Ok, quick poll...

Ok, quick poll: which sounds like the stronger vessel?

Achmë 

or

Lyon


Cheers very much for your thoughts :)

Well, how are the dice making projects coming along?

Well, how are the dice making projects coming along? Better than my blogging frequency, I hope :)

Once again it is well overdue for me to post.

Exciting news (I hope) is that I am working on two books at the moment: one an edit/rewrite of The Corsers' Hinge to (again, I hope) be released as a stand alone novella, complete with maps, illustrations, a brief explicarium and other appendical (not a real word) matter. Do people want to see this? If it happens it is more likely to come out first.

The second is a proper novel that the more I work on it, the more I feel might stretch out into the usual fat, multi-volume "epic" (for want of a better word) I found myself stumbling into with MBT. It will not (as I might have said before... or was that just in a dream...?) be about Rossamünd and Europe this time around, but I hope you are going to really like the new fellow in the spot light (as it were) - he really takes up where dear little Rosey left off.

This is all what I would like but it is yet to be accepted/approved/green lit/let come into exiatence so prayers/good wishes/positive quantum flow all appreciated.

This does not mean I have abandoned the Branden Rose or her little man, just that I am trying out the Half-Continent from a different point of view. This is actually a significant element of the overall thesis of the Half-Continent: that it came well before I had any concept of specific characters and contains stories from many different points of view yet they are all interconnected - not so much sequel spin-offs but distinct folk who overlap in what I hope are conceivably realistic ways. For example, the protagonist for this new tale plays a very tiny role in Factotum, just as a teaser.

As for Duchess-in-Waiting of Naimes and Rosey-me-lad, well, Lord willing we shall see where they are at again in the future.

And in answer to you request, Master Come Lately, here be a map showing the rough political boundaries of the Sundergird. Such things are necessarily vague in a land without satellite imaging/modern political wrangling and all such modern/our-world stuff that makes out own maps so punctiliously delineated. I hope you like, and more importantly it helps you-all over there at the Forum.

The tabs, Madam Blackwood, are those Post-It [TM] tabs you buy at your local stationer, and I have used different colours depending which book I writing (yellow-green = Foundling, pink = Lamplighter, sky blue = Factotum, dark blue = navy/newest stories... its getting vague, be good to clarify to myself once more) marking a large number of my notebooks in this way at all the pertinent entries for each story as I find them: I sit on my couch and trawl a notebook for anything I might need to know for that current tale, typically scribbling on the tab what the entry it flags is about.

Ahh, Master Alyosha, as always you make my day(s): Pococo is actually Italian for "freckles" - I use Italian/Spanish for localised colloquialism of Tutin which one can especially encounter in such areas like western Seat, Tuscanin and across to Catalain.

Hello, hello Troubadour! Wonderful to hear about you project - apologies for the lack of a more full depiction of troubardiers. Perhaps Appendix 2 of Factotum gives some idea, just add the sash as shown in Appendix 3 Factotum around the back. And now I am going to be a drag/punctilious pain-in-the-rear and offer that the proper spelling is troubardier - the concept being that they are soldiers (the "~ier" bit) who wear proofing/armour (the "~bard~" bit) that is fully protecting (the "trou~" or "true" bit) *please don't punch me* Will you be showing us you wondrous work when it is done? Can it be seen in its incomplete state at all? If need more keep asking.

An art book, huh, Emily Odenwald? Well, I reckon this will be worth doing once I have a bit more "art" under me belt. MBT is just one story and I hope I have a few more in me to tell on the Half-Continent yet, a body of work from which a selection of "art" (appendices, illustrations, maps etc) would be selected. As for manga/graphic novel - sweet! If I was to do such a thing, to stave off boredom I think I would tell an entirely new story.

And yes, dear dear Portals old blog-friend, until the conquest by the Tutelarchs and then re-conquest by their descendants/heirs the Tutins, the Soutlands were a collection of independent city-states warring and combining as political need moved. The Germanic names shows the influence of crossing cultures, of Gottish people coming over the Pontus Canis to dwell in the Soutlands.

Well, a long blog makes up for a long pause.

I hope you are all well.

So long since signs of life were present, but yes, it lives again!

I herald my long long long overdue blogging return with an apology for my absence - words have just looked foul and ugly to me for an extended period, but they are indeed gaining their shine again.

I know that there is some RULE for blogging out there that states that it is dead after a set period of silence.

*shrug*

... if I listened to rules I would never had made the Half-Continent in the first place. I see this blog as an on-going conversation, a friendship that must sometimes go silent as life intervenes, yet the relationship is not over, it is simply waiting there for the conversation to begin again when it it possible once more.

So here I am, and I hope (and pray) that entries will be resume with a little more regularity.

Thank you to BB, Alyosha, Differlot, Anna, Camilla, Carlita, Sean, RJA, Ali, Tradgardmastare and all of you for your patience and encouragement and your musings and questions.

For my first actual post I would like to show you all a leaf from notebook 32, drawing especial attention to the entry on the bottom of the right hand pane:




This, dear fellow Sundergirdians, is what a lot looks like (a lot being the Half-Continent's version dice) - a hexagonal 'tube', painted black, marked in white and actually having eight possible outcomes. The longer notation to the right of the drawing says:

"...landing on it ends is possible with a vigorous toss and is either fortunate or ill-favoured depending on the circumstance or culture."

The image shows the "7-end", with the "8-end" being all red but without a number or any other marking. It was such as these that Rossamünd saw being thrown at the Broken Doll.

I reckon it might be a cool little project to get a brace o' these puppies made... *puts on to-do list*

Now to ponder your musings and muse answers of my own...

Europa of Naimes

Forsooth, the Branden Rose is a real soul, you can go see her activities get all Tumblr-ed over at Europa of Naimes, where she and other bright-souled Sundergirdians keep the energy of the Half-Continent roiling.

I go there to remind myself that the Half-Continent is not just me in a room on my own in front of a blank screen.

Thank you, Branden Rose, thank you.

Drawing with DMC

A couple of posts ago Elinor Blackwood (Ashira) was asking for me to divulge the process that goes into making my coloured images, so I shall now oblige.

So, I start with the line drawing on paper (yes, a real piece of paper!) done with a sepia pencil for no other reason than I like the feel of the media and the brown looks nice. Some folk have mistakenly thought these charcoal drawings, but they are not, just coloured pencil.

Having scanned the image in at 600 dpi, in Photoshop I then make a layer on MULITIPLY setting, onto which with the PENCIL tool I draw/paint/whatever it is you do in the digital context, areas of flat colour corresponding with the lines of the original drawing.

Usually making a copy of this FLAT COLOUR layer – as I call it (turning off the original flat layer, thus preserving the original should anything go awry) I then mould the copied flat colour layer with the BURN tool, working in shadows and form as appropriate.

Finally over the line drawing and the moulded colour I make a HIGHLIGHTS or SHINE layer (sometimes both if I am really pushing things around) onto which with the BRUSH tool I work all the glimmers and glows and shines that pull the image out and finishes it off.

Not much to it really, just time and the right ordering of layers. I highly recommend some form of drawing tablet for this though, drawing fine details with what amounts to a bar of remote soap (by which I mean a mouse) is not so much fun and does not allow quite the same finish without some extra frustration and effort. (Believe me, I have tried for many years with mouse only, and when I finally got a tablet it was like a whole new world opened up… usual story.)

What I like about this combination is the immediacy of a real drawing yet the glamour and finish of fine digital colour. Oh, and I used the same process for the image of Europe you see as a background to this blog.

I hope that is what you were looking for, Elinor.

All images (c) D.M.Cornish, 2011