Ostara and Day's Planning

Good Ostara to all of my friends and readers. Those of you not familiar with the Celtic name - Happy Spring Equinox. Yes, Spring is finally here and when I look out of my window I see growing/budding plants, birds flying together in pairs, and I see bunnies hopping across my front lawn. NOT!!!!! No, I see snowpiles of more than four feet high, grey skies, and ice patches everywhere with a temperature that will be lucky to hit 20 F (-6.66 C) for a HIGH today. Ostara? Well, it's a nice astronomical mark but my personal Spring is still a month or two away.

Good Ostara to all of you.

Today, after coloring one last pic for CB's story, I'll begin the pencil and charcoal work on her final original piece. I'm really looking forward to playing with drawing again - it's been too long since I've set up my easel. I have a ton of errands to do all over town today also, and have to remember to drop by Target to pick up some essentials plus (after all, I'll already be there...) the video of The Hobbit. DH said we could go ahead and get this but no additional copies until the combined set of all three in Director's Cut become available. I can live with that and it's at a good price for the full combined version.

I use a portable tabletop easel similar to this (not quite
as nice, though) and it's wonderfully useful.

Next week will be the final episode of this season's Face Off and I like all three of the final contestants. I won't put spoilers here, but it will be a hard-fought finale and any of the three could end up winning it all. The designs that have been constructed through the season have been mind-blowing and some of the painting skills of these artists - I want to just learn airbrushing techniques from them. Truly amazing talent.

The Face Off logo splash-screen features the hostess being
transformed into an avian of some type. Beautiful coloring.

I'm continuing to focus on artwork because I haven't found any writing that has jogged me lately. Yes, B2ME is ongoing, but I am not enamored with the format that is being used this year. But on the original fiction front, I'm pretty happy. Dragonthology is doing well as an e-edition (available as a NookBook and e-pub on March 31st) but even more exciting, it has now been issued in print now and is available at major book retailers including Barnes & Noble and Amazon. I received my author's copy in the mail a few days ago and it's a lot of fun to see and flip through the pages. One baby step to a novel of my own. If you have a desire to do some original fiction, Untold Press is still accepting stories for consideration to be included in their next anthology - Happily Ever Afterlife. If you're interested in finding out more, click the link, write a story between 5000 and 10000 words and send it to them (formatted properly). Who knows? You may be the star of the next anthology.