Fan Art Friday

Sooo... my effort to gain more followers and get more fan art was a total fail. No responses. I'm just going to have to try this again in a few months. No biggie.

But in the meantime, this leaves me with slim to no pics to share with you. I've been super busy doing edits so that for the up and coming printing in the Book-it! magazine. But, I suppose I can come up with something. Let me see... ah! Here is some art I've been admiring lately. Some inspirations for Target Lost, my webisode series leading up to Tailslide. (forgive me if I've shared these before)

Introducing Nannette!

Raide

Jarreth

Maggie

aaaand more Maggie. I seriously love Maggie.

Fan Art Friday

I'm extending the due date on the competition by another week. The last two weeks have been really busy and irritating and difficult for me. But I'm here to do a little bit of positive at the end of the week, and hopefully bring you a little bit of sunshine to carry you through the weekend.

Welp, it's Fan Art Friday, and once again I am short on fan art... However! Never let it say that I shall be deterred!

I've had some requests on reference photos for a couple that I absolutely love: Josh and Gabe. I revealed them briefly about a year ago, thinking at the time that the very next book I would be writing would be Shifter Centric... come to find out, I have a lot of work to do before I can start writing SC - which is intended to be to HBL what the Ender's Shadow series is to the Ender's Game series. So! For your entertainment, and reference, here is more of Josh and Gabe.

Josh

Gabe

My original version of Josh and Gabe

Andrea Hatch's version of Josh and Gabe

I hope you love them as much as I love them. ;) You get to meet them in the last parts of Hard Bank Left.

Fan Art Friday

I really don't have much for you this week. I've been very busy trying to coordinate this character competition. YOU HAVE ONE MORE WEEK PEOPLE! Please spread the word. So, for you, here is what I have for FAF.

In a word:

OHMYGOSHITSDOWNTOWNCHICAGOINTHELAST FEWCHAPTERSOFHBL!!!

I know... not really one word... and I missed an apostrophe... but still; that's pretty much it. Hope you guys have a great weekend!

Fan Art Friday!

Continuing with the bad guy theme: Constantine. The baddest bad guy ever - supposedly. In truth I know little about this guy. I know his history. I know his basic appearance. I know what has happened in his life. But his motivation is still a mystery to me. In writing HBL I had a close encounter with him... But this still leaves him a mystery to me. Thankfully, the edits I have in mind for Hard Bank Left give me the space to make Constantine the silent predator. I have very few pictures of him, but I'll share what I have.

There you go. That's pretty much it... only a little older. He's pretty much a scary business man. Aaaand I really need to work on him. *sigh*

But I do have pictures of The Twins. Yeah, that's right, The Twins. They're a pair of grotesquely evil torturing Dureri that I'm going to cover in Target Lost. I'm not going to tell you much in hopes that you'll find out in the webisodes. But, here are the reference photos that I totally love!

Fan Art Friday

Wow... is it Saturday??? Where did my week go? No seriously, my husband has a different work schedule on Saturday than he does the rest of the week, so I was freaking out when he got up at 8 and I thought it was 10... yeah, that was a bit of a shock.

So! Fan art Friday... again, I have little fan art to present, but I figured I might keep up with my theme of sharing what inspires me. (Seriously, I have a bunch, so I'll keep it coming.) So, it's bad guy day!

You've heard me make references to her, and seeing as how she's playing a bigger role in HBL, it's high time you guys see my inspiration for Ero Gleilien. This character, like many of my characters started off as something completely different in a completely different universe. Ero was originally a crazy Wild Elf in an RPG that had a major schtick with goblins. The best image I can give you of what she used to look like is this:

courtesy of Ashli Hara

But then I started writing a sci-fi novel and Ero became a care free pilot with an attitude that went a little something like this:

I still love this character, but I found in writing HBL I needed Ero and her partner Caprisha to fill a role, so she turned into more of a staunch bounty hunter working with a federal agent. Of course, all that would be a cover for her true self - a Commandant in the Shadow Cast's private military. (No worries my other characters got renamed, they have not gotten lost in the mix up!) So, now Ero looks a little something like this:

mixed with a little of this

 Yeah... I know, figure that one out. But I had a dream and somehow it worked! So, you'll just have to read on and see what I have in store.

Fan Art Friday

Again, I am a little low on fan art, but at least I'm getting a few more fans. :) *waves hello to the half dozen people paying attention* But, I have my website up and running! So, if you're still looking for the latest webisode of Target Lost to pop up here, you're out of luck, because it's over there now.

Whelp, I suppose it's about time I talk about the Keypers and their keys. I know, you haven't really gotten there in the book. I've only posted two chapters. But! For those of you that have seen the pictures of the really cool keys that I keep posting I still owe you an explanation.

I stumbled across Keyper's Cove about a year ago and was immediately inspired by their array of fantastical keys. This inspiration bloomed into an obsession with underground, grass roots movements society... thing! (Yes, I know that seems a little redundant. I'm getting to it!). Underground because it's society that has taken root among a culture/group/sub-race of humans that most people don't know exist, and grass roots movement because the majority of the culture doesn't even know the society exists. If you have (a) better word(s) to describe what I just said, feel free to offer it.

In my mind, there are many traits of these keys that are unique, which I really won't go into detail about here (a woman has to have her secrets), but the main feature is that each member of this society-thing has their own, one specially made for them and specially attuned to their aether (not to be confused with The Aether).

Here are just some of the keys from Keyper's Cove that I've used as inspiration in The Shadow Cast Chronicles:

 Cadence's key

 Jeldhen's key

Krys's key

Lia's key

Adrianna's key

Casandra's key

Drystan's key

Nereida's key

Renee's key

and finally...

Gabe's key

*waits patiently for the sudden wave of key enthusiasts*

Fan Art Friday!

Well, seeing as how another week has come and gone and I am rather short on fan art (though fortunately, I've been gaining fans!) I figured today is a day for reverse fan art!

You know how some days you're really stumped and just can't think of a thing to write? Well, most of those days I revert to scoping out the interwebs for some inspiration. The years have granted me with a wide variety of fantastic art that has inspired me, inspired my world and, sometimes, inspired specific characters. I showed you a lot of Krys last week, allow me to introduce some of my other characters!

Jeldhen was inspired by one particular character and, if anyone has seen the Mummy franchise, you just may understand why.

Mind you, Jeldhen is 21, but you just can't beat Rick O'Connell for that classic international cowboy swagger. And then you have to throw in one of my favored artists who has inspired a great many things in my world:

Then there's Ve. Well, Ve has been inspired by a number of people, not the least of which being my lovely friend Kato. Most particularly, you may recognize this as being the main inspiration for Ve's appearance:

However, I am pleased to say that Kato is not, nor ever has been mad - at least not in the sense that Ve is. For that I can only thank Joss Whedon's vamptastic character Drusilla whom I adore.

Cadence is next, I suppose. But the thing about him is that I stumbled across a random pic on a random search that kind of lead to a number of different, completely unrelated pictures that eventually lead me to an underdeveloped character that very happily blossomed into the obsessive, slightly disturbed man that he has come to be. (Wow... I'm beginning to realize just how much I like writing crazy people...)

Fes sprung out of two pictures (one comes from Kato, no idea who took the other one). But in essence, these two pictures:

 gave me an entire attitude to an entire character that lead to an entire chapter that deserved to be in her very specific voice. Thank you whomever took these pictures.

Lia, as well, came from two random pictures... both of which are results of a random search:

The top one gave me her attitude which has been my favorite part of her whole obnoxious character. The second gave me her irrational fear of heights... no idea how I got that off the picture, but there it is!

Krys is the only character left from HBL, so I suppose I might as well feature her as well. But, I have so many pictures that have inspired her, that it's difficult to count and even more difficult to credit. I can say that the second one is from The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, the first one is the lead actress from Peter Pan, and I believe that somewhere in there is a steampunk Princess Leia. So, just for the heck of it, here are the inspirations for Krys: