceiling was one of the most unrotted, stable beams in the building. Yet for some reason, it chose that moment to give way and send Diddle plummeting to the ground below.

            Diddle shouted frantically as he fell, but he had sense enough to curl himself into a ball and angle his feet downward, his muscled tensed for impact. He hit the mound of rotted hay, and then, with a splintering crash, kept going.

            The floorboards underneath the hay were even worse than the rafters, and they crumbled beneath Diddle’s weight like toothpicks. He, the rope, and a flurry of hay tumbled into the basement floor of the barn, crashing through the ceiling and into another mound of moldy hay at the bottom of an old calf stall. Diddle landed on his feet, but the force of the landing sent him sprawling flat with his face on the ground, his ribs aching and his butt sore from punching through the ceiling with it. He moaned miserably into the ground as the dust and hay settled around him.

            Nothing was broken, but Diddle probably would have laid there all day if it weren’t for the distant sounds of shouting that drifted down through the hole in the ceiling. It wasn’t the giben birds this time.

            “Crap!” Diddle cursed as he shot up to his feet, his bruises forgotten as he recognized the voice of his neighbor, Ian McClillan. The old, retired farmer sounded angry, and quite willing to take off Diddle’s head if he discovered him in the barn.

            Diddle ran for the downstairs exit, brushing off hay and splinters and praying all the while that Mr. McClillan would check the upstairs first.

            Not for the first time that day, luck was in Diddle’s favor.

            He ducked out of the basement and dodged behind a nearby bush as Mr. McClillan stormed by, on his way towards the upstairs loft.

            “Curse that rotten kid! If I find him in there, I swear by Anajyrosima’s tail I’ll wring his skinny little neck!” the old farmer muttered as he passed. Fortunately, the thick hair growing out of his ears prevented him from hearing Diddle chocking back a laugh.

            Once the coast was clear, Diddle shot away from his hiding place as quickly as his feet would carry him, heading for the small grove of woods that marked his home. He picked hay and wood out of his hair as he ran, hoping all the while that his mother wouldn’t notice the moldy barn smell that was clinging to him. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d grounded him for something he’d only sort of done on purpose. 

I rewrote the beginning of this story about a week ago. What I had before didn't seem like quite enough to introduce such an energetically curious character like Diddle. He needed to start out doing something...something he wasn't supposed to. The next chapter is up as well, so be sure to check it out!

The Creature Project

Tyrranigan Falcon--the very first

I have no idea how this project started.
All I know is that I was told one day by a friend of mine that everyone at our lunch table was going to come up with a mythical creature. The idea was to combine the front and back halves of an animal, much like the griffins, centaurs, and satyrs in classical mythology.

Oh, and by the way, I'd been volunteered to draw these creatures.

It was a great project to work on, though some of the animal combinations were a pain to work with. I started with the Tyrranigan Falcon, only to discover that cramming the head of a tyrannosaurus rex on the shoulders of a peregrine falcon was not easy, nor was merging the leathery, wrinkled torso of a rhinoceros to the sleek, neatly striped back end of a tiger. They turned out fine nevertheless, and I learned how to draw several new animals (I never realized how weirdly-shaped the head of a rhinoceros is).

Now all that's left to see is if these drawings ever actually worm their way into modern mythology. Be sure to check out the other creatures on the Doodles and Art page.