Because it's clearly never too soon, here's a doodle to tease my next novel!

Auva Cameron, Earth native, was on her way to the Moon for a new job when she suddenly found herself in the Andromeda Galaxy instead. Whoops. Good thing it turns out she's got a knack for piloting giant robots! But how, exactly, will that help her get back to Earth? Well, she's got some other things she may need to take care of, first. Will she get to be the hero she's always wanted to be? With everything on the line, she simply can't afford to be mediocre, that's for sure.

Renny Gallahan is an officer in the Challinor Empire's Galactic Police Force who's been assigned to an out-of-the-way sector to hunt down space pirates. What she'd really rather be doing is gathering intel on the Lykoi, a mysterious extragalactic species of wolf-like warriors who are trying to invade and conquer Challinor. But the government has banned Renny from having anything to do with the Lykoi, because many suspect she may be a Lykoi spy. 

Sure she's not big, strong, and dark-furred like the Lykoi, but Renny also resembles them more than she does any known Challinorean species. And to complicate matters, she was adopted as a toddler and has no idea who her birth parents were, or how she ended up in an escape pod on her adoptive parents' planet. Despite Renny's overachieving in the police academy and her responsible, no-nonsense methods, many politicians still have their doubts, as do a number of her fellow officers.

When Renny gets put in charge of chaperoning Auva and a motley crew of space pirates on a quest to save Challinor, the officer knows she's purposely being sent on an out-of-the-way mission again, but sees it as an opportunity to - hopefully - prove her loyalty to Challinor for once and for all. And although she and Auva don't see eye-to-eye at first, gradually they come to understand one another and become friends.

What neither of them expect, however, is that their mission to the center of the galaxy will ultimately blow open the case of Renny's past, and with their combined courage and persistence, they might just wind up ending a war along the way.

I'm not sure exactly when I'm going to get started on writing this novel. I'm very, very busy right now. I'll definitely wait until things quiet down and I've gotten adequate rest from Earthkeepers. Still, making plans is fun. :)

At long last, the eagerly-awaited sequel to Skydwellers is available as both an ebook and a paperback!

Journey along with girl genius Miette, her tomboy BFF Kieri, and warrior-in-training Yonwin as they unlock some crazy secrets behind their planet... or should I say beneath it!

The past four months of producing this novel has been quite the ride, as you can read in previous blog posts, so I'm very excited to finally be able to show the product of my labors.

Give it a read if you like fun, family-friendly science fiction!

The Scattergories Files

Okay, here's something out of left field. Maybe you just needed a diversion today.

My sister and I dug our old Scattergories game out of the game cupboard, and discovered a bunch of used game papers. For some reason I found reading through the random, out-of-context words and phrases oddly meditative. And funny.

So before I threw the papers away, I thought I'd share some of their contents here for you to peruse. I dunno, read them aloud to yourself to calm your mind or something. Or use them for creative writing inspiration.

Lists of random things are too important to go to waste!

I listened to the first 7 chapters of the Thunder Girl audiobook last night and it. Is. INCREDIBLE. It's coming along absolutely spectacularly, and I'm so excited for everybody to hear it! I think I'll get to listen to the rest soon! That's like 3 more hours of gloriously nerdy steampunk dinosaur fun!

Today I needed to go through and add timestamps to the few lines that needed correcting in the first 7 chapters; I made note of them but didn't add timestamps, but thankfully Ben Fife let me know that would help him locate the lines easier. He is doing a totally professional job, but of course he's only human so it's not going to be 100% perfect the first time around. Just 99.9% perfect. I myself make plenty of typos in my manuscripts despite being a stickler for grammar and spelling. I mean, a number of requested corrections are actually due to my own typos in the manuscript that didn't get caught after several rounds of editing. Whoops. (Don't worry, I'll edit them and upload fixed manuscripts for the ebook/paperback.)

Anyway, this time around, since I didn't have to listen so hard for misreads, I decided to do a bit of doodling as I listened, and did this sketch of Cat and Hermes, who I think are a great protagonistic duo. Except, Hermes sometimes gets so excited that he gets carried away and starts blabbing about important secrets, and Cat has to silence him before he totally ruins everything. It's actually his fault that Mr. du Bois discovered the American Museum of Natural History had the thunder stone. But then, if Mr. du Bois hadn't learned that, Cat's whole wonderful adventure never would have happened, so it all worked out. :)

Looking forward to Thunder Girl coming out in April-ish! Gonna be so much fun!

 My sister asked me to draw our family's pets as Animal Crossing characters, and I just couldn't resist!

My cat Chewbacca 

My angel cat Marshmallow

My sister's dog Pepper

My other sister's cat Muffin

I hung out with my art pupil today and she let me play with her Copic markers on her graytone paper! Fun times were had.

Here's Zuben being adorable.

And then she wanted me to draw a posh rabbit. Why not?

 Here's my (contemporary) design for Terros, the crystalline scorpion guardian of the Earth element from a cheesy old story I wrote in junior high. Despite the story's super cringiness, I still love the idea of a crystal scorpion, and when my pupil suggested I draw it, I couldn't resist. She also said she'd like to see a re-imagined version of the story someday, and I agree that it's not irredeemably bad. I'll have to give it some thought!

 

I'd had kind of a rough day... and then my new Paleozoic Pals plush toys cheered me up. :) I got myself a Gorgonops because I love gorgonopsids and was so thrilled when I found out they were doing a Gorgonops plush. Gorgonopsids were pretty much the tigers of the Permian. So epic. 

My reconstruction here is very, very, very hypothetical and definitely errs more on the mammalian side of Synapsida. But you never know, gorgonopsids could have been big ol' fluffbabies! 

I also kinda made this one look pretty rodent-like, but I love rodents so I'm not even mad. I had a pet rat in third grade. To me it just kinda made sense because most early mammals looked a lot like rodents, so maybe some therapsids did too.

Earthkeepers cover WIP gallery

 

It's time for a cover reveal! :)

I worked super hard on this cover and had a lot of fun with it! What a relief to be done! Now all I have to do is wait for my proofreader!

I also like the hybrid painting/graphic novel approach I took with this cover. The background was considerably easier to paint than draw, while the characters were easier to draw than paint. I will likely use this technique for book covers from now on!

Excited for the book yet? :)