I'm used to it being a planet, but don't really like to involve myself in scientists' taxonomic disputes. I sit back from it remembering that its definitions do not change that vastly distant cold rock, it continues to orbit as it has for billions of years without worrying too much about what its status to human beings who are so very, very concerned with status. I doubt that Pluto plays dominance games with other astronomical bodies.

We are far from a technological level where its definitions might become a matter of legal protection or not from exploitation, if there are limits to what you can do to a planet but not to asteroids, then it could matter. But that's a matter for science fiction.

I haven't done as much art lately. The past couple of weeks I've been engaging in horror, working on the Guy Krieg book.

For a moment I forgot Guy Krieg's name. That means I've been up a bit long.

I'm also reading Tad Williams' Otherland, in my usual habit of reading out of genre. I liked Tailchaser's Song, and now I really like this one. Very satisfying to look ahead to three more fat volumes too, the backstory is good and satisfyingly complex.

Meanwhile, with painful little daily sessions of a thousand or two thousand words at a time, mine is creeping along. I think it's the genre. That I need to listen hard for this one, it's not as immediately easy to follow what's next and hear the true thread of it as when I'm doing my familiar fantasy stuff. Now I know it's time to shift point of view and introduce another character who will have a different interaction with the ancient evil of the novel... there is supernatural evil in this one. Something more horrific than Mommy Dying, or if not more violent, then edgy, creepier, suspense-building creepness, needs to come next. I'm getting it right as I go.

It's slow but it's coming out well and I seem to be spending a whole lot of my time playing Diablo and thinking about the backstory. Things like "I don't know what comes next... hmm..." and then play for a level or two... and then "That's it, I need someone new, another POV who will probably be major cast (or sudden victim)" and not knowing who that is.

Then there comes a point where the next line floats up out of my well trained unconscious and I know what it is. At one point when I halted in the first chapter I played for a day and then laid down to sleep and heard Mike say "I must be nuts. I'm talking to my cat." And knew yes, that was next, and so I got up and put it in and the rest of that scene rolled out. Most of it the cat seemed to have more sense than Mike. But that switched at one point when Rufous (the cat), tried to describe the evil telepathically and fell short of it because he didn't understand "good and evil" as Mike did. He was linked to Mike's mind fishing for words at the time, and still couldn't grasp the concept or relate it to what he was trying to express. Rufous seemed so naive at that point.

He is good -- deeply good. He is one of the shining paladin guardians of the city and perhaps the world. He's proud of that, no false modesty in catkind. But for all that he's smart and sentient, in some ways he's a cat... and he doesn't grasp that his generosity, his kindness, his good nature and sense of responsibility are qualities that are exceptional. To him they're just part of being who he is. He lives in the moment unselfconscious. And so he seemed very naive and innocent, deeply innocent there for a moment. It made me see how their partnership may develop as Mike gets more aware of magic and goes farther on his journey.

Mike is very real and so unlike me, so unlike most of my protagonists either. Right now he's not a resourceful survivor, he's a sheltered innocent who can't cook for himself or even buy his clothes because Mommy did all that for him -- and Mommy's dead. As a man he's a lot like a house pet. His cat is more street wise.

Actually that is a hint, a floating line, something to come up as soon as Mike gets another scene. Another teaser. Someone and it could be Rufous could mention that to him, that he's dependent, that he expects to get fed and his box changed and all that, but now he's on the street and needs to hunt and den like a feral. Ironically, he HAS been taking care of Rufous better than himself because he was in the habit of taking care of Rufous for all the cat's life, and he loves his cat. He lost appetite and didn't bother to eat but he fed his cat. That says something for Mike's sense of responsibility too. And he did choose to live rather than just sit by the empty food dish mewing for Mommy.

ACEO Green Apple is done in Graphitints both wet and dry, from life. It's a bit brighter and greener than the scan, though I did my best to adapt the scan colors to it.



ACEO Dachshund Puppy is done in Conte sketch pencils, black, red and white, on Sand colored Canson Mi-Tientes for a traditional Trois Couleurs look. I had intended it to be just a quick sketch but I kept working on the fur textures and details, then decided that even though I kept a loose traditional-drawing look, it was much more than a doodle.

Both of today's ACEOs seem to remind me of things I've seen in formal classes and art schools, the sort of things teachers do. It's kind of neat to be able to do that!