organic ink | Ann's Immaterium

I was quite pleased to receive my author copies of Organic Ink, Volume 2, a poetry anthology from Dragon Soul Press. I’m happy that the editors decided to include a bunch of my poems, including a longish one that I was hoping would find a home: “The War of the Jar.”

Yep, it’s February and the Christmas stuff is still up.

I read some of Hesiod’s work as a child and that was the second place I had heard the Pandora’s Box myth. (I think the first place might have been Rocky & Bullwinkle.) A few months ago, I happened to be in the middle of re-reading the bit about Hesiod’s five ages of Man in his Works and Days when I decided that it would be fun to write a longish poem set in the third or “bronze” age, and work in a somewhat different version of Pandora than the one I read/heard about growing up.

I’m thinking of doing some other Ages poems. There is going to be an Organic Ink Volume 3, so if I’m happy with whatever I come up with then I’ll give them first shot at it since they were kind enough to print the first one. That, and it would be fun (if I can pull it off!) to have all my Ages of Men poems appear in the same series of anthologies.

Thinking the one on the left is a wizard who casts spells from his enchanted blunderbuss!

I haven’t been playing Warhammer 40K, so I haven’t really felt much of an urge to paint more miniatures for that game in awhile. I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons lately, so I decided to try some of those and ended up with these dwarves off of Etsy.

I wanted miniatures that were inexpensive and had some detail, but were still pretty basic and not hard to paint. They had to not be fragile, which means being resin they can’t have thin bits that easily break. (Especially since other people would be handling them.) These guys at $9.99, including shipping, for a pack of six met all of my expectations.

The dwarf with the beer says, “Hey, you did say this was an adventuring PARTY!”

I’m not sure if these guys would fit into anyone’s upcoming painting challenge, but I am going to try and get the top four dwarves done this month or during March at the latest. I am thinking of running a one session D&D game where a bunch of dwarves explore a dungeon, and the characters will be based off of these miniatures.

I also bought some goblins, bugbears and some other stuff from (I think) the same seller on Etsy. I’ve primed the dwarves since I took these pictures and will prime a rust monster when I get home later today.

Next time I plan on getting the third issue of The Dragon Egg Gazette out. After that, perhaps I’ll have some painted miniatures to show off.

My husband has been on a pie making kick lately for his vegan/plant-based weight loss Youtube Channel. I’ve been (not surprisingly as a confirmed omnivore) enjoying the fruits of his labors. He sent me this jewel, which though he didn’t make it he said he sure wish he had. I’m sure most of you reading this can see why and I’m sure glad he sent me this picture. It’s Cthulhuicious:)

“In his pie at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu dreams for whipped cream.”

I had more than I wanted to share, but as it turns out I burned most of my time today working on my Wattpad writing and composing a little promotional doggerel to put in a section of the chapbook I’ve spent most of October and some of November working on: Thirty-One Days of Darkness with the idea of having one offering for each day of October.

Someone suggested that I ought to shoehorn in a small advertisement for Organic Ink Volume Two so I did. Actually I forgot but then was reminded when I was reading someone’s poetry collection in Wattpad and ran across an advertisement for their print chapbook.

So I typed up the usual sort of promotional stuff about pre-ordering it on Amazon, the release date being December 30th and so on, but thought that was kind of boring. I kicked around a few ideas and then settled upon beginning with the lines:

I am one of the authors featured in this anthology

it’s far more interesting than a text on gnathology.

and goes from there for another nine or ten lines. If you’re interested you can read the rest of it in my aptly titled, Organic Ink: Shameless Self Promotion, which I’ve sandwiched between some micro fiction concerning a superheroine’s first night alone on the job and a haiku involving tentacle fingers.

Click image for Amazon’s pre-order page for the Kindle version.

Finally, I did a little more work on poor, long-suffering poxwalker #17. Alas, I don’t have time to take and post any pictures of my worthy zombie, but that will give me something for next time, hopefully before the weekend. All I will say is that need to redo its violet belly tentacles because they came out too pretty by half. Slaanesh will be making my poor poxwalker into an honorary daemonette if I’m not careful. Oh, the pain, the pain!