Rook sprawls out on their four-poster bed as indolent as a large cat.
“Don’t say that,” Nice chides. His fingers make quick work of his hair. He’d just recently returned from yet another trip. Although the winter had promised no more diplomatic trips, he was called to the city of Vada-el for something he had only told Rook about in vaguest terms.
“Hiding from me?” Rook had asked, half a tease.
“I would only bore you,” Nice had said, before deftly twisting the topic to other things.
Nice regards himself in the mirror, tilting his head to the side to take in the white fishtail braid that begins above his left ear and trails down to his throat. It’s strung through with beautiful baubles, glass beads the size of marbles that contain the vast blueness of the cerulean ocean, as well as crystals set to look like glorious four-pointed stars, bright against a backdrop of snow.
He unravels the braid with his smallest fingers, drawing the colorful pieces from the strands of his hair and setting them in a shallow dish where they plink together like water.
When he’s through, he scritches the tips of his fingers through his hair, waking up and soothing his sore scalp with a sigh. He’s been wearing the ornate Vada-elan hairstyles more and more lately, even getting proficient at doing the simplest of them himself, but he’s still not quite used to it.
Koreatown is done (?) but I’m having trouble figuring out the cover, so it’s a bit of a work in progress.
I’ve really committed to doing my own covers in recent days, and it’s been frustrating, exciting, and kind of hilarious. I have a perfectionism problem. I’ve made a ridiculous amount of thumbnails and sketches.
On the writing– I went back to Willow and Lira’s story, of all things. I like the chapter I’m working on today. I think I might try to finish it by the end of the day and then maybe get some art up.
I usually have at least a week of false starts after I finish writing any long project. I finished the second Fox and the Rose book and then… flailed. for like 2 weeks straight. I always have way too many WIPs in the pipleline, and whenever I finish a book, I am usually excited to get back to one of them.
Usually, the next thing I write doesn’t end up being the thing I thought I was going to write.
I was really excited to revisit Mouse and Charis in a tentative story I’m working on, set between Fairytale and First Aid.
Ah, another false start. I’m back to working on Koreatown, and maybe this will be the one I finish.
I’ve also been making a lot of art. I probably owe a longer post to this, but I’ve been increasingly… idk, disturbed by gen AI and what it’s doing to the cultural and fictional landscapes. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably noticed that I have some AI covers on my books. I don’t love it. I go back and forth on it.
Often, I think it’s what I need to do in order to make sales, in order to produce books that are pretty enough to gain an audience. I am small and fleshy and made of meat and unfortunately I need to pay rent and pay for medication and buy food. And yet I do on some level think that every piece of AI art makes the world worse.
For years now I’ve gone back and forth on the idea of illustrating my own covers. Something in the idea must appeal to me, because why do I keep ending up here, time after time, year after year? But the process is so big and daunting. I don’t know how to have time to be a “professional” artist in that way and also to be a writer. The indie output schedule is brutal. I am never really keeping up.
Anyway, I don’t say any of that to make you feel sorry for me, or to excuse myself from anything, if there is something to be excused for. Just… this is where I’ve been at. I’ve been drawing a lot lately, making a lot of frankly very bad drawings of my characters, and also a few good ones when I get lucky. I’ve been thumbnailing covers and trying my best and just… trying.
Artist: jonasgoonface on Tumblr
I spend a lot of time thinking about this comic by jonasgoonface on Tumblr. I think about this whenever I make another bad drawing. I can be worse!! Maybe in a world full of AI, every bad drawing means more, if nothing else as an act of very human mark-making.
I’ve been working hard, and I’m quite tired. Feeling kind of wrung out but also like there is so much more work to do.
Mostly, I want to lose the AI covers because I feel like they cut me off from a community that I love and care about, a community that supported me when I was in fandom and that (understandably, laudably) loves their artists deeply and wants to defend them.
I don’t know that I can change all of my existing covers—certainly not overnight, not right away, and maybe not for a long time. But I can think hard about what I’m going to do moving forward, and i can try to do some things differently.
I’m finishing up the edits on the next book in The Fox and the Rose series, and I can’t wait to show it to you. I’m excited to continue writing in the next book in the series, but also I am looking forward to taking a short break to finish off Koreatown.
I might be doing the cover art for this one myself! Here’s one sketch for the book cover. I might post the other thumbnails I did later if I can dig out my sketchbook (paper, like it’s 2004) in better lighting. <3
Sketch of Laurel and Shigeru for The Fox and the Rose, vol. 2 book cover
My art isn’t where I’d like it to be yet. I wish I could make more stunning illustrations! But I think I’m coming to realize that if I don’t start now, I’ll never get to where I’m hoping to go. So maybe we just enjoy the process.
