Step 46: Give The Middle Finger To 2016

I think we all can agree that 2016 has been... somewhat of a shitshow.

2016 WYD???

A lot has happened since my last post in August, and none of it is particularly interesting so I'll spare my readers the details. But just yesterday I read the news that Ron Glass of Firefly fame had passed away, and it was on a morning just like this a few months ago that I was drawing a line illustration of Shepherd Book for the Serenity Adult Coloring Book published by Dark Horse, musing that Book was perhaps my favorite character of the series.

The sky is yours, Shepherd.

Speaking of books, there's been some developments with my own, but I'm not at liberty to discuss that right now. What I will say is that I finished writing a second book since August, and I haven't quite recovered from it yet. I didn't expect to become so emotionally invested in the lives of people conceived in my head, and I'm surprised at how much their fates are weighing on my shoulders. I'm sure a lot of artists struggle to separate their personal lives from their work, and the affection I carry for my characters hovers annoyingly between fantasy and reality. Perhaps I'm living vicariously through them as a means to escape the ugliness of society and my own unfulfilling existence, but I better start writing something more upbeat here pretty soon before the fictional landscape I've invented begins to mirror something altogether more awful--in the real world, and in my heart.

Here's a cute .gif of Bowie to cheer you me up.

Step 45: Get Stuff Done

ICYMI in my last post, I was picked to be a 2016 #PitchWars Mentee!

I was saving this .gif for when I got an agent but I think its use is warranted here!

Pretty sure I cashed in the last of my karma chips because the odds were fairly steep. Like, Han-Solo-successfully-navigating-an-asteroid-field steep.

Maybe I should go out and buy a lottery ticket or something.

As exciting as it is to be selected, I know this is but a single battle in a much longer war. Many awesome people have made posts varying from how literary contests are just one avenue toward authorship, to even hindering their publication timelines. Pitch Wars does not guarantee me an agent in November. I repeat: Pitch Wars does not guarantee me an agent in November. In fact, it doesn't guarantee me anything at all, but I suspect my awesome mentors Sonia Hartl and Jennifer Hawkins will utilize the next two months wisely and help me whip my manuscript into steroid-induced swoleness.

My word count just increased by OVER NINE THOUSAAAAND

To say I am nervous is an understatement. I haven't received my edit letter yet, but I've spoken to another mentee who told me her mentor asked her to basically rewrite her entire book from the ground up. I think I know where the weaknesses in my manuscript lie, so I fully expect my mentors to poke giant ego-deflating holes in those delicate spots, but I'm also aware their suggestions might make me see my MS in a whole new light. And that--for better or worse--is not something I can completely prepare for.

I bet you thought you'd seen the last of these rewrites.

But getting an agent at the end of Pitch Wars was never the goal. The goal was to take my book and make it into something great. If I have something stellar on my hands, the rest of the pieces will (hopefully) fall into place. And a secondary goal was to connect with others in the literary community and to locate my tribe, which I've found in spades. Sonia has taken on three mentees in total, and we've already become acquainted with one another. We even have a name--with our powers combined, we form to become #TeamBossBitches!

It might take 20 cases of Two-Buck Chuck to get me through to November, but I will persevere! #apologiestomyliver

Step 44: Find Your Tribe

I sent this tweet last night while the folk behind #PitchWars were making their preparations for today's mentee reveals:

In case you're wondering, I am absolutely going to milk my screenname for all its worth.

I wrote it in regards to Pitch Wars, but there's more to it than just a dick pun and hashtag. Because, in my journey to become a storyteller, I've discovered two things:

1. Writing is absolutely a solitary lifestyle, and
2. The loneliness will drive you batshit insane if you don't find a community of people to metaphorically wrap their arms around you.

Essentially, it's of the utmost importance to surround yourself with others who understand the struggle you are going through in order to retain your sanity. A tribe, if you will. And this is a bittersweet notion for me, because I once had a tribe--many tribes, in fact. I rode horses with a group of ten women from the ages of 11 to 21 who I considered my tribe; when we disbanded, I found another tribe among the costumers I met when I was active in the cosplay community throughout my twenties; I was embraced by yet another tribe of artists when my illustration career took root.

As my interest changed and my priorities shifted over the years, so has my sense of belonging. I am still friends with many of these people--equestrians, cosplayers, and artists alike--and many more have continued to support me throughout my endeavors, but the feeling of togetherness that originally brought us together has waned. I hold no ill will towards anyone who has felt the drift, and I hope they feel the same about me.

But I've discovered a new tribe of fellow pre-published authors through #PitchWars, those who have an intimate understanding of the sting of rejection and continue to preserver through overwhelming odds. I miss my old tribes, but I am looking forward to immersing myself in this new one. Each tribe holds a special place in my heart, and nothing short of a well-placed anvil falling on my head can take that away from me.

So as to not keep you in suspense any longer: I'm officially a 2016 Pitch Wars Mentee!

Step 43: Prepare For War

I know it's been forever and a day since I've posted on my blog, but it's for a very good reason I can sum up in two words: Pitch Wars.

It's something like that.

When I first heard about the #PitchWars hashtag a few months ago, I noted it in my calendar along with the rest of the Twitter literary pitch events. Little did I know that it would consume my entire month of July.

BRB SLEEPING FOREVER TT_____TT

In a nutshell, #PitchWars is a contest that pairs up aspiring authors with published "mentors" who spend two months helping you rip apart your manuscript and piece it back together stronger than it was before. An agent window then opens in November for mentees to parade around their newly polished and publication-ready books.

It's a ridiculously amazing opportunity to be brought under the wing of people who have been in your shoes and understand the hard work that goes into taking a good MS and making it great. The catch? Last year, 1600+ entries vied for approximately 150 spots, and this year is expected to garner even more entries.

I spent the entire month of July dusting off my old Twitter account, getting to know potential mentors, and swapping query and first chapter critiques with fellow #PitchWars hopefuls. After several weeks of reading and re-reading my MS until my eyes bled, I finally took the plunge and submitted my beloved brainchild to six carefully-selected mentors.

Now what?

With the excitement of the submission window closing on Saturday night wearing off, I am beginning to temper my expectations. There's a lot of things you can do to up your chances of being selected as a mentee--picking the right mentors who are asking for exactly what your book has to offer, perfecting your grammar and prose in your MS, etc.--but what it really boils down to is sheer luck. Imagine, if you will, perusing a bookstore; sometimes you're in the mood for a corny romance, and sometimes you're in the mood for something more fantastical. #PitchWars works in much the same way--your best shot at getting selected is having something that just happens to align with a potential mentor's hankering at just the right time.  You can have the next A Song of Ice and Fire saga on your hands, but if your chosen mentor is dying for a good vampire fic, them's the breaks.

That's not to say I haven't gained anything from this experience--on the contrary, I am infinitely happier for having participated. Sure, I'll be as disappointed as the next person if I don't get picked, but realistically speaking, I might as well be disappointed in not winning the lottery. What I have acquired from participating in #PitchWars has been invaluable: I've connected with people in the writing community that I would not have otherwise met, and I've made my MS even better than I ever thought it could be. Ultimately, though, I've learned an important lesson in perseverance, because not winning #PitchWars does not equal defeat. Whether I get into #PitchWars or not has no bearing on the potential success of my manuscript, and pushing forward in the face of staggering odds is what makes or breaks a writer.

To Brenda Drake and all of the amazing #PitchWars mentors: I salute you!

Step 42: Answer The Ultimate Question Of Life, The Universe, And Everything

If you don't get the reference to this post title, that's okay. I've never actually read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I consider myself to be one of the foremost experts on geek culture.

Shame indeed, Septa Unella.  SHAME INDEED.

The Twitter event #PitchWars is coming up, which is sort of like a pre-published author version of The Hunger Games. Or Battle Royale, if you're an 90's anime weaboo like I am.

If you weren't ~*blessed*~ to grow up with Sailor Moon, I feel sorry for you.

Some writers are pimping out their Author Bios under the cleverly-titled hashtag, #PimpMyBio. So I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring, even though for me writing a personal bio is about as much fun as jerking off using a hedgehog.

On the one hand, ow. On the other hand... I mean, you're still masturbating. /letscallitadraw

Shall we get started?  First and foremost, here's some basic stats.  I am:

• 31 years old but forever 17 in my head
• A cisgendered female
• Happily married to a man but would identify myself somewhere on the queer spectrum
• A San Diego native
• A 2007 alumna of the University of California, San Diego with a B.A. in Visual Arts

I've worked professionally as a freelance illustrator in the comic book industry since 2009, but my real passion has always been in graphic novels (Blankets changed my goddamned life--seriously, go read it right now). My short graphic story, Strawberry Wine, was a winner of TokyoPop's 2008 Rising Stars of Manga contest and was published nationally in their anthology book. The manuscript that I am currently peddling about, Defining Lines, actually started life as a graphic novel, and I would love to revisit the medium one day (time and finances permitting).

And so long as my drawing hand doesn't fail me.

At any rate, this little spiel of mine is starting to sound suspiciously like a query letter, so lets move on to the fun stuff.  In my spare time, I like to:

• Cosplay
• Draw
• Read
• Play video games

Pertaining to that last one, I am an especially avid fan of the Final Fantasy franchise. My all-time favorite game is Final Fantasy X, and I will fight anyone who says Final Fantasy VIII is a shit game and not worth playing.

Take your FFVII superiority complex and shove it.

I also enjoy decorating my Lakeview Manor house in Skyrim with the bones of fallen dragons I have slain:

Unless they slay me first.  It happens.

And to round this post out, I'm going to link to a few random .gifs that are relevant to my interests:

When u sneeze so hard u regenerate

Exhibit A: My first sexual awakening

Real men wear pink.
(Alternate caption: Bye Felicia~)

Data with his emotion chip is just the best I can't even

Welp, that about sums it up!  I hope you enjoyed this little stroll down .gif lane, and I'm looking forward to #PitchWars! May the odds May the Force Live Long and okay whatever good luck everyone!

EDIT:  Most mentees appear to be including some info about their manuscripts along with their bios, so here's mine in a nutshell--

DEFINING LINES is the story of an awkward girl who suddenly becomes popular and--hahaha just kidding, awkward girl stays totally awkward and unexpectedly finds her Prince Princess Charming! YA Contemporary LGBTQ+ Romance with a sprinkling of David Bowie and pop culture, complete at 92,000 words.

Step 41: Life Goes On

I feel my crippling grief starting to ebb. I've made it a couple of days without crying, and while it's still hard to look at photos of Niles, I don't fall to pieces in a puddle of my own misery upon viewing them. Which is a good sign, because I really don't have the time to come apart at the seams right now. I've been hired to illustrate five detailed drawings on an incredibly tight deadline, and I really shouldn't even be taking the time to write this blog post unless I'm in the mood to pull an all-nighter tonight.

This is fine.

I'm certainly not complaining--while I can't talk about what I'm working on just yet, I can tell you it's a licensed franchise that I'm a big fan of--but boy howdy, it's been a chore. I'm starting to get the feeling that maybe I'm not cut out for this type of work; deadlines are not particularly lenient to the whims of creativity.

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” -Douglas Adams

Still, I don't have much else to keep me busy. On the literary front, things are progressing about as quickly as can be expected (which is to say, not that quickly). My full manuscript is out with two agents at the moment (and a partial with a third), but I've played the waiting game before so I know how the process goes. Interestingly, one of my characters from my book visited me in a dream during my mid-afternoon siesta today; it was strangely comforting to be able to interact with them as if they truly existed. We drove together down a road, chitchatting about what we meant to each other, and headed off to explore the basement of my old high school.

Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that cold pizza right before I fell asleep.

Step 40: Take One Step At A Time

The vet who put Niles down called me out of the blue today to see how I was doing. It was curiously serendipitous timing, because I had tried calling a pet loss grief hotline late last night and was unable to get through to anyone. He listened patiently as I bawled my eyes out and relayed my regret over not saving Niles' ashes.

He then said to me that I shouldn't sweat it too much, and that I would not likely feel lifelong remorse over it.  He told me to take comfort in the fact that the hardest decision I had to make, which was the easiest one to screw up--whether to try and prolong Niles' life or not--was the most important one that I got right. He went on to say that he had known many people, himself included, who had tried to hold on to a beloved animal's life for far too long and for selfish reasons, to the detriment of their pet's wellbeing. When the time came for me to choose what was best for Niles, it was a no-brainer for me: I wanted what was best for him, and a dignified death was my parting gift to him.

It never really occurred to me that I would ever chose to prolong Niles' pain because I wasn't ready to let go. My job as his guardian was to make the right choices that he couldn't make for himself. I knew the grieving process would be hard, but seeing him in pain was by far the worse alternative. The vet said he had never seen a young woman make such a hard decision so bravely and decisively, and that he was so impressed with how I handled everything that he had relayed my situation to his coworkers and family members alike.

I have to remember that ashes are for the living, not the dead. Wherever Niles' remains are now, he's not alive to care. I have a lifetime of pictures, mementos and memories to remember him by; ultimately, all that really matters is not where his ashes are but that every second of his life was led in comfort and he was surrounded by love, so I will try and move forward without regret. And I will do as the vet told me, and take comfort in the fact that when the time came to make the hardest decision of all, I chose wisely.

Step 39: Deal With It

Tonight has been an exceptionally hard night for me. I suppose I am somewhere between the anger and depression stages of grief right now, because I am sincerely frustrated and burdened with guilt over not opting to keep Niles' ashes.

I am generally an indecisive person, but I have noticed that in deeply distressing situations my brain switches over into some sort of auto-pilot mode, where feelings are irrelevant and logic and pragmatism take over. On the one hand, it's a fantastic coping mechanism for when difficult decisions arise; on the other hand, it doesn't take into consideration the roller coaster of emotions I will experience after all is said and done.

When I first got the text that Niles wasn't eating, his mortality didn't even cross my mind. He was getting older, and colic--generally a treatable problem--is not an uncommon occurrence in horses his age. He had never been sick a day in his life, so I chalked it up to being lucky that he had gone this long without any major health issues, and was prepared to treat whatever ailed him in his twilight years.  The vet administered mineral oil, took a blood sample, and promised to call me first thing the next morning. I was already at the barn when I heard back from him: Niles' situation was serious, and that he'd meet me there to discuss the prognosis.

When I say things happened fast, I can't understate enough just how fast everything went down. In the span of thirty minutes, I listened to the vet calmly explain to me that Niles' liver was failing and that his condition was terminal, made the decision to let him go, and had to decide what I wanted to do with his body. All the while, my auto-pilot brain took over: Do what is right for Niles, your own feelings be damned. Be logical. Don't let your emotions get involved in the decision-making process.

A very nice gentleman arrived with a truck to remove Niles, but I had to make a choice: spend $200 to have him cremated with other livestock to be used for fertilizer, or spend $1000 to have him privately cremated and have the ashes returned to me. At the time, it seemed irrational to spend that much money on a pile of ashes. Niles was already gone;  it wasn't like he would have cared what happened to his body.  Having his remains sitting in a garbage bag in my storage shed seemed like such a depressing thought, and I took comfort in knowing that his ashes would be put to good use. The circle of life in action, so to speak. And since it was my mom who was footing the bill (and had already spent $700 in vet treatments up to this point), I couldn't bring myself to ask her for the additional extravagance of having him privately cremated.

I don't necessarily feel like not keeping his ashes meant I loved him any less; I'm not religious and don't have any particular attachment to bodies. I suppose keeping his ashes would have given me a sense of closure, but I saved some of his mane and tail, and my wonderful farrier has offered to create a piece of art from of his shoes. It's just that, for a horse who gave me so much love and affection for 18 years, $1000 seems like a drop in the bucket. He was worth that and so much more, and I feel like the least I could have done for him was bring him home with me.

Deep down, I know it's pointless to agonize over this. The window of opportunity has long since passed, and I'll just have to make do with the mementos that I have. But for once, I wish I had let my feelings get in the way of being practical. I don't know what I'm going to tell people when they ask if I saved Niles' ashes; "they were a lot of money" sounds like such bullshit when you're talking about a member of your goddamned family. I can only hope that this feeling is merely a part of the grieving process, and not some lifelong burden I'll have to bear.

Step 38: Find The Strength To Carry On

I had to let my best friend Niles go on Thursday. I know time is truly the only remedy for grief, but I hoped that by putting my feelings into words it would help ease the pain in my heart.

I knew this day would come eventually. Everyone who brings an animal into their lives is automatically signing themselves up for heartbreak, and death is simply a part of life.  As much as I can reason with myself that, yes, it's normal to feel this way, and yes, I made the right decision, I can't help by beat myself up over it. It all happened so fast, and in my robotic understanding that he was never going to get better and for fear of prolonging his pain, I made the quick decision to end things while he was still in good spirits. I wanted to remember him when he was still beautiful, and not a shadow of his old self, but days later I am wondering why I didn't give myself more time to say goodbye. What difference would an hour or two have made?

I sit here with a knot in my throat as I stroke his mismatched shoes--he had a club foot on his right front hoof, and an underslung heel on his left--and I think about what the Doctor said when Clara died:

"The day you lose someone isn’t the worst. At least you’ve got something to do. It’s all the days they stay dead."

It's not like I haven't ever lost anyone or anything close to me before. But, while Niles touched the lives of many, he belonged to me and me alone. We had a bond that transcended species lines--he owned me every bit as I owned him. He had and language and personality all his own that I not only understood, but was entirely fluent in. I knew what his favorite treats were and just where he liked to be scratched, and he knew how to walk gingerly around me as I sat on the floor of his stall, standing vigil while I cried over a boyfriend or a tough loss or simply because I had bit an onion.

Half of me is thankful that the decision was essentially made for me, that his condition was terminal and that I wouldn't be given the option of a long, painful treatment process to extend his life by a few extra months. The other half is consumed with guilt, wondering if maybe the signs were there and I could have spotted it earlier if I had just been looking for it, wondering if I simply didn't take care of him well enough to give him all the years he should have had.

The outpouring of support and sympathy has been vast and overwhelming. I know countless friends who have been in my shoes, so to that end I understand that my pain is just a drop in this bucket we call life. Unfortunately, it's my burden to bear--which seems apt, considering Niles carried me for 18 years. It's my turn to carry him in my heart for the next 18 years, and for the rest of my life.

FF Bey Ovation (1993-2016)

Step 37: Stand Up

Please forgive my absence; it's been a tough weekend.

I haven't talked about it on my blog, but my book is an LGBTQ story.  An agent asked me recently what my goals were for Defining Lines, and this was my response:

"I wrote Defining Lines as my contribution to the LGBTQ movement. I’m not a politician and it’s unlikely I will ever sway the masses or be in a position to enact laws that protect LGBTQ rights, but by writing this book I am offering my voice to those who might not be able to speak up. It might come as a surprise that I identify as a straight, cisgendered woman, but I wrote this story simply because it was something I wanted to read. I wanted to read about the lives of ordinary people living under extraordinary conditions, who may choose to live a life in secret for their own safety but are nonetheless brave for being true to themselves. I wanted to normalize the idea that love is love, no matter who you are attracted to or how you identify yourself. I wanted young gay and transgendered people to see Defining Lines not hidden away in some tiny boutique that specializes in LGBTQ literature, but proudly on display in the Young Adult section at Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com next to Anna and the French Kiss and The Fault In Our Stars, because the story of Defining Lines is the story of millions of people who shouldn’t feel marginalized because of who they are."

In light of the events in Orlando, my resolve to make this book available to every underrepresented individual in this country is stronger than ever. My goal in life is to live long enough to see the day when two men kissing doesn't even register on anyone's radar, and for trans people to be able to live their lives openly and to the fullest without nary a blink of judgmental eyes. If Defining Lines can help normalize that ideal and sway even one person towards the idea that love is love in all forms, I'll die a happy person.

I sure do, John Oliver.  And I'm singing right along with them.

Step 36: Do A Little Dance

A little news on the literary front: I've got two partial manuscripts and a full out on review!

When it rains, it pours!

In the days following the #PitMad Twitter event, my tweet got favorited twice more--once by an agent, and another from an independent publishing company. The publishing company requested the full, while the agent asked for the first three chapters. In addition, another agent--whom I had contacted on the recommendation of an agent who had passed on my query--also requested the first fifty pages of my manuscript.

I actually knew this guy back when he was MATT-FUCKING-MILLER.

It feels good to be oiling the pipeline, even if nothing pans out. I'm used to rejection at this point, but the target is starting to feel a little closer. I went from shotgun-firing my query to everyone and anyone with an e-mail address, and now I'm getting nibbles from the right demographic of agents for my book. It'll be interesting to see what the next few weeks hold!

Trying not to count my dancing chickens before they hatch.

Step 35: Take What You Can Get -- A Short Story In Gifs

Remember the time I missed that pitch session on Twitter by like 20 minutes?

Haha yeah that was a laugh wasn't it? No it most definitely was not

Well, there was another one yesterday. And I missed it again. BECAUSE OF COURSE I DID.

Whyyyy does everything feel like such an uphill battle?  TT__TT

Still, I had nothing to lose, so with thirty seconds of thought I went ahead and submitted my 140 character pitch (an hour late to the party).

Eight months of work summed up in one sentence? No problem!

And you know what? Against all odds, an agent favorited it! Which means they had to actively reach out to me and let me know they wanted to read my query.

Huzzah!

More than likely, nothing will come of it. But still! I'm proud that I'm too stubborn to let this go I haven't entirely lost the momentum to see this through to the end.

Y'all know I'm putting the next pitch session on my damn calendar.

Step 34: Be Inspired

I had somewhat of an art meltdown earlier this week. I wholly admit that coloring is not my strong point, but part of the reason I have such an aversion to it is because I just haven't found the right style for my line work. Realistic rendering looks weird with my bold penmanship, but I can't seem to hit the sweet spot with minimalist coloring that so many other artists make look easy.

Damn you talented artists! God damn you all to hell!

Speaking of artists, there are a couple out there that I've been positively obsessed with lately, to the point where I've been trying my hand at emulating their style. Phobs, a Russian artist I discovered some years ago on DeviantArt, creates brilliant sketch dumps that I can get lost for hours in. The images are too large to do any justice posting them on this blog, but a few of my favorites can be found here, here, and here.

Claire Hummel--better known as "shoomlah" on Tumblr--has a distinctive, whimsical style all her own, and yet her line work and coloring is very much in the same vein as Phobs. I think more than anyone she has mastered the art of "less is more" when it comes to coloring. Just look at her A New Hope tribute piece--all flat colors with very little rendering, and she still manages to capture the hustle and bustle of the Mos Eisley Spaceport.

Mos Eisley Morning by shoomlah on DeviantArt

At any rate, I tried incorporating some of their style into my own sketches. They both work the "cartoony" angle more than I'm used to (at least, since I've moved away from my original manga influence), but I love how expressive all of their characters are, so I'm willing to make the trade-off.

My hand was not prepared for actual pencil-on-paper contact. Ow.

Step 33: Keep At It

It's not much, but I sent out three more queries today.

Kind of how I expect to feel after the inevitable rejection.

A long time ago I made the mistake of researching the agents that I query. I mean, you want to do a little research so you aren't sending your Time Traveling, Post-Apocolyptic, Young Adult Romance manuscript to James Patterson's agent, but beyond that, it's best not to know who you're dealing with. Because you just might discover that they're a huge geek who cosplays and graduated from your alma mater and loves David Bowie just as much as you do. And rejection from them is the hardest of all.

"Did we just become best fr--"
"LEAVE ME ALONE"

So, there's that. I told myself that I was never going to quit, but gosh darn if it isn't tempting. I'm so in hate with myself right now that I can't even bring myself to re-read my manuscript, which I haven't done in a few months. I fear it's going to be just as bad as I think it is and I'm going to want to collapse under the weight of my own shame for even entertaining the idea that I had enough talent to write a book. But giving up isn't a great option for me, because it would mean that I'm admitting the last year of my life was all for naught and I'd be back to square one.

sdfaklsjdf;ljasdklfjaskdjf

Step 32: Give Blood

Man, I've been suffering from a severe lack of motivation the past few days. I'm at a 95% rejection rate for my book (including three rejections on the full manuscript), and the last 5% of queries I've basically written off as being ignored or lost in the ether. I'm trying to drum up the motivation to send out another batch of queries, but the idea of writing a slew of tailor-made emails sounds about as much fun as watching paint dry.

And not the cool kind of paint drying.

Ah, well, there's always tomorrow. I did accomplish one thing of value today, which is that I hauled my lazy ass down to the local blood bank and gave them a pint of vampire chow. World Blood Drive Day is an international event bringing together blood banks and Star Wars fans, and is the brainchild of my good friend Ryder Windham of Star Wars literary fame. It's actually held on the second Saturday of June every year, but I was a week late to the party last year so it seemed only fitting that I  would overcompensate and do it a week early this year.

Rebel 4 life, yo.

The plan was actually to dress up in my entire X-Wing pilot costume, but it was so flipping hot this afternoon that I forewent the jumpsuit in favor of, you know, not passing out. Maybe next year!

I literally created this whole blog entry just so I could post this picture.

Step 31: Stop And Smell The (Blue Winter) Roses

I decided to work through my art slump by picking back up a piece I had started a few months ago and never got around to finishing. Before I post the image, a little context: I am a HUGE A Song of Ice and Fire fan. I read the first four books in 2008, and waited patiently with everyone else for A Dance with Dragons to come out in 2011.

Me waiting for The Winds of Winter.

I even got my copy of A Clash of Kings signed by George R. R. Martin at a book signing, and got to hang out with him at a fan-run moot right before the HBO show came out:

Back before he was an untouchable mega-star.

Which brings me to my latest piece. When I told George that my favorite character was Lyanna Stark, he looked me dead in the eye and said, "Your favorite character is a girl who died fifteen years before the events of the first book?" And I replied, "Well, yeah--she was a strong-willed young woman, and an expert equestrian like me. What's not to love about her?"

Joke's on you, George--you can't kill off my favorite character if she's already dead!

There's obviously a lot more to my interest in Lyanna Stark than what I could convey in five-seconds of face time with George. Lyanna is at the center of a very intriguing mystery that, up to this point, has not been revealed to readers of the books (or watchers of the show). Everything we know about her we've learned through the eyes of often untrustworthy narrators, so what little we're able to piece together about her life is seemingly contradictory. Did she love Robert Baratheon? Was she kidnapped and raped by Rhaegar Targaryen? What exactly happened at the Tower of Joy?

At the rate of George's writing, we may never know.

That's not to say there aren't any credible sources. Ned may have been biased towards his sister, but he didn't seem to have any ill-will towards Rhaegar Targaryen considering the hefty allegations. And Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and arguably one of the most honorable men in Westeros, straight-up says "Rhaegar loved his Lady Lyanna" in ADWD. So, forgive me for stating the obvious, but I'm 99.9% sure there's a little more to the story of Rhaegar and Lyanna than just Grand Theft She-Wolf. And because I'm mildly obsessed with the mystery surrounding her, I put together this Mucha-inspired piece:

"Beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time."

The art is a direct appropriation of Alphonse Mucha's Primrose and Feather. The plan was to create a companion piece featuring Rhaegar Targaryen, but I dunno if I'll ever get around to doing it. Coloring is really not my forte, and after working on the colors alone for two days straight I eventually threw in the towel and said "fuck it", the result of which you see before you now. I will say, I enjoyed incorporating Stark symbolism and Lyanna lore into the piece, like the dire wolf and weirwood leaves of the North, and the Knight of the Laughing Tree shields behind her. We'll see if I can gather the energy to draw her beloved (???) dragon prince.