Aura, Valkyria, and Andromeda Updates June 11

Aura, Valkyria, and Andromeda. I think I'll refer to my collective ladies as AVA. It has shades of Ava "Hemingway refused to drain the pool after she swam nude in it" Gardner.

I am starting the Andromeda comic. At the moment, I don't have any plans to go beyond the initial "how it happened" opening story. That will begin off DA, on my own blogs. The foundation of her story is sexual. In fact, it could appear in Heavy Metal, or even the now defunct Penthouse Comix back in the 90s. I don't like pulling my punches for the audience (it's my story), so I sure as hell don't like pulling them for a bunch of whining babies with dirty diapers (i.e., The Purity League). If the story requires that Andrea gets sexed up by alien machines, then she gets sexed up by alien machines. End of report. So, there will be another link on my sitenav page.

Night scenes render slow!

Speaking of Andromeda, don't forget to vote in the Name Her Suit poll. It's open through Friday, unless it appears we have an early runaway winner.

Work resumes on Valkyria this week. And we all said YAY! The irony is, while I'm beginning and keeping Andromeda off DA, I'm bringing Valkyria back. The Purity League doesn't care about violence, it seems. The comic could depict blood and guts and gore and eyeballs and flying limbs and veins between my teeth and they'd love it. *grumbles* They will just have to have all their cows over the number of times Katie appears nude. I'll clothe her when it's right to clothe her. The comic will continue to be posted on its own site, however. I'm trying to attract readers from other corners of the websphere that don't hang out on DA.

It's Obvious Statement time. So, you want to see more Aura in ropery scenes, eh? There will be more kinky dreams coming up. And if I can get bondage scenes to make sense (they have to be part of the story for me, not the centerpiece), then there will be more. Aura trusts me. Condemned is progressing. I won't release it until Part One is finished. But you'll get Aura nude and bound in almost every page.

I wish I could say The Fires of Tallen Hall was progressing as well as Valkyria and Andromeda. It isn't. The problem is I HATE my writing style! It feels to me as if Hemingway wrote a Conan story. Too staccato. Too subject-verb-object. I open it, start working on it, and one hundred words later, fall into a "This is shit! Aura deserves better!" morass from which I don't recover for a month. It only took me five years to write A Path of Stones for that reason, despite the story being complete in my head. My prose just lacks the poetic lyricism that I want it to have and that I think Aura's story deserves.

Eowyn is good to me. When I fall into this sort of thing, and lament how it's the middle of June and the second book isn't finished yet, she says, "You are working on Aura. You're telling the story of her with Viona, and Storm Warning. You're building a fanbase for her, and for Katie. You're making friends. Now, go get an ashwaganda and shut up before I kick you."

For the next several nights, I'm spending time with some old friends -- Raymond Chandler and John Steinbeck. See if I can crack this language and sentence structure barrier.

AWK! I just remembered Valkyria Shorts! "The Gunfight at the Not-too-Bad Corral." Okay. Sorry, Katie.

I need a clone and two more computers.

Finally, next week, I get to meet a couple of groovy DA hep cats! and are dropping down to old Texas for a visit. We're going to paint the town purple! I don't know how to handle a blonde who can look me in the eyes barefoot, and who can twist me like a pretzel. There will be much yes ma'aming.