Mid-December
How is 2024 almost over?
Hi Everyone,
I’ve been busy editing my next novel—it’s coming along, not much to report.
I have also made time to make some weird art (see above). It’s a digital collage, mostly. The background I painted with watercolours and gouache—then I scanned it in and added cut out parts of other things on top. It isn’t fancy, but I like how it turned out (it would make a nice notebook cover).
The real reason I’m playing around with making these sorts of collages, it that I have an idea for a story that work well presented this way. And I like making weird things.
Escape
Last weekend, I escaped to a cabin in the woods and had a few days to read and be creative. I experimented with a solo RPG (role playing game) as a prompt to get my own ideas flowing. I tried out Substratum Protocol, which I had originally supported as a crowdfunding campaign because I liked the art and it was a variant of Journey to the Centre of the Earth—a story I love.
I had fun with it—and I’ve already started a short story about a crew on a mission to find out what’s in the centre of a hollow asteroid. I’m not sure what will come of the story, but it was a nice distraction.
Will I play through more solo RPGs? It’s something I’ve been pondering. There are some great looking ones that I’ll probably play around with, but I’m not sure I’ll play to completion in the near future. My time is limited and I have so many of my own stories to write.
I’ll leave you with an interesting video which answers a question that I’m sure you weren’t asking:
Cheers,
Jeannette
My Books:
The Lost Star Chart - Preorder
Hope is the Thing With Feathers - direct or from the shops
Encoded Orbits Trilogy
Fractured Orbits - direct or from the shops
The Alien Algorithm - direct or from the shops
Subject 34 - direct or from the shops
Settler Chronicles
Day 115 on an Alien World - direct or from the shops
Far Side of the Moon - direct or from the shops
Abandoned Ships, Hijacked Minds - direct or from the shops
The Alien Artifact - direct or from the shops
And if you aren’t already a subscriber, what’s stopping you (especially if you have read this far)?
and as a final disclaimer - please take any typos and errors as proof this newsletter is entirely written by a human (and a flawed one at that!)