Tail of Two Scions: An Update

As some of you may know, I am halfwy through writing (what I intend to be) a trilogy. Entitled "Lemurs (A Saga)" it follows the adventures of Aurelia, a mostly Silky Sifaka who is orphaned and fostered by ringtailed lemurs, in Ifaty on the west coast of Madagascar. It is an (or hopefully will be) epic fantasy novel, with lemurs. The lemurs have a culture that is a hybrid between that of real-world lemurs, the Malagasy people and a healthy dose of pure imagination. I blogged extensively a few years ago, when I wrote the first draft of "Fellowship of the Ringtails" (book one) for the Southern Cross Novel Challenge in 2011.

I am pleased to say that, despite my rather negative posts towards the end of June 2011, "Fellowship of the Ringtails" DID have a future and HAS been published. Even if no one has bought a single copy in any of the formats.
If you wish to actually buy a copy, here's where you can acquire it from:
Amazon (in paperback and ebook format)
Kobo (epub format, with the illustrations in COLOUR)

Anyhow, more because I want to than because I feel anyone will want to read it, I am working on book two: "Tail of Two Scions". I wrote the first draft for this back in NaNo 2011, and blogged about that too but then ended up deleting the entirity of Aurelia's side of the story (although I am still really very fond of Rakoto's, and shall keep that).

Essentially, the storyline of book two follows two characters -  Aurelia, the true (albeit illegitimate) heir to the royal throne and Rakoto, not a true heir, but by Madigaska rule, the official heir to the royal throne. Hence the "two scions" of the title. Rakoto's story is set entirely (so far) in Narivo, the capital city whereas Aurelia's needs to be set in Bemaraha, the grand tsingy, where she has joined a scholarly collective of lemurs that call themselves the Karazana.

Here the problem lay. I did not really have a good grasp on where Aurelia lived, and what she could be doing there. Obviously she needed to be doing something vaguely interesting - as I am sure that the reader would not be particularly enthused about hearing everything about her daily lessons, but that if I just skipped all that and got straight to the bloodbath* climax, then the reader would feel cheated too. So, I experimented. In the original plot, she went off with a bunch of other lemurs and travelled through the tsingy and rode on a hippopotamus, got captured by a mandrill and a bunch of other stuff which seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect seemed kinda silly and took the plot off on a wild-mad and completely unnecessary (excepting for wordcount) tangent. Then I dilly-dallied around with some other stuff in which nothing much happened.

Finally, the problem occured to me - I needed to better understand how the Karazana worked.
So, I got myself a personal wiki via TiddlyWiki and then I popped along to TiddlyToddler to learn how to use it properly. And I started brainstorming. That worked pretty well - I wrote out a timetable for the Karazana Novices, I made a list of Rules, I worked out different Punishments and then started writing. First goal - to see how many rules Aurelia could break in the first few pages (only about three, but they were pretty serious ones, and she's currently up to eight, including breaking some twice).

This has worked out rather better. In fact, I'm starting to get into a sort of fairy-tale mash up now in which there are elements of Billy Goats Gruff, Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast and maybe a touch of King Kong thrown in for good measure. I might be able to manage Arabian Nights as well.

I intended to work on this side of the novel for SocNoc 2013, but due to various other events (ie: finishing the final edit on book 1) I did not get started writing properly until the 15th June. Halfway through. Therefore I am attempting what they call "HalfNoc" (25k). It is still feasible that I could write 50,000 words in the remaining 8 days of this month, but it seems unlikely.

Word count when I started: 32,096

Words written since 15th June: 15,454

So far Aurelia has: climbed a stone spire to steal an eagle's egg, fallen and given herself a concussion, been assigned "dung duty" (exactly what it sounds like) as her punishment, befriended an antelope calf (actually, it's a goat, but the lemurs don't quite have my knowledge of taxonomy), rescued antelope calf from a "troll" and now been captured by aforementioned troll.

The troll is a mandrill, the antelope calf is an aoudad, or barbary goat and Aurelia is going to be in a whole lot of trouble... with any luck, these events will work to be tied in with later events. We shall see. Otherwise, I guess I'll just cut them out again and relegate them to another "removed story" text file.


* This ain't Game of Thrones

The Crow Bar

Back in 2007 or so, when I was first making ATCs and what-not, I joined a "Black Birds" swap, There are always swaps involving crows circulating on the ATC forums. Personally, I don't really like crows that much as an artistic subject - they're hard to draw and difficult to colour. Anyhow, I made up this image that formed into 6 atcs:

For the recent Summer Solstice (*coughs* it's midwinter here in NZ) Swap, I decided to redraw the image, to see how much my art had improved. This one was not cut into 6 atcs, so I did not have to be quite so precise at the bird placement. My bird anatomy has definitely improved, although unfortunately the scanner washed out some of the pale blues in the sky. I changed one of the bird's species too, as I was bored of colouring black.

The birds are: black-throated magpie-jay, blue jay, rook, crow, Eurasian jay, hooded crow and green magpie. Also threw in a few obligatory puns for fun.

Secret Solstice, Part Uno

Now this Secret Solstice package has been received - I can show it off! It includes the Pilgrim Pony, who is a 4x4 chunky with moveable carrot and real twine mane, and an Aurelia bookmark - she's reading her biography! Other items included were a couple of gel pens, a whittakers chocolate bar (very yummy, made in NZ) and a little pukeko notepad that was probably made in China, but is cute anyway.

A close up of the pony, minus the glare:

 

And here's two of the three packages I received (the third is yet to arrive):

From Art_Junkie in Durango, Colorado

From Livia in Texas(?)

Corvids I have met...

As I sit here in cold Christchurch, hail sleeting down outside and wind rattling the trees, I am thinking of this time last year - when my husband and I stepped off a plane and into the midst of spring-time California. And, to commemerate that it has been a year since we had our grand adventure, I am drawing American birds.
Corvids, in fact.
Now, I am not hugely fond of drawing ravens and crows - as birds go, they're pretty nifty; but they're too black and angular and I struggle to draw and colour them.
So why, may you ask, is LemurKat drawing corvids?
Well, I love jays.
They're smart, quirky, daring and bold. And I had the fortune to meet a number of different species on our Western US roadtrip.

So, here are the first four (with anecdotes):

Corvids I have met #1: Scrub Jay
Location: Grand Canyon, Arizona

 

Due to various reasons, mostly involving getting confused over time zones, my husband and I managed to awaken early enough to watch the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. Walking back, the dawn was upon us and with it the many birds were awakening to celebrate the day. One such bird was my first Scrub Jay - trilling quietly to himself, atop a post. As I approached him (hoping to get a good photo), he scolded at me and flew away. I did not get a photo.
I was disappointed that my first jay lacked the characteristic crest that I mentally associated with kin.
(And looking back at my little bird identification brochure, it may not have been a Scrub Jay at all, but a Pinyon Jay. I def DID see Scrub Jays though! I have photographic evidence.)

Corvids I have met #2: Black- Billed Magpie
Location: Rocky Mountains, near Veil, Colorado

These long-tailed magpies were everywhere, enjoying the relatively open countryside. I observed several of them molesting one of the ever-present raptorial hunters. Much like our magpies do at home - except that these are true magpies and ours are actually butcherbirds.


Corvids I have met #3: Clarke's Nutcracker
Location: Rocky Mountains National Park, Colorado

Pausing at a lookout with our hosts and guides, we found a small gaggle of children had caught the attentions and affections of some of the local fauna with the lure of nuts and seeds. Whilst they were intending it for the squirrels and chipmunks, this white bandit was hanging about, with his Stellar's cohort. I have heard they are quite the pirates.

Corvids I have met #4: Stellar's Jay
Location: Leggett, CA

 We saw numerous jays on our wanderings - mainly Stellars and Scrub, the two seeming to share the same territory without quarrel or qualm. I chased them around a rest stop in Oregon, trying to get a decent photo (but they don't stay still) and in Leggett the landlord of the establishment where we were staying tossed out handfuls of seed. In order to get a decent photo, I went out early in the morning and poised myself, hoping that they might stay still enough for me to get off a few shots. These attempts were rather hindered by the presence of the skinny resident felines, who insisted on accompanying me - paying more attention to me than the birds, however.
Also, on the previous evening I had been doing a short nocturnal wander (until the insects drove me nuts) and noticed a bird kreeing overhead. Thinking it was probably a jay, I picked up my husband's ipad, which contains an app called BirdPro and played the jay's call. The jay answered back and we had a short arguement, with him flying back and forth above me, looking for the intruder in his territory. But I felt a bit bad about it, and stopped!

Three more to come: Raven, Crow and Bluejay. Or possibly Pinyon Jay, even though I don't have a background and anecdote for one.

Holey-Moley - Monochrome birds!

For Catpratt's "Rainbow" themed moley journal - I got the colours violet and indigo. Monochrome is difficult, and after this double paged spread featuring purple martins, and indigo bunting and a black-naped monarch flycatcher (identified by the awesome Kate) I decided not to sully the magnificant journal with any more of my avian art.

Where has she been?

Some of my loyal followers may be wondering: "If this is a daily art blog, why is it updated only monthly?" And you would be right - my art creating endeavours were a bit slowed by other projects - such as finishing "Fellowship of the Ringtails". Also, about a month ago I injured my right hand in the stupidest way possible - I was merely tying a plastic bag shut (you know how you do, knotting the handles) and a bad pain shot up through my hand from my fourth finger to my wrist. It was actually almost excruitiating and flared and faded, leaving a dull ache. For the rest of that day I had to rely more on my left hand for operating the till and other work related stuff, feeling like my right hand had turned into a claw. It got better, and by the end of the day I was able to use it again but ever since it has cramped up when I do fine detail stuff or twist it a certain way. I asked the doctor about it, and I think she said it was a tendon. Anyhow, it's mostly okay now, I just have to be a little careful with it.

The other reason is that the majority of my May art has been for either the Secret Solstice swap on Illustrated ATCs or a commission piece. The commission piece is very exciting - it is designing swing-tags for a New Zealand company that creates garments from merino wool - either 100% merino or a blend of merino/possum/silk. Consequently I have designed two images - one for the merino and the other featuring all three creatures.

Since they have seen and approved the merino one, I'll show it here:

So - would you buy clothing with this fellow on the label?

New Zealand birds strut their stuff!

The Purple Prince and Tiriki the Kea strut their stuff, while Flit the fantail watches. The mountain in the background is Mt Cook. This was a leaving present for a co-worker.