As Promised, Again With WIP Poxwalker #17

Posted on November 15, 2019 by Ann

As promised, I offer a couple of pictures of where work-in-progress poxwalker #17 stands since the last time I turned my proverbial painting lens on this worthy zombie.*

PW#18 waits with undead patience in the fuzzy background.

I still have a bit more work to do, though I’m getting close to the end stages now. The purple tentacles used to be blue, but I decided they were far too pretty in a wow-that-looks-like-it-would-look-great-on-a-blue-horror pretty and not poxwalker pretty so I hit them with some purple shade. Upon reflection I might have hit them too hard and maybe I should have used some medium and/or tried blue shade or a blue and purple mix. I still can, but I’m undecided. I might leave them more or less as is and just highlight them a little.

Inertia and all….

After all, they are just a couple of belly tentacles and not really worth too much thought in the scheme of things. Are there not whole regiments of guardsmen in the world who are still painfully bereft of the Grandfather’s multifarious blessings?

What kind of maggots to go with this time?**

I still have a few decisions to make such as what kind of maggots, and what kind of pox to go with this time. Maybe Emerald Pox. I’ve only done that with one other poxwalker, (one of the dreaded beach boy twins) so it isn’t overdone with this mob.***

I’m probably not going to rust up the mechanical arm too much. Maybe a few Rhinox Hide patches and the like.**** I am thinking of busting out an old brush and the bottle of AK Interactive engine oil and experimenting with that. I tried glossy Nuln Oil for a bit of fresh oil look, but that didn’t really work for me so far.

Click to read

Next time I will post some pictures of the fully completed poxwalker #17, a work in progress no longer. I’ll know it is done by my usual tried-and-true method, which is when my fiddling seems to make things no better and maybe even worse. That is when I know it is time to stop with many things in life, miniatures and writing both.

* “Promised” should be construed to mean a non-binding echo of a glimmer of a reflection upon said Humble Narratrix’s part to maybe put up some pictures of WIP-PW#17 if and when it is convenient to do so before becoming distracted by less important things.

** It is a very good sign when you type “maggot” in the search box for your site and a whole bunch of pages come up!

*** I haven’t forgotten about my idea of having countless hordes of poxwalkers, plaguebearers, etc. and identifying each mob with a different disease.

**** Perhaps the mechnical arm was in good working order when PW#17 was gifted with the blessings of Nurgle rather than the usual state of affairs, which of course is that the rust and falling apart look is in fact a wonderful magic that makes the mechanism in question work at least as and probably better than when it was right off the forge world assembly line.

Death Guard Symbol 125 wide

Cthulhu Pie and update on Organic Ink

Posted on November 11, 2019 by Ann

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!

Poxwalker-in-progress and more Wattpad writing

Posted on October 15, 2019 by Ann

So I spiral out the long, sad task of painting my mob of twenty poxwalkers into late 2019. I would say, “I’ll finish the lot before 2020!” but we all know that probably has as much truth in it as a short, sharp fit of sneezing meaning nothing but continued perfect health after putting in an eight hour shift driving around a bus full of sick people.*

Here we have Ole #17, who is one of my current works-in-progress. I gave this poxwalker some attention this past weekend, sketching out the base colors on its belt and loin cloth as well as beginning a little experiment with purple tentacles. I also put some paint on the Death Guard symbol. Still a lot more work to go, as you can see, but it’s coming along.

Unfinished but only semi-forgotten!

So far as my Wattpad adventures go, here is what’s been going on there for me lately:

I’ve been sketching out the next section for the Gabby novel. I’ll certainly post here when it goes live.
Another user, Microbytes, who puts out little anthologies of collected work on Wattpad, used a drabble I wrote in August, called “Survive to Swim” in their Micro-August Anthology.**
Microbytes struck again, this time notifying me that they are doing 30 days of writing prompts called “30 Days of Spooky Tales.” I came to the party a bit late, but I am going to make an attempt to complete all 30 prompts and make a little Wattpad collection/book/whatever out of them. Right now I am up to three done and collected under the dubious work-in-progress name of “Thirty Days of Darkness.”

For next time I am hoping for more progress on the aforementioned Ole Number Seventeen, and I might play around a bit with some Plaguebearer Flesh contrast paint I picked up last week. I can always tell I haven’t been to the game store in a long time when I see a new staff member and she gives me the Welcome to the Store New Customer Speech!

Also plan to work on more of the Spooky Tales prompts and of course Gabby. Hope everyone who managed to read this far has a good week. May you make good progress on your varied projects, both mundane and multifarious!

* I was going to say “we all know that would probably be a lie” but I thought it best (for my own continued good relations with the Grandfather if for no other reason) to stick to a Nurgle-based (and rather familiar situation, to your Humble Bus-Driving Narratrix) rather than a Tzeentch-based figure of speech.

** A “drabble” is apparently a 100 word short story. I didn’t know this until I stumbled upon this tidbit in Wattpad. I found some interesting information on the subject over on Wikipedia.

Gabby Novel: Night

Posted on October 3, 2019 by Ann

I finished the next section of my novel, Gabby the Bug-Eyed Monster. The title of this section is Night.

I decided to dispense with the idea of looking where I’d put the chapter divisions if the work were a traditional book. Instead I’m looking at each section on Wattpad as its own chapter. So this section is number four in the story.

I have another picture, though I haven’t worked it into the story yet but I plan on doing so fairly soon. I experimented with including pictures in my Wattpad stories, but ended up taking them out because they apparently made it hard to load for phones, which caused a precipitous decrease in viewership. I’m not on Wattpad necessarily to build a large viewership, because I don’t see myself having the time that it would take to do that, I don’t want to needlessly make it hard for people to view my work either.

Another offering by the talented Stefan Ljumov

I’ve been slacking off on moving forward with the story because I have had to give some attention to changes in my job situation. The changes are good and will result in more free time, so I can work on the story more. Wattpad has proven its worth so far. In the past, this period of not working on the story would have probably caused me to consider abandoning the project in favor of the next shiny, new idea, but since I’ve put myself out there with it online, I find I still have the interest and energy to continue.

Finally, I started another WordPress blog. This one is called Ann’s Physical Culture Journal and it is a place for me to keep track of my workouts and such. I have enjoyed doing various workouts for years and have lots of old notebooks kicking around full of stuff that I have been doing from the 1980’s up until now. This is the first time I have done a blog on the subject though.

I decided upon a separate blog instead of creating a section here, because I expect that I will be posting a lot and I don’t want to clutter this space up with lots of posts about lifting weights and such. I want to keep the Immaterium primarily an arts space.

Finally, my husband has a lot of weight he needs/wants to lose and decided to start a Youtube channel where he does vegan recipes and every Friday posts a video detailing how his week went diet-wise, etc. I’m proud of how he’s done so far — he’s lost 60 pounds. So if you are interested in fairly easy-to-make vegan food and such check it out here. Don mentioned, after I told him I was going to put out a link to his channel that a play list of the cooking videos is here. I’ve (of course) eaten them all, some multiple times, and quite enjoyed them. Having a husband who likes to cook is a beautiful thing.

Gabby: Last Shot (End of Chapter One)

Posted on September 9, 2019 by Ann

I finished the next installment of my novel, Gabby the Bug-Eyed Monster. This finishes chapter one and I achieved two of my goals: finish the first chapter and also finish with that wretched cave. My first chapter was a bit over 5300 words, which means word count-wise I’m about 5% done.

The title of this section is Last Shot. I decided that each of the subsections is going to be no more than two words. I’m really only doing these chapter subsections because I’m doing this in an online format and need to break it up more than I would for a physical book.

Gabby by Stefan Ljumov

Steady but slow progress. I’m looking forward to my schedule changing in October. One happy consequence of that is I’ll have more time for writing on a set schedule instead of carving out some time here and there when I can, which doesn’t work very well for me in terms of completing long-term projects.

I have a pretty good idea where I want to go for Chapter Two, which will get me through the next few weeks of writing and give me some time to think about structure and plot beyond what I already have. I have an idea for a sub-plot that I introduced the fleeting germ of at the end of the first chapter, and think I know where I more or less want to go by the end of the book though at this point that could still change.

Of course I can go back and fix structural problems and the like in a second draft at some point, but I would like to get as much right as I can on the first go.

The next section will go live on September 15, 2019.

Gabby: Picture of Main Character

Posted on September 5, 2019 by Ann

I thought it would be fun to have some drawings made for my novel that I’m working on, Gabby the Bug-Eyed Monster. The other day this depiction of my main character arrived in my inbox, complete with the eyes on the arms, just as I hoped!

Gabby the Bug Eyed Monster as drawn by the talented Stefan Ljumov

I have the rough draft of the next section already done and plan on tinkering with it a bit before going live on Wattpad this Sunday, September 8th. That will wrap up the first chapter. The working title for the section is ~~(without apology to Henry James!) Turn of the Screw~~ Last Shot.

I’ve also been thinking about where I want to go with the story through the first quarter of the book. That will be about 20,000 words or so, and since I’m already up to 4,000 that will happen fairly soon, even though it still seems like a lot to me. Especially if things work out with my schedule as I anticipate and I have more time for writing starting in October.

A friend suggested playing some sort of cooperative space platform defense board game. Hope to attend that soon. It’ll be nice seeing some friends, who I haven’t gotten together with for awhile now, and (of course) gaming.

Gabby the Bug-Eyed Monster: Eternity

Posted on September 1, 2019 by Ann

I’ve managed to keep my schedule of posting new material every Sunday for my novel-in-progress thus far. The latest bit went live yesterday and is titled, Prologue: Eternity.

The novel so far is located here.

“‘The Stars, Like Dust!’ Wait, I think that one’s taken.”

As the title suggests, I went back and did a little preface. I figure that since I’m sharing a story pretty much as I write it, then if I’m going to write such a thing in such a way I should get any introductory bits out of the way early in the game.

I’ve noticed that I’m developing a tendency to work backwards a bit, editing and correcting things as I go along. While it has been working so far it is early days yet and I think this could be a dangerous thing, when the story is longer, and could stall my first draft progress. So in the future I’m going to make notes somewhere about things I need to correct once I’m done. I’ve fallen into that trap before with other projects and avoiding said trap is one object of this pantsing experiment.

I plan on writing a final section to wrap up Chapter One for next time. While I’m doing that I hope to finalize in my own mind where I want to go with this for the first quarter of the story.

Gabby: Blind Ants of the Outer Darkness

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Ann

I posted the next installment of my novel-in-progress, Gabby the Big-Eyed Monster, this past Sunday, August 25, 2019. The title of the new section is Blind Ants of the Outer Darkness.

The novel so far is located here.

I can’t see the ants either. Small little buggers!

The new section is a bit over 2100 words, which is about double the length of the first one. I don’t want the sections to be too long and 2000 words or so is about the longest I will go. In general For the chapters I’m organizing it like this for now:

Chapter One: The Forbidden Cave
Blind Ants of the Outer Darkness
Next Section

Chapter Two: Whatever I call it.
Next Section
Next Section: and so on….

I’m planning on getting the next section up on Sunday, September 1, 2019, which will end chapter one. I certainly have a long way to go. I’m aiming at making this an 80,000 word novel and I’m at about 3100 words now. Fortunately in October my schedule will change and I’ll have more time for writing.

I also engaged someone on Fiverr to draw a black & white picture of Gabby, the main character. If I like the picture and I’m happy with how the project is turning out then I’ll probably have him do more illustrations for the book.

Novel-in-Progress: Gabby the Bug Eyed Monster

Posted on August 18, 2019 by Ann

So my writing efforts continue unchecked at least for the moment. I have some stuff making the rounds with various editors, and was trying to decide what to do next. So I decided upon a little experiment.

I’ve written a few longer stories from outlines with lots and lots of plotting, but I’ve never attempted a short novel without having an outline or really much more than a couple of characters and some initial ideas. So I thought I’d give it a try on Wattpad. I’m going to publish one or two chapters a week (500 – 1000 words or so) until I write myself into a corner and blow up my creation or manage to write said short novel.

My working title is Gabby the Bug Eyed Monster. I put up the first chapter up on Wattpad and plan on posting chapter two no later than August 25, 2019. For anyone who might want to check this out, be warned this is not a complete story. It is the first chapter of a work-in-progress. I’m sure that the 40K-oriented readers on here will notice some passing similarities to a certain favored xenos race….

Cover makes me want to re-read Dune.

I made a quick and easy cover for the story. If I manage to make decent traction with writing the thing, and it gets a half-way decent reception from the reading-free-stuff-online crowd, I might commission a nicer cover for it down the road.

Otherwise, I joined the Goodreads 2019 Reading Challenge and pledged to read at least 50 books this year. So far I’m up to 34, which the site tells me puts me three books ahead of schedule. So that’s keen.

My reading for July 2019 was:

The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber
The Howling Asteroid by Murray Leinster
Forever Free by Joe Haldeman
Mulgara: The Necromancer’s Will by David Rose
Appreciate Your Life: The Essence of Zen Practice by Taizan Maezumi

I’ll be back again ~~(hopefully)~~ with Chapter Two of Gabby next Sunday, and if my sacrifices to the Elder Gods have been particularly propitious maybe I’ll even make some progress on another poxwalker as well!

January Thaw: Short Story

Posted on April 6, 2019 by Ann

School has been keeping me pretty busy, and one of the things we’re doing is mucking about with social media as writers, potential writers, people posing as writers, etc. So I’ve been flogging around my short story, January Thaw, in various places and thought I’d make a link to it available on Ye Olde Blog for anyone who might be interested.

January Thaw posits a future where old age is a thing of the past and no one dies anymore. Carolyn Deschaines is a woman who has lived too long, and after 150 years she has decided to gracefully “die of old age.” She puts her affairs in order but then she meets Theo…

Additionally, I finished the Red Spiny Back Poxwalker, who is now ready to take to the field with its green twin. I hope to get some pictures of my newest addition to the Festering Horde soon.