April 2026 Newsletter
Hey, folks –
I know I said I’d try and get one illustration/work done per month, but I really, seriously underestimated the amount of work the shadows took. Here’s the scene from book 3, where Dareum struggles for his life.
This is my second piece where I’m incorporating shadow. It’s about on par with the Avart Massacre scene from book 2, though that one had a way bigger scope with the amount of figures, animals, perspective, and shadow. But, I took months to do that, including redoing the ground several times and a couple months of complete inactivity. Getting this piece done in ~1.5 months is a better timeline. It’s certainly not pro-quality, but enough for a writer that does his own illustrations to get the point across. In time, I’d like to be able to get much better at these, but it’s a juggle of priorities, you know? Anyways, things are coming along.
If you recall, last month I mentioned getting this comment on youtube.
So, I found a documentary on the Battle of Ahmadnagar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLE9bOJmok4). To my surprise, the battle ends with the garrison’s surrender. The main battle where the British use siege ladders is when they attack and capture the nearby fortified town of Petta. As I watched it, the capture of Petta reminds me of the Battle of Versingit in book 2, where forces under the Donbat-Karang with supervision from Maglaban and the Borys-Karang attack Versingit, defended by Prince Eron and his army.
Before I watched the documentary, I was thinking I’d use the course of that battle as inspiration for something else in book 3. While that’s not quite panning out (since Ahmadnagar and Versingit are already kind of similar), it did get me going on the next project for book 3. The Battle of Balta. I drew a map of Balta sometime around ~2014, maybe. I can’t find that map, so I drew this one.
Really looking forward to working with Luke on this project. Thinking of extending the map a bit further to show the sprawl to the southeast. What I am glad for waiting a bit to start writing is that I have learned a lot about the world and worldbuilding since 2011-2015 when I did my initial thinking on this setting and 2021 when I started seriously writing. I say that to say that Balta is on the southern coast of the continent, circled in yellow.
Whereas other cities near rivers in the story, so far (Yvel, Keppa, Versingit, etc.), are closer to the mountains and the soil is a lot more rocky, Balta is on the coast and far from the mountains. The soil here is softer (and if one of you is a geologist and knows better – go ahead and hit me up because now’s the time to change it and get it right), so there are problems with erosion and a big wetland area. Being on the southern coast, it’s much warmer (think like on the Mediterranean coast) and so those swamps are active year-round – with mosquitos – which means Malaria. In medieval times, people figured out that Malaria (antiquated name: Marsh Fever) came from the swamps, but not that it was carried by mosquitos. Nonetheless, they’ve constructed dykes to drain the wetlands and divert the river, creating more area for the city of Balta and the surrounding sprawl. Malaria will have a play in the concerns of this battle, as will Pneumonia (winter fever, which is the title of Book 3), as this battle happens on the tail end of winter.
Another factor is that this is the first time the story has gone into a coastal city, and so we will have a population of immigrants from the continent of Ungat, largely as sailors or peripheral to the transportation industry in Balta.
Hey, speaking of Luke, he’s launching his own business of medical posters for exam rooms. Here’s his website (https://palsmedicalvisuals.com/). Check out some of his other work and maybe you know someone that could benefit from some of these products.
In other news, a little on the business side, I may have mentioned this in the past, but I get multiple scam attempts per week, sometimes multiple per day. Sometimes it’s an outright scame and sometimes it’s a semi-legit offering of services that, while technically legal (assuming they don’t just take your money and run), aren’t useable (violate terms of service for where you’re publishing or something like that). This week, I was blessed with this one, among many others.
I’ve noticed that a lot of them end in ‘warm regards,’ ‘best regards,’ or ‘kind regards,’ like this one. I have a strong feeling that this phenomena is a combination of chat gpt (or some other) and google translate. However, this is the first time they managed to leave a part untranslated.
The Russian word translates to ‘scope,’ which is what a lot of the other scammers talk about, too. So, (shrug) just to give you folks a glimpse in. These come in 1-4 times a day in various forms, offering marketing, book visibility, search engine optimization (SEO), etc. General rule of thumb, legit businesses do not solicit your business over email. I get a fair bit of art scammers, too, but much less frequently (art scammers being people that try to either sell you someone else’s work or sell you AI-generated content, but claim that they drew it).
Upcoming events
Kansas City Fae Ball and Literary Market, Kansas City, KS, May 30th
O-Con (Omaha Convention), Council Bluffs, IA, July 17th-19th
Nerd Con KC, Overland Park, KS, September 19th (applied - no response, sad face)
Boozy Book Fair, Kansas City, MO, October 3rd (applied - pending decision - probably hear from them in June)
In other news, I got some (cheap) hair beads with Norse runes on them. Tried a thing.
Stay classy, folks.
