I have a confession… I have not been writing.

While all my writer friends are hunched over notebooks and computers, bustling and toiling, penning lines and crumpling them up, or even just jotting down ideas, I’ve been over here… not… doing that.

Since finishing my novel in December, the last creative writing I did (excluding blog posts, which are more article-y or journal-y than creative, um, -y) was a 1000-word fiction in March, that I didn’t post because I’m submitting for publication. Oh, and those one-line stories I did in April, if those count. Otherwise… *crickets*

Advertisement

Oops, did I drool on your book cover?

I LOVE book covers. As both a writer and artist, they are the perfect combination of my passions. Over time I’ve collected a bunch of cover art, many for books I haven’t even read; I just like gazing starry-eyed at them. Here are some favorites!

She is Not a Dancer

To anyone else, this is what they would call her, but she does not think of herself this way. She is not a dancer. She is just a person with a body, a body that writes words on the air, words and sentences and full manuscripts in a language she cannot decode but that she knows in her guts. And others know it too, because when they read it something rips and flaps open inside them, and they think, Yes. I understand. Anyone could write this language, because we all have bodies. The only difference between herself and others is they prefer her penmanship over their own.

Everyone, meet Zalea.

Zalea, this is everyone.

Character portrait by yours truly.

Zalea is the second-most main character in the fantasy novel I’m working on. She’s part of a race of humans blended with tree elements (inspired by the dryads in Greek mythology), who can manipulate the growth and shape of botanical life. She has brown skin scattered here and there with wood knots, and hair the same color as the fuschia flower that grows from her tree branch horn. The rest of her people have symmetrical antlers that stretch outwards above their heads, as a tree would – Zalea here is the only one with the curled horn on one side. The others poke fun at her for it, but she doesn’t mind; she laughs along. 🙂