My two new series of cutout art are done!

Feast your eyes on Sea of Pride and Sea of Shapes and Shadows.
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You can get this artwork on clothing, blankets, laptop skins, accessories, and more in my RedBubble store.
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Here are the links to the designs:

Sea of Pride:

Agender
Androgyne
Aromantic
Asexual
Bisexual
Demiboy
Demigirl
Demiromantic
Demisexual
Genderfluid
Genderqueer
Intersex
Lesbian
LGBTQ
Neutrois
Nonbinary
Pansexual
Polysexual
Transgender

Sea of Shapes and Shadows

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Light blue
Blue
Purple
Pastel Rainbow

​My latest short story just got published on Loom of Tales!
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A god of War whose power brought him misery.

A search for purpose, for happiness, for an identity worth having.

A tale of devastating betrayal and lingering hope that spans generations.

And the origin of Sarovak, Quillen, and Raina, three of the characters from my upcoming novel, The Memories that Bind Us.
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To get this artwork on physical items, visit my stores at RedBubble and Society6.

To get me to draw something like this for you, check out my commissions page!

To get early access to completed stories, art and videos, support me on Patreon.

And finally, you can also support me by leaving a one-time tip on Ko-Fi.

I had an interesting development this month: a recommendation for a scholarship at Superstars. A friend of mine strongly recommended it, and she gave me some great advice for my application.

I don't know if I'll win or not, but either way, I appreciate the advice and the opportunity.

I also rewrote a significant segment of Wisps of Memory, to patch a plot hole I accidentally introduced when some characters started seeking information that they'd already gained via a scene I'd added earlier in the book. Whoops!

I swear, dialogue is like dominoes; each piece sets the next in motion, and if you remove or rearrange them, it creates a gap that ruins the whole thing. I tried to patch it neatly with a minimum of rewriting, but it still felt awkward.

Partway through that effort, I realized that, if I let go of the original version and heavily rearranged a certain series of questions, I could build organically and ominously toward a revelation that would shake some of the characters to their core.

So while this plot hole slowed me down a lot, the process of fixing it greatly improved the tension and the resulting "Oh, SHIT" moment.

I'm rereading the parts of the dialogue that follow that moment, to make sure there are no lingering offshoots of that plot hole, and then it's onwards and upwards!

Before the creation of the Mortal Realm...

50,000 years before the story begins...

Beings of pure magic and energy danced together, not knowing that the parts of them that mingled would blend into something new, something separate... something dangerous.

This was the birth of Sarovak.

The beings in this artwork are Raina's grandparents, the God of War and the Deity of Emotion.

I was recently given the opportunity to submit a 500-word short story to to Loom of Tales, so I decided to write about the semideities' origins from the perspective of the God of War. His search for purpose and belonging, his joy at discovering the power to create life... and his horror and his lingering glimmers of hope when everything went wrong.

Loom requested that the writers include images with their story, and rather than grab a generic picture of a war deity, I decided I wanted the artwork to match the characters' canonical appearances.

And so, in the couple of days I had before the deadline, I whipped up this portrait of the God of War dancing with the Deity of Emotion: an act that would lead to the birth of Sarovak, the origin and banishment of the semideity species as a whole, and the creation of the Mortal Realm.

You can see the concept art for Sarovak's daughter, Raina, as well as a lot of additional info about the world and characters, in this Patreon post.

Now that Chielle and Quenzin have their own character art, I'm working on the design for Raina: the Mother of All and Mother of None, First Semigoddess of the Mortal Realm, and the person with the most challenging outfit design I've ever created.

Not that her outfit is super complicated or anything, but it does have to accommodate two wildly different body shapes without ripping, because if she's given a good enough reason to, this woman hulks out and flips tanks.

The fact that she's 1/4 war goddess doesn't show often, but when it shows, it SHOWS. She is as gentle and maternal as she looks... until suddenly she's not. >:)

Here's a little preview of her normal form:
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​My Patreon supporters can see a higher-res version of this artwork, a work-in-progress image of her battle form, and a lot of additional worldbuilding and backstory info in this post.

They can also see an image of her in a swimsuit, because this outfit doesn't do justice to how muscular Raina is.

I finally finished Quenzin's concept art!

Behind the woeful visage of a sad, tired old man, there lies a plethora of mysteries.

​Quenzin first enters the story as the sole occupant of a crashed shuttle he wasn't supposed to be aboard, and he doesn't know why he was brought there, where the rest of the crew is, or why they left him to die alone.

To make matters stranger, when Chielle Havello Sai dragged him from the flaming wreckage, he was covered in blood and clearly in distress, yet showed no visible injuries.

And while he alludes to the existence of a sister he loves and children he may or may not have, most of his backstory - ESPECIALLY the details about his estranged family - is off limits to anyone he doesn't trust.

If the style of his clothing looks similar to Chielle's, that's because it is. Between the shuttle crash and the brutal events that preceded it, his former outfit was tattered beyond repair, so she loaned him the biggest coat and pants she had - and they were still noticeably too small for his 6'5" frame.

You can see the height difference between them in the image below. Unsurprisingly, there were no shoes in the facility that fit the towering rescuee, so he'll have to do without for a while.

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You can see higher-res versions of this artwork, as well as some of the earlier versions of Quenzin's concept art, by joining my inner circle on Patreon.

A new fanfic just dropped. :) Spoilers for season 2 of Wakfu ahead...


Echoes of Bitter Comfort is a glimpse into the bittersweet relationship between two immortals who were doomed to be forgotten, and the child whose perennial love made their painful eternity a little more bearable.

What did their bond look like, back when Qilby was sane, Shinonome was alive, and Yugo still trusted them? This short character study explores that.

Read it on my website.

Read it on AO3.

I decided it was time to make a proper character profile for Chielle, a character in my upcoming novel.

 
You can read more about her in the blog post where I first shared Chielle's concept art.

If you're curious about the naming convention I used for her family, it was inspired by the Spanish method of passing on surnames.

Since I'm writing a sci-fi fantasy world that isn't based solely on white Canadian culture, I didn't want to default to the "kids get the dad's last name and the mother's name disappears" formula from my own culture, so I looked to some of Earth's other cultures for inspiration.

I liked the Spanish model better: married women keep their original surnames, and after their personal names, Spaniards have both of their parents' first surnames, usually with the father's first and the mother's second.

But there were still a few things about that system that I wanted to tweak for this fictional universe.

For one thing, the first surname is often the only one used in less formal settings, so once again, the man's name is at the forefront while the woman's is left out.

​And because the children usually inherit the first of each parent's two surnames, the fact that the father's surname usually comes first means that - again - the mother's surname is erased.

That being the case, for the purpose of this book, I gave the system a small tweak: if the child is a girl, her surname is her mother's first surname, then her father's. If the child is a boy, his surname is his father's first surname, then his mother's. And if the child is nonbinary, it's decided on a case by case basis.

That way, both parents' names have a chance to be passed on.

How close is this book to being finished?

I'm in the process of fleshing out the outline, which means filling in plot holes, making sure no characters inexplicably disappear for days or indefinitely, adding foreshadowing, and removing any parts that no longer fit with the overall story.

I'm also writing the first draft of some scenes where I already have a clear and detailed idea of what I want to happen.

I'm currently on page 84 of 138, and the document is 68,664 words long!

Right now, I'm in the process of rewriting and fleshing out a pivotal scene roughly halfway through the book.

The first draft was already pretty much written, but then I decided that, under the circumstances, it would be more realistic and more emotionally compelling if it took place in another dimension, while one of the characters was bleeding into their brain. >:)

It definitely shifted the dynamic between the characters involved, and it gave me a chance to show off a side of their relationship that hadn't been shown in quite a while, while giving a shoutout to a part of their early backstory. All in all, I'm really happy with this change.

Want to see more?

If you want to be among the first to get updates about this story, to get early access to all my completed art and stories, and to get exclusive access to works in progress like the concept art for the man Chielle rescued, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

The latest chapter of my Undertale fanfic, Just Cause, is out, and Frisk is about to learn a few things about their friends that they'll wish they didn't know.

Read it on this website.

Read it on AO3.