I am back with another Inktober series! This year is my second year doing Inktober, I did it for the first time last year. Continuing the theme of last year, I will be dividing the series into three parts-- 10 drawings for each part, and then 11 in the final post. If you wish to check out my Inktober posts from 2021, you can check them out here: part 1, part 2, and part 3.
Also, as a reminder, I am doing a Q&A on this blog for novel. If you wish to leave questions for the second part of the Q&A (if you haven't already) you can do so here. But back to this post, let's get started with the drawings:
The Official Prompt list for Inktober:
And here are my drawings...
Day #1 Gargoyle, I thought it would be interesting if someone (a spy/rogue), was hiding amongst gargoyles waiting to make a move.
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Day #2 Scurry, I drew of a dog character from a children's book I'm working on, whose name is Toto. This isn't one of the drawings for the book, but I thought it would be fun to draw none the less.
Day #3 Bat, I drew an (elvish) vampire, since that was the first thing that came to mind. She has a tattoo/face-paint of a bat on her left cheek, and I gave her red eyes.
Day #4 Scallop, I had to look up what a scallop was to make this drawing. Once I figured it out, I decided to draw a mermaid with a scallop as a necklace. It ended up turning into Arisias as a mermaid.
Day #5 Flame, Since Karleon the god of Mischief gives his devotees blue fire magic (along with sometimes the gift of prophecy, but that will be talked about later), I thought it would be fitting to draw him.
Day #6 Bouquet, This drawing was inspired by a John William Waterhouse painting "Gather Ye Rosebuds While You May (1908)". I took the life drawing approach and only drew the lower part of the body (not the face), so that I could focus on the hands.
Day #7 Trip, This reminded me of my characters traveling in my novel, Becoming the Body Thief. So, I drew something inspired by that. Since the writing on the sign got a little messed up, I'll tell you what it says. It says "The Woodland Tavern." There is an also an altar to a god off to the side with coin offerings from travelers.
Day #8 Match, The first thing that came to mind was lighting a match. So, I decided to draw that along with a candle.
Day #9 Nest, It's been a while since I did a drawing of a bird! So, I decided to draw a bird sitting in its nest.
Day #10 Crabby, For this I thought I would reference the mermaid theme from earlier, and draw a mermaid sitting with a crab. I really like how it turned out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which drawing is your favorite? And are you doing Inktober this year?
On September 17th, I finished the first draft of Becoming the Body Thief!It was a novel I worked on during Camp NaNoWriMo, and it feels good to have the first draft done so that I can move onto the second. In this post I will also be including a Q&A about my novel. Thank you to everyone who submitted questions. Like my last Q&A, this is going to be divided up into two parts. I did this because some of my answers were quite long. So, if I don't answer your question(s) in this part I will in the next, and if you didn't get a chance to leave a question for this part, you can leave one for the next part here.
The reason I decided to do a Q&A along with this celebration post was that I realized readers would probably want to know a bit more about the story, or about what it is like to be a criminal in my Fantasy world. So, I decided to make a post asking for questions about that. This post will answer those questions, as well as talking about what I will be doing next drafting-wise.
Synopsis
(Images used from Pixabay. The paintings are: "The Soul's Prison House" by Evelyn De Morgen, "The Shadow" by Edmund Blair Leighton, and "God Speed!" by Edmund Blair Leighton. The lyrics quoted are from the song "Over the Hills and Faraway". The template I used to make this mood-board was made by Ayzrules).
Genres: Fantasy | Crime | Adventure Series: Second book in the Princess Arisias Mystery series
After Arisias is framed for a crime that she did not commit, she finds herself having to work amongst criminals. In order to bring the one who wronged her to justice, that is "The Body Thief," Arisias finds she will have to blend into her new surroundings by acting like a criminal. In doing so, she has to enlist the help of two thieves and a con-artist. But as all of this is happening, Arisias fears that she will become the very thing she is pretending to be. Will she become a criminal like The Body Thief?
What's Next For Becoming the Body Thief?
The next phase for this novel is to work on the second draft. In the first draft I worked to get down what happens in the story, but I did not focus much on the prose. So, I will now be focusing more on the style and the world-building. While I already built a lot of the world (though there is still more to work on--such as the pantheon of gods, and the magic system), I didn't include as much of it as I would like to do in the first draft.
With this in mind, I will be focusing more on what the criminal world is like. In world-building for this book, criminals' relationship with the gods is different from that of law abiding citizens. Some gods will refuse to give criminals magic, but other gods are more willing to, or perhaps they just do not care about the background of the person. Karleon, the god of mischief, is one of these less careful gods. This is because he is a trickster god, and tricksters tend not to care about legality of most things. (Also, Karleon stole magic from the king and queen of the gods. I don't think he has a leg to stand on when judging criminals.)
Speaking of criminals who have magic, I have a con-artist character who was given magic by the god of music. But then, I also have a character who has no powers whatsoever, but his abilities as a thief seem magical even though they aren't.
I also want to develop the locations of the story more. For example, I made some versions of one of the taverns that appear in the book in a virtual world. I did this because I generally have trouble figuring out the layout of a room in writing: visualizing it is just hard for me. I want the readers to feel as if they are there and could visit the taverns that appear in it.
This was also one of the few books where I actually have written a fight scene. Most of my books didn't focus on fighting, but instead on solving a mystery. So, because fight scenes are important in Becoming the Body Thief, I want to make sure they are well written. For instance, I don't have my characters instantly defeat an opponent or monster with magic or weapons.
So, that is my plan for the second draft of Becoming the Body Thief. Now on to the Q&A!
* * * * * * * * *
Q&A
In order to make this more fulfilling and to ensure that I give you the information you want about the novel (but not enough that it spoils the story), I asked for questions for my novel in the previous post. Here are my answers to some of the questions.
The first wasn't really a question, but I want to talk about it anyway. Someone left a comment about fantasy stories involving heists and criminals, mentioning Six of Crows. I find this interesting, because it was only this year that I read Six of Crows. The Fantasy writing group I am running voted for it as one of the books to read for our book club. This really led me to think about the inspiration for my own story...
My inspiration was the TV show, Leverage (which is not Fantasy, but is a show focusing on heists). This was the first crime show I ever watched, and it also definitely inspired elements and characters of my story. However, I should say that, unlike the characters from Leverage, my thieves and my con-artist (who all work for Arisias) are completely unaware that they are doing something good (or at most, a pale shade of gray).
I love fantasy cities. Will Arisias be working with a thieves guild or anything like that?
The thieves that Arisias works with are loners. They work for themselves and don't like being tied down to a guild. (There are thieves who join guilds in this world, just not these thieves.) Nevertheless, they were persuaded to work for Arisias.
I also enjoy Fantasy cities: my characters visit several throughout the story. Some are shader than the others, like the one where Venus (the con-artist) lives. However, to visitors the city appears to be safe, People ignore what is going on beneath the surface and generally come there to have a good time (with or without later regrets).
I like the idea of Arisias having to work with criminals. I wonder if they'll be hardened ruthless types or more heart-of-gold types. :)
I'd say the criminals are in the middle between these two. I will say they lean more toward hardened-and-ruthless than heart-of-gold since they have been in the criminal world for years and years. However, a lot of my sympathetic characters have backgrounds that are...bad or questionable. Despite their ruthlessness you, the reader, will eventually be able to relate to them on some level...even if you disagree with their (past) actions.
Question from Anonymous:
How long will your novel be, and how long do you think you will need to complete it? Good luck!
Thank you for wishing me luck. 😃 The first draft was 32,520 words in length. My best guess is that the second draft is going to be twice as long or longer--in the first draft I was outlining more than focusing on the prose. I really don't know for sure, but my best answer is, longer than 32,520 words.
As for when I am going to complete it, it has really no exact date at the moment. It depends on other projects of mine-- given that I have to take into account details like world-building, character-building and naming certain characters and places.
I believe I am going to finish (and publish) Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass first, and then The Mystery of the Body Thief,and then this one. As I answer this, though, I also have to take into account that I've been working on The Mystery of the Body Thief since 2018. My writing was very different in 2018, so I had to do a lot of work to get it to my current writing style. For Becoming the Body Thief, it will be far easier to rewrite. But since Becoming the Body Thief is the second book in the series, the first book will have to be completed first.
I'm interested in the justice system in your novel's world. Is it fair? Are judges/lawyers corrupt and bribable? Is the justice system excessively punitive?
(Image from wiki commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_william_waterhouse_fair_rosamund.jpg)
It really depends on what judge/lawyer you get and the situation as a whole.
If the crime is related to royalty then there can be meddling and bias in the court (as in if the person who was attacked was royalty not the accused). Judges will be on the side of royalty for the most part and rule in favor of them. But, if a royal is accused of a crime, there will be different opinions.
It is believed that if a king, queen, prince, or princess commit a crime, that they have gone against the gods, since they were chosen by the gods to be royalty. But others will assume that the royal is innocent and try their hardest to prove this, even if the evidence is pointing in the opposite direction.
So overall, for Royalty the legal system is complicated and sometimes can be corrupted. I should also say this applies to priestesses/priests, because they the same power as royalty.
All that being said when a crime involves only common citizens, the legal system in this world is quite fair. Nevertheless, other biases can arise in the court (such as people avoiding angering the god(s) they're devoted to, political biases, biases based on species, etc.)
Penalties for some crimes are quite extreme. But once again it really depends on the situation. Some people are not eager to give out penalties that are irreversible for petty crimes such as theft. Instead people will be confined to prisons for a certain amount of time. But for murder, it depends: some people believe in the death penalty, while others have argued that a life sentence is better.
(Keep in mind that a "lifetime" to a certain species might be different. For the Fair Folk that is hundreds if not thousands of years, to a human it would be shorter).
Will Arisias face the death penalty for any crimes she may commit or be framed for?
The death penalty is a thing some criminals face in Dragons' Province for committing crimes, and public executions are held (this is something some kingdoms ruled by elves find primitive, so don't do it, but since Dragons' Province has had both elvish and human rulers at different points that it is why it happens). In this case-- without spoiling anything, the crime Arisias was framed for would usually have the death penalty, but, they were unable to do it. (This is for reasons that will be revealed in the book. I'll let you, the readers, speculate for now on what those reasons are.) But regardless, her punishment is far from being pleasant and is very traumatic, even if not that extreme.
What are the prisons like? Warehouses or hellholes or both?
It depends on the prison you're sent to as a prisoner. Most are far from pleasant and quite hard to escape from (whether it was made by humans, dwarves, or the Fair Folk--that is the elves or fairies). They're all different, and they have different ways of messing with a prisoner's mind. This is not illegal to do in their world. (It would be illegal in our world.)
(A typical made by the Fair Folk, prisoner at the front an illusion appearing at the back).
A prison made by the fair folk (the elves and fairies) would seem beautiful upon entering. It would even be hard to tell that it was a prison because of its sheer beauty. However, upon staying there for a long time, one will begin to feel like the prison is playing tricks on their mind. They will see visions of different things that happened in their prior life and of their greatest fears. At times, it will seem possible to escape the prison-- the prisoner will have false hope and only later will find out it was all a trick. And sometimes when walking around the prison, they may feel as if they are getting lost in it. Time will feel as if it either going too quickly or too slowly, depending on what the prisoner is used to.
(A fay and a human prisoner in a prison made by humans)
A prison made by the humans is mostly like a warehouse. Prisoners are allowed to leave their cells periodically and wander around-- but only at certain times. Prisoners usually keep to themselves. Even though it is periodic isolation, this kind of isolation eventually begins to mess with the minds of the prisoners confined there.
(An elvish prisoner in a typical dwarf prison).
In a dwarfish prison, one is confined in a completely underground prison. There are cells for different prisoners like in human prisons, but prisoners are not allowed out. The cells have the feeling of a collapsed mine: no sunlight is allowed in, and prisoners can feel as if they are stuck unground for ages and ages. It does not help that they are not able to wander about.
The state of the prisons makes criminals (and people in general) want to avoid getting arrested. Some authorities believe that the harsh nature of the prisons makes crime-rate lower, but in reality the prisons are not the issue. It just makes criminals try to avoid getting caught at all costs. And for those who are framed for crimes, it is a very scarring punishment when they didn't do anything wrong.
Are there a lot of criminals in this world? Are people forced into criminality in order to survive?
There are a lot--enough that I'd say that the crime rate is high in Dragons' Province. Generally, people are forced into being criminals in order to make ends meet. Though, people's reasons also depend on the crime committed. For murder, there can be sympathetic reasons (such as self defense), but it can also be done for horrible reasons...
Theft or conning someone, is something most people do to survive, at least something they are forced into doing. There are others, who do it for greedy reasons or because of the fun of it. But, mostly people do it because they have to or are forced to. It really depends on the criminal whom you're talking about.
...This is the end of part one of the Q&A. If you would like to get a question or questions in for part two, you can ask them here or comment them down below.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which prison from my Fantasy world would you least like to be confined in? And, do you have a favorite Fantasy story that involves criminals or crime?
I just finished the first draft of Becoming the Body Thief. It is a novel I was working on during this year's Camp NaNoWriMo. Last year I did a Q&A forTheMystery of the Body Thief, which you can readhereandhere. I thought I would do a similar post for Becoming the Body Thief, because I don't want to just give a simple description of the project and what I am going to do next. So, a Q&A with questions from you, the readers, is also going to be included in the post.
Here is a synopsis, which will also be included in the Q&A post, and may be helpful for coming up with questions:
This takes place after the events of The Mystery of the Body Thief.
After Arisias is framed for a crime that she did not commit, she finds herself having to work amongst criminals. In order to bring the one who wronged her to justice, that is "The Body Thief," Arisias finds she will have to blend into her new surroundings by acting like a criminal. In doing so, she has to enlist the help of two thieves and a con-artist. But as all of this is happening, Arisias fears that she will become the very thing she is pretending to be. Will she become a criminal like The Body Thief?
Here are two posts I made during Camp NaNoWriMo that involved Becoming the Body thief: part 1 and part 2. And lastly, here is the page with profiles of the characters from the entire book series (Becoming the Body Thief is the second book). I have not yet created the profiles for all of the new characters, but most of the characters who are included on that page also appear in the second book-- even if they don't directly talk to Arisias in it.
Regarding the questions: feel free to get creative with your questions. (But please avoid asking questions that have spoilers in them such as "who or what is the Body Thief?"). If you're feeling stuck, here are some example questions to get inspired by--
Has your story surprised you in anyway while you wrote it?
What are the new characters (the thieves and the con-artist) like?
What is it like to be a criminal in your Fantasy world?
What was the inspiration for your novel?
You can either ask the questions you have about it down in the comments down below, or ask it in this Google form (I will be mentioning who left the questions hence the name and blog part of the form, but if you would like to be Anonymous, you can just enter "Anonymous" and entering your blog is optional (since not everyone has one)):
Hailey Marshall Writes and I, decided to do a collaboration, that features our characters D.I. Time and Shadow, interviewing each other. You can check out Hailey's part here where Detective Inspector Time interrogates interviews Shadow. Here is my part, where Shadow interviews D.I. Time:
In doing this I learned a lot about my character, D.I. Time, that I hadn't known before, and it was really fun. Thank you, Hailey, for collaborating with me. One thing I noticed, is that D.I. Time does not like being the one who is being questioned (in this case interviewed), which I realize is why he felt so awkward in answering questions. When he was interviewing Shadow he behaved like he usually does.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Did you relate to any of D.I. Time's answers? Have you ever been interviewed?
I thought it was time to do another drawing post, so here it is:
This drawing was actually inspired by a prompt that my writing group on NaNoWriMo posted-- which was a guest prompt by Alien Romance. The prompt involved frogs, so, I ended up deciding to draw Ophelia helping a frog get back to its pond. Since Ophelia is a priestess to the Earth elemental goddess, it seemed in character for her to do that.
A drawing of Oceana my siren character-- I really like how her hair turned out.
I really wanted to capture her personality in the drawing, and I think I managed to.
I was kind of frustrated that Tinker Bell's wing was healed at the end of The Secret of the Wings.
So I redesigned her as if she never had her wing healed and was much closer in character to another fairy, Rani.
Austen is a character who used to be part of The Mystery of the Body Thief. He used to be Ophelia's boyfriend interestingly enough. However, I'd figured I'd redraw him (since I drew him a while ago) and reuse him but in a different story.
I don't know which story he should go in, but I am thinking a ghost story of some kind might be fitting for his character. Given that he is in between being dead and alive-- and isn't quite dead, and isn't quite alive.
This is an old D&D character, who I decided to redesign and redraw and may use in a story of some kind. The Character's name is Sarah, and she is a warrior-- Her lower body is paralyzed so she uses a wheelchair, but that does not stop her from fighting, because she is skilled fighter with a bow and arrow.
And lastly, I have a drawing of Elm. I've been playing around recently with drawing in Photoshop and been getting better at it. This was one of my recent attempts, and I really like how it turned out.
Also, here's a video I made of my process of drawing her:
I decided this song deserved its own post, since it is one of my complete songs that I am really proud of. I wrote it for a songwriting guild; the prompt for it was to write a song inspired by a painting. So I ended up choosing, this painting as inspiration for it, it was of a sinking ship so my first thought was a siren song. While writing this song I was very much inspired by "My Jolly Sailor Bold" from Pirates of the Caribbean and "Arms of the Ocean" by Blackbriar.
In my process of creating the song, I decided that instead of using a background track with instruments, that sound effects of waves and thunder would be better suited for it-- as I wanted to capture the feeling that you're hearing this when you're in the ocean or traveling at sea, like the man and woman in the painting.
Lyric writing wise, I decided to focus on ocean related imaginary, such as poetic images related to sea foam, the waves, and the ocean itself. Since the song is being sung by a siren in the ocean, it would make sense for her to focus on ocean related imaginary. Also, when writing this song, I eventually had an idea for a character who now appears in my posts regularly: Oceana. She is the one who sings the song. I never really write songs from my perspective-- but instead from a character's perspective.
So, here is the song:
This is the lyric video I made for it.
But if you want to listen to the music alone, here it is:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What's your favorite lyric from my song? Do you have a favorite siren-inspired song?
I'm back with another installment of using polls to create art!
To summarize what this series is about, I post a poll asking what I should draw. People vote, and whichever choice ends up winning, I draw. Unless otherwise stated, every drawing was a majority vote. Also I should add, some of the drawings this time around are redraws of Pixton comics I made when I was a child (I was about twelve or thirteen I think?) I had voters vote on which of them I should redraw. While the others are the usual drawings you'd see in this series.
Here's the drawing that came out of the poll in the previous post in the series.
Felix Moore from Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass ended up winning. So I drew him as a merman.
I had a lot of fun drawing details in the drawing like the suit and tail.
I also made a video showing my process of drawing it.
I did a poll where I redrew a painting in my style. The painting that the drawing was based on was this one. I thought it made sense for Ophelia to be using the crystal ball, given that she likes that type of magic.
I had the voters decide on which of my characters I made in Pixton I should redraw in my style.
Lieutenant Williams ended up winning. She is a half Klingon half human.
Here is what she looked like in the Pixton style:
I wrote the comic she was from years and years ago, and there were a ton of spelling errors in it.
But, I find it nice to revisit old stories and characters-- especially because they can show how different
my stories are today than they were back then.
Speaking of old stories and characters, I had the voters decide between having me redraw this Pixton comic and another one. The second one won, which is Edward's and Willow's wedding. I decided in the redraw not to draw them in the same pose but instead draw them in different poses. In the comic as a whole I would use real photos as the background while the characters would be Pixton characters.
Looking back at it now, the backstory of how they fell in love is really not romantic. The comic itself retold the story of The Little Mermaid (leaning towards the Disney version, not so much the Hans Christian Anderson one) but with dryads and wood cutters. And in this version Willow literately caused the shipwreck and then when she saw how handsome (and in pain) Edward was, she changed her mind. She didn't do this for the several wood cutters before 🤔-- 1,712,302 of them to be exact, I'm not joking: that was the number I wrote in the comic, minus 1. 😆
I don't know what child-me was thinking! 😂 Especially since Willow never once tells him that she was the dryad that did that at all.
This is a drawing of Elm. I had the voters vote on what I should draw her wearing out of several options for outfits. This outfit ended up winning. I really like how the outfit looks. However, I feel her arms are a little too short proportion wise. But other than that I like the drawing.
This is a character from the same fanfic that I wrote years ago. I had another poll, about which character I should draw in my style, and she won. She is called the EEH (Emergency Engineering Hologram). I was inspired by the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager when creating her. I wondered why there were no holograms for emergencies involving engineering. (That we can see in the show).
In the (Pixton) comic she is an enemy of the doctor on her ship. They don't have a particularly good relationship. And she was activated when most of the crew on the ship was kidnapped by aliens. So, she plays a similar role that The Doctor in Voyager plays.
This actually turned out to be a drawing that came out of a poll, and I somehow forgot that I had drawn it for that reason. This drawing was actually included in this post, though I combined it with a drawing that didn't come out of a poll.
Anyway, I had the pollers vote on which character I should draw, and what they should be doing. And Oak doing archery won.
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