Today really feels like work.

For the most part, The Peacock King and its related microgalaxy of projects is my hobby.  At least, that's the way it's been for ages; I wrote when I felt like it, drew when I felt like it, and worked on the wiki when I felt like it.  The most effort I expended was nagging at Irk to write, an effort that has paid off well, if I do say so myself.

Lately, though, the game has changed for me.  Infernal Shenanigans is now my bread-and-butter, and what used to be my collection of fun little hobbies is suddenly also my job.  For the most part, it's not so bad; it's not like drawing taxes me much when I have to just churn it out, especially given the way I have constructed my workflow so that I can spin several plates, depending on which mode my brain is in at that given moment.  Writing, though... writing is different.

It's harder, for starters.  I can pick up any sort of mark-making device and scribble at any time.  In fact, I'm notorious for my habit of doodling while on the phone, and have had a few phone-doodles turn into full-fledged drawings.  I can't just open a document and write... well, I can (and have), but the results aren't usually anything I'd be willing to share with the general public.  Call it the text version of Gerald's doodles (although, to be fair, I'm rather certain that my word-doodles are a lot less dangerous to the stability of reality than Gerald's doodles).  I'm also a lot more forgiving about sloppiness and general yick in my drawings than I am writing.  Hell, I've posted scraps to dA that, had they been the written equivelant, I wouldn't have even bothered to save.

In spite of those misgivings, I've managed to land myself in a position where I have to write, no matter what my brain says about it, or how loud the kids are being that day, or how much (or how little) tea I've managed to consume.  (As of right now, 15:16 Pacific, I have had 4 cups of White Ayurvedic Chai and 1 glass of ... that peach flowering tea Irk bought and I can't remember its name.  I am about to go for a cup of Mate Vana, which means I'll probably end up drinking another.)  Part of writing this entry is trying to warm myself up and get that flow of characters a-marchin' across the screen, and another part is to track just what the hell keeps distracting me from writing.  

I feel warmed up, and can now happily report that I am being distracted by the following things:

• My kids
• Urgent biological needs (I've been drinking A LOT of tea, if you haven't noticed)
• Desire for more tea
• Unordered lists
• The urge to work on this commission some more, despite the issue with the hands throwing me into a tizzy and requiring MORE TEA to keep me calm
• Gmail (damn you, G-Labs!)
• Housekeeping (even though I STILL haven't scrubbed the toilets... hey, suddenly I want to write more!  WIN!)

Now that all that is (un)sorted out, I can start un-distracting myself and get to work.

With the exception of my kids.  Not much I can do about that except peck away in between taking care of them until the blessed little creatures are in bed.

... ooops. HEY GUYS CHAPTER UPDATE! :D

It went up on time. I... did not.

In my defense, I was getting ready to go out for the night when Irk updated, and by the time she was ready to go, I was doing the I'm Kind Of Paying For This Car Right This Minute And We're Not In It dance.  (I opted for a car-sharing program versus owning one outright.  It's LOTS cheaper, and worth a bit of inconvenience now and again for me.)  By the time we got home, all I wanted to do was sleep.  

So there.

(Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion nobody uses the news blog to track updates.)

Anyway!  Lots of fun doing that rush job on the image there.  I was in a rush (and it shows), but it was also kind of fun to just throw something out there without fussing myself into fits over the lines, or agonizing about every little aspect of composition, or trying to decide on technique... all of which I end up tossing out and doing what I want most of the time anyway.  Some days, I just don't feel like a real artist.  XD  

The Myriad Ways Google Image Search Makes Me Happy (plus a chapter update)

Chapter 35 - Pigs on the Wing

Thank you, Pink Floyd.

The best part of doing this chapter illustration was finding the references for the critters.  See, I tend to search Google Images with SafeSearch off.  I admit that the biggest reason is because of the delicious little bits of trauma it occasionally throws my way, but sometimes it tosses me something that makes my inner 12 year old ROFL.  Such as a photo of a moose humping a statue of a bison (probably NSFW... hard for me to tell, being all self-employed and all).

In the meantime, I'm trying not to have a panic attack about Novel 1 finishing.  I've been loving this update schedule, been loving watching things develop around the story, and I'm worried about having all that stop.  baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw.   Perhaps I should get Irk fired from her day job so she can write more or something.  I'm also ass-deep in writing my own huge chunk of story, which of course I can't post because it takes place 15 years after the events you're reading about, and... yeah.  That's spoilers even I won't sneak out.  

... Then again, there's all those snippets and short stories that we've been writing that can start being posted.  

Anyway, back to drawing OTP#1 again (I drew OTP#2 yesterday, but it's so chock-full of spoilers and stuff that would make NO SENSE yet to everyone else that I haven't uploaded anywhere).

Hey, am I even allowed to call it an OTP, if it's partially my story anyway?  Does "OTP" necessarily imply a non-canon ship in the first place?  I SHALL HAVE TO PONDER THIS.

Chapter 33 - Girls Gone Wild!

New chapter up! GIT SOME, JENNY!

So! .... New chapter up. ^^;;

The sad part about a new chapter being up is that it means we're that much closer to the end of Novel 1. Not that it's the end of the novel that makes me sad... in fact, this chapter is where I started going OH HELL YEAH WOOOOOOO \m/ every five minutes or so until the end of the novel. It's just...

... Oh you guys, I was just distracted by some downright FRIGHTENING art cycling on my other laptop. (Yep, I work on two. Believe it or not, it helps me make my ADD into something productive.) I'm not going to share what, though. Just trust me on this: there are some things I'd rather not see again, but it's just part of the hazard of posting art on y!gallery.

OH RIGHT. It's just that it's the end of an era in a way. Kind of bittersweet and all.

Oh man. I think I'd better just go to bed. Who knew that Sleepy Time tea would actually, you know, make me sleepy?

BEHOLD.

Common Radian - Beta

You can download it here.

OMG. I am SO SO SO SO SOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOOOOOO EXCITED. I'm STUPID with giddy. SERIOUSLY.

I'm going to make myself take a break before tweaking it, though. There's a few changes I already want to make, and I'm going to see if I can find another font proggie that will allow me to add points without having to redraw the entire damned glyph. 9_9 It should help solve some of the jaggedness issues.

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

So, like, I draw and stuff on occasion?

But I forget to update here when it's Peek-related. ... Which is an awful lot lately.

So. Thanks to Irk's constant nagging and the irresistible draw of people LOOKING AT MY STUFF :D :D :D I have a y!gallery account. The downside? Boys-only club leik woah. The upside? Lots of drive to push stuff out because people LOOK at stuff there OMG!

There's a lovely pic of Erynn there, as well as 'Sy and Daemon giving each other the friendliest-looking stink-eyes ever. The best part? Nobody knows who Daemon is, or anything about the Velvet Hell! (Except Trav, because Trav is special and introduced us to the Hell.) It's still worth looking at, right?

... Right? ;_;

OH MY GOD LOOK AT MY STUFF AND LOVE ME I CRAVE APPROVAL.

Now that I've spammed up the news feed, it's time to get back to drawing! Because God FORBID I write another word. Ever. ... ¬_¬

Artses

The continuing saga of our Valentine's Day art spree:


V-Day 2 - Rachella and Gerald by ~irk on deviantART



V-Day 3: Katherine and 'Sy by ~Karis-Surya on deviantART


I have another pairing that I want to do, too. It's an utter crack pairing, but it's cuter than HELL and also makes me squee a little inside with delight. Sadly, it's spoilery as all get-out because it reveals a character that's not been introduced yet and a character who... well, shit. I might do it anyway, because NOBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD (except Irk) would get what's going on there anyway!

But first, website work. ... Well, maybe after sketching a bit, but I really do need to work on the website today!

Waugh. Web design gives me gas, y'all. I did it for a living... like, a decade ago, and I think it shows. I'm rusty as heck and I'm worried everything will look dated and ugly and WAUGH. I need to do it anyway, or I will have forgotten the face of my Father or something.

Ramblings I

Our setup is something like this: two laptops on the kitchen table, roughly two feet apart.  My laptop is usually jacked into the stereo, and is usually playing the most current version of the Peacock King soundtrack.  (Currently playing: "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?" - Paula Cole... wait, make that "You're No Rock n' Roll Fun" - Sleater-Kinney.)  The lights are on overhead, my knitting is half-hidden by stacks of papers, and Irk occasionally looks up from her laptop to stare into space.

She also twitches, people.  It's like her brain runs on a friggin' friction drive.

There is the ever-present tea.  Neither of us are capable at this point of writing without a cup of tea to keep us company.  When Irk first moved in with me, I had to train her in the fine art of brewing tea, and introduced her to the wonders of fresh loose-leaf teas.  I can now safely say that she's at least as hard-core about her tea as I am, although I suspect she's a bit more willing to drink the pre-bagged stuff than I am.

Laptops, music, tea... cats.  We're up to four cats in the house now, even though two of them are still ensconced in my bedroom acting as if the entire universe just shat on their little kitty lives.  (In a way, that might just be true.  After all, the poor dears have to live with my kittyboys and my children now.)  Roland, my snowshoe Siamese mix, tends to either hang around our feet or hang off the back of the couch, when he's not trying to upturn the garbage can.  Gordon is ... Gordon.  I think he's more of a mobile rug than a proper cat.

In the midst of all this, Irk drinks her tea and shimmies the table and churns out more story.  I support this activity by playing music, drawing, and surfing 4chan writing my own stuff.  After a while, I either give up waiting for her to finish and go to bed, or she'll announce (with the proper amount of angelic trumpeting and holy beams of light) that she has finished another bit of manuscript, and would I like to read it?

We'll ignore for now the fact that seven times out of ten I've been sneaking peeks at the document while she's writing anyway. Oh, the joys of sharing GoogleDocs!

... I think that's enough rambling for now.  I'll just finish this off by pointing out the new banner (yay) and the new art on Chapter 4 (also yay).  Time to get back to my own scribin'...