I drew this for my niece's birthday; I've been having a blast playing Zelda with her and I'm hoping we'll get more gameplay in at some point. Right now she's pretty busy with school, but come summer break we'll be tromping all over Hyrule again.

Also I guess I have to change the name of the comic now.

Video game ramblings

 I'm not even gonna make up an excuse for this; I just wanted to blog out stuff about video games. (Spoiler alert for Zelda and Pokémon games!)

 Concept design for Tam, one of the main protagonists of the novel I've been working on. Tam is a 16-year-old who's got it all together: her parents buy her whatever she wants, she's super popular at school, she's a star athlete, and she's tremendously spoiled and entitled because of her legendary tantrums.

When Tam's sister Carrie is taken away by the mysterious Lord Saturos, Tam follows them and finds herself adventuring through the fantastic world of Arthabasca on a quest to free the Erdunn, powerful elemental entities. Tam develops a special bond with the first Erdunn she finds, Smaragdus, who is able to link with Tam to lend the girl her powers over crystal and electricity.

While at first Tam isn't used to actually having to solve her own problems, as she journeys through Arthabasca, she learns how to work for what she wants and that the universe doesn't revolve around her. But in her stubborn drive to outwit Saturos and get Carrie back home, Tam is missing some critical details about her adversary and the beings she is helping, and her actions may end up deciding the fate of Arthabasca.

Tam was fun to write as the archetype of the bratty teen who goes on a character-building adventure. She's sort of me poking fun at the fact that in a lot of teen-oriented fantasy, the main character is a disagreeable person who it seems the writer just sent on a quest to learn some life lessons and get a good dose of humility. In Tam's case, she gets her quest completely wrong and really makes a mess that Saturos and Carrie are stuck trying to clean up--but she does end up learning some life lessons along the way, and in the end, she helps to permanently make things better in Arthabasca, and reconciles with her sister.

I find her growth into an independent and resilient young woman satisfying, especially because she is not the only heroine in the story who gets to have fun adventures in a fantasy world--but more about that later.

 Concept sketch for Smaragdus, the crystal Erdunn from the novel I've been working on (not the one that just came out). Smaragdus is a small entity who Tam, one of the heroines, finds imprisoned in the ruins of a city and inadvertently frees. Smaragdus asks her to find and free the other Erdunn, elemental creatures who were sealed away eons ago, and together they set out on an epic journey to gather the Erdunn and rescue Tam's sister Carrie from the questionably evil Lord Saturos. 

Along the way, Tam discovers that she and Smaragdus can link energies, giving Tam access to Smaragdus's ability to crystallize and control the rock around her, which proves immensely helpful in their adventure. However, Smaragdus remains suspiciously vague about her origins and true motives, and Tam might have bitten off more than she can chew in her quest to show Saturos what she's made of.

 

My novel Between the Salt Water and the Sea Strand is now available in ebook format (and paperback is coming soon)!

Check it out for a fun collision of modern England and British/Celtic mythology and folklore, a heroine on the autism spectrum, and more than you ever really needed to know about making rock (the confectionery, not the geologic object). 

I worked hard on this one and I really hope readers enjoy it. (Old Tom is totally based on my cat.)

Stay tuned for that cool announcement I promised!

Cover art for the next novel I'm going to publish very soon!

One of the (many) things I love about the UK is how the sky is always in a mood. <3 Also, corgis are fantastic.

You may remember me doing some concept art for this novel last year; I'd actually written the manuscript then, and now I'm finally ready to move forward with publishing. I'm very excited to share this tale of faerie warriors, a middle-aged cat lady, and surreptitious theoretical physics. Also, snails are important.

... I promise it all makes sense in the end.

P.S. I have a very special surprise planned for this novel, so keep an eye out for a big, cool announcement!

 Finalized character design for Lord Saturos, the antivillain of the novel I've been working on. Saturos is a millennia-old immortal demigodly sorcerer--although as he explains in the book, he has the ability to manipulate the universe on a quantum level, but he just calls it "magic" for the sake of convenience. Despite all appearances, Saturos is a kind, compassionate, friendly creature who enjoys music and has a sweet tooth, and wants nothing more than to see the world he rules thrive peacefully. Unfortunately, he also holds quite a bit of disdain for humanity because of how xenophobic they are towards him whenever he crosses over into our world--and in his underestimation of what humans are capable of, a stubborn teenage girl unwittingly uncovers the dangerous secrets of his world's past and the reason why Saturos is the last of his kind. With an unexpected ally and friend in the girl's brainiac older sister, who possesses the same sort of powers as him, can Saturos stop a misguided heroic quest before it's too late?

Saturos is basically me poking fun at and deconstructing every cliché evil wizard character ever. Not that I'm consciously trying to fangirl villains, but often I find I'm just more interested and emotionally invested in the highly intelligent, misunderstood fellow with phenomenal powers, a posh castle, and a retinue of quirky underlings, than the dusty peasant lad who just happened to pick up a magic sword or something. And it drives me crazy when the former just exists as a plot device to make the latter look cool for defeating him, which I kinda feel is some thinly-veiled wish fulfillment that I just don't connect with.

Saturos himself complains about this at one point in the story, and maybe it's a bit too meta, but the entire plotline has a tongue-in-cheek subtext of the characters being very aware that they are basically living out a D&D campaign.

Also, I know posts have been a bit sparse lately. I've had a lot going on and haven't been feeling super art-motivated. Also I've been replaying Pokémon Sword on a Switch account I made under my cat's name and being reminded of how much I hate the ending, which mostly consists of mercilessly crushing other people's dreams one battle at a time for the sheer sake of fame and glory. Can't we all just be Champions, guys?!

P.S. Goat eyes are adorbs.