December (not November) Update

Hello everyone, I'm sorry for the long period between posts.  I've been feeling pretty sick lately, and being sick sucks the creative energy and motivation out of me.  However, I've continued editing Book III of LI, and I actually get through quite a bit in each editing session.

Hopefully I'll have  more to put into my next post. I'm still alive!

Incarnate Memory 1st Revision Finished!

Hello everyone!  I'm excited to announce that I've finished the first revision of Incarnate Memory!  This entailed a lot of additional scenes, including new POVs, and deleting and rewriting other parts. I mentioned in an earlier post that I hadn't been satisfied with the first draft's ending parts, but I've rewritten all of that so it creates for a smoother (and more exciting!) climax and resolution.  With the gritty story details down, I'm ready to go back for another round of polishing so it reads well.

To celebrate, Sabra's joining in on some Halloween spirit.

Our little family has been doing some Halloween decorating. My family growing up didn't do much in the way of Halloween decorations, but my husband's family is a different matter.  His dad went all out to decorate their porch with a Death figure and all.  We've hung lights and set up gravestones, and we're working on a Death figure of our own.  Once we get it finished, I'll probably share pictures with y'all!

Also, I had this crazy dream where Hillary Clinton was chasing  me through the city trying to kill me, and I had to fake my own death so she'd stop.  So random.

Researching Cosplay

Hello everyone, just a quick update!

Sabra on the left in Adel.

Lately I've been doing research into making a cosplay suit of armor.  I want to construct a replica of  Adel from The Legacy Incarnate series using a thermoplastic, most likely PVC foam and/or sheets.  Beneath the plate armor I would wear a unitard, probably made of cotton or spandex. I'm not sure I could really afford a full set of steel mesh clothing, or a custom unitard of steel mesh like Sabra wears. Maybe eventually :)

Little One

I've been having fun painting in Krita, and I've wondered why I didn't download and use Krita earlier despite the glowing feedback on it from some of my loved ones. Oh well, stubborn me.

Original Concepts

I was inspired to do this illustration after looking at one of my old concept cover art sketches for Book I of The Legacy Incarnate.  Sabra and little Ferkaes share a tender moment. I had lots of fun playing around with different brushes, getting a feel for which ones I liked best.  I definitely like the fountain pen for the sharp highlights, and the airbrush is fantastic. This piece was very experimental, and I'm happy without how it turned out.  I look forward to doing more illustrations in Krita!

Just an update on my revision of Incarnate Memory: I am getting towards the end of the manuscript, where I've removed most of the old ending and am adding a lot of new material to tie up the book.  It's been a challenge to write a lot of new scenes in a book I drafted years ago, and the story has actually become a lot darker. I'm glad I'm creating a new ending to the book, though, as the original ending never sat quite right with me.

Have a nice evening!

New Look and Krita

I've updated the look and some of the layout of Xenithar's Lair, now in a green theme!  The color isn't for any real particular reason other than I like green.  Originally I was just going to change the header, but ended up changing the colors and stuff on the Lair.

I downloaded Krita, an opensource art program.  It's dedicated more to illustration and less to technical stuff like GIMP, and I'm slowly getting the hang of it.  I really like all the art tools it has, and I hope to eventually produce quality illustrations with it. Below are a few unfinished pics I've done in Krita.

Gonna be one of those days . . .

Art tidbit

On Sundays I don't work on my primary writing projects, so it gives me time while our little boy is sleeping to do art.

This is a character I've hinted at in a previous post that I didn't expect to meet during my revision of Incarnate Memory, but that I'm delighted to explore.  The picture depicts her as she is, and then as she used to be and could be again.  Originally I meant to draw just the left version of her, but decided to go for a more upright and confident version of her, contrasting the movement of her hurt and sad self with the stillness and serenity of her happier self.

Her tattoo I actually drew as a separate file weeks ago, and wanted to use it as a design for products like shirts and necklaces.  I might do that sometime.  I just pasted it into the picture and shrunk and turned it and erased parts to fit on her arms.

Her race is inspired by Native Americans, and so she has rounder features, along with darker skin, than most of my other humanoid characters, like Sabra the Incarnate.

Speaking of Native Americans, I had Colors of the Wind from Disney's Pocahontas stuck in my head while drawing part of this, haha.

Sad Crazy, Plus Excerpt!

The last few weeks have been kind of crazy.  We had an unexpected loss in my husband's family, and it's still hard to think of how suddenly the death came.  I'm still grieving off and on.  However, I press forward with my writing, and I hope the event will serve as an inspiration for me.

Working on several projects really stretched me thin creatively, so I pushed aside many of my projects, written and art, to work on the revision of Incarnate Memory.  The more I work on it, the more I'm excited to publish it!  I've added a lot more material to the original draft, including a completely new POV, and am having fun expanding on the story and Sabra's world.  I even met a new character I didn't expect to pop up in revision, and she's definitely going to help strengthen Sabra's story arc.

Incarnate Memory is going to be the first Legacy Incarnate book that will be published for the first time without the POV of Lithia McCail.  I edited out everything about her in the first two books and re-uploaded them to Createspace.  Doing this actually allowed me room for that new POV I mentioned, and will help tie this book a lot better into Book IV of LI.

My goal is to publish Incarnate Memory by the end of the year.  That's a real push, but if not by the end of this year, then by the end of March 2017 at the latest. It's no promise, but that's my ballpark estimate of publication date.

I created a new blog to post my book reviews, so I won't be posting book reviews on Xenithar's Lair any longer. [Edit 1/20/17: I will still post some reviews on here as well as on SDR.] It's called Silver Dragon Reviews; some of the reviews I took from Goodreads and re-posted on SDR.

I would like to share an exclusive excerpt with my readers from Incarnate Memory.  This is not from a finished edition of the manuscript, and may still have issues, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

New Art Gallery (again?)

Hello everyone!  I recently signed up to Elfwood, a long-going sci-fi and fantasy artist/writer website, for a more casual gallery that I'll be posting a lot of my COL CCG art on.  It's a simple and streamlined platform, and people can comment on art.  Head on over to my profile to check out my current uploads!

Xenithar's Elfwood Profile

I know I just created a more formal art gallery, but that will mostly feature my more detailed art pieces, along with the digital sketches.  Like I mentioned, Elfwood will feature a lot of my trading card art, along with my bigger pieces.

Everyone have an awesome day!

Digital Painting - This needed to be done!

I love me touchy feely romance :3

As part of the COL CCG project, I've made an effort to make quality illustrations for the cards, some more quality than others.  This particular painting is close to me, and is a picture I've needed to draw for some time.

It depicts a scene from Founders Part 1 after Skandar confesses his reason for marrying Ayaka, and Ayaka allows him to remove her mask of maidenhood, her deepest gesture of trust and appreciation.

This picture was originally hand-drawn in pencil, and I scanned it in and went over all the major lines in black.  It made the curves of the lines less natural, but it turned out cleaner than it would have otherwise.

I did the background to get an idea of the major light source, and then colored in the characters.  I did Skandar's glowing body runes so I would get a good idea of lighting on him as well.

After filling in the colors, I started to shade Skandar using a brush.  However, it was looking kind of sloppy, so I tried a different technique I learned from my friend Taelifoe.  I used the gradient tool to cast dark shades over Skandar, and then erased areas that were supposed to be lit. I used the same technique on Ayaka. While it doesn't have as much detail as the brush method, it has a softer effect, which really complements the mood of the picture.  I did very little brushing for lighting and shading.  Their hair I used a brush for shading and highlighting.

Original pencil drawing.

Aside from art, I've been tackling my writing of Incarnate Choice, and I'm still working on the Incarnate Memory.  I was talking to my husband about how to keep the Legacy Incarnate series and Sabra as a character fresh to readers.  He used the example of a series he had read and told me how the character is constantly adapting to different situations, along with his personal growth.  I've been trying to keep that in mind as I write, as I don't want Sabra to become a stale character or, even worse, a Mary-Sue.  She has developed throughout the series and has had to adapt to several situations, so I hope I can keep it going.


I've updated my progress bars on the left side of Xenithar's Lair, and I've added more link buttons so you can stalk find me at different places online.

Everyone have a nice evening :)

Gift Search Release Date

Hello everyone, and good news!  Book 2 of The Legend of Draconite: Gift Search will be available on Createspace Friday, July 8th, 2016!

I must apologize for how long it's taken to get this book out for purchase.  There was still a lot of stuff I had to fix in it, and even after I ordered a proof copy, there were a few things (even a few inconsistencies, out of all things) to fix.  But now this story should be ready to go, and I'm excited to finally publish it for all to enjoy!

I must say, I really ripped this book apart and put it back together.  There's so much going on in it, I'm just glad it came together as well as it did!  I'd like to thank my critique group for the (indirect) help they gave me, as I learned a lot about writing from getting critique on another story, and my beta reader Taeborg.  All of you have helped make this a great book!

New Art Gallery

This has been a long time coming since I moved Xenithar's Lair from Freewebs to the Blogger platform.  I have created an art gallery at Wix.com for everyone to enjoy!  It features digital and traditional art.  So head on over to the Silver Dragon Gallery and take a peek!

There are a few finished pieces I missed while uploading to the gallery, such as the new Lithia book cover, but I plan on getting those up there when I get back to editing the site.

For the last week I've taken a break from working on any novel stuff --- writing and editing.  Between writing and this critique group I joined, I've felt really burned out.  I have so many projects to work on, and having to read through other peoples work and write out comments stressed me out more than I had expected.  However, either this coming week or next I plan on diving back into The Legacy Incarnate for more writing and editing.

The critique group got me thinking very critically about The Legacy Incarnate series as a whole.  I drafted 7 books in the series and thought I would leave it at that.  However, due to some major revisions I decided to make from the first novel onward, I currently have 2 more books planned to write for the series and have started on one of them.  Both will take place between Book VI and the original Book VII, and are tentatively titled Incarnate Choice and Incarnate Hunt, Books VII and VIII, respectively, and Incarnate Test will be Book IX.

This means I have put off writing In Chaos Forged, at least mostly.  I may jump back into ICF once in a while, but it's no longer my main WIP.  I will continue to do revision on Incarnate Memory, Book III of The Legacy Incarnate, and I hope to get it published by the end of the year.

Aside from book projects, I've continued work on the Chronicles of Libera card game, and it has undergone a 3rd major revision.  There are still some things in the rules I need to tweak, and I have yet to test it out, but I'm hoping it will work out better than the last few versions.  This past week I've been focusing a lot of my energy on the Collectible Card Game, and have created a tasty piece of art you may enjoy.

This actually isn't the final card, but it's pretty close.  Characters and other cards will come in collectible sets and have different rarity levels.  Unlike the 2nd version of COL CCG, I'm planning on making starter decks and booster packs.  There are literally hundreds of cards to make, but I'm not in a big hurry; this has been a fun art project, and I hope it will eventually come to fruition as a fun card game.

Everyone have a wonderful evening.

Experimental Style - Sabra portrait

Here's a piece of art where I experimented with some realism.  The goal of this picture was to avoid keeping any line art in the final piece.

Side-by-side comparison of the line art to the final piece.

I admit I got lazy when I got to the clothing; I somehow messed up the blue base color layer, so I did a little modification to one of her sleeves and left the colors flat.

I'm happy with how Sabra turned out; her appearance has changed somewhat since 2010, 2011, and this picture definitely gives her a more realistic look than how I normally draw her.  I know looks amateur.  It's been a long time since I've tried this style, and I have a long ways to go before making it look even more realistic.

Done in GIMP with a Wacom Bamboo tablet.

Book Review: King's Folly by Jill Williamson

King's Folly by Jill Williamson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was an interesting book. It's hard to describe how I feel about it, which is one reason why this book floats between 3-4 stars for me (marked as 4/5 on Goodreads because I rounded up :p).

I like big tomes I can really dig into, and this story did it for me. The story flowed pretty well throughout, and I think that's what really kept me going. King's Folly was super long; over 500 pages in about a 6x9 format, and the font size is probably 10 pt. at least. Just think Wheel of Time: the Great Hunt long, and you'll get an idea of how long this is. I think this is supposed to be a YA novel, as I think Bethany House Publishers intends to publish YA (correct me if I'm wrong), but due to the length and more mature themes, this definitely came off as adult level to me.

For some background, this is a story about a land that's falling apart due to the greediness and general immorality of its people. The story focuses on royal families, most of which are involved in sleeping around with concubines and mistresses. Normally a book with this sort of content, even though it's not explicit, would have made me set it down pretty early on. However, I have a habit of looking at the end of the story/book soon after I start reading it, where I found the Author's Note. Basically, she explains this is a story about a people slowly turning to the true God of this fantasy world, so that helped me see all the immorality and corruption, and the eventual turning to truth and godliness, in the right light.

There were a lot of characters, at least named characters, and I lost track of some at times when they reappeared after hundreds of pages of first meeting them. I'm glad the author took pains to list the major characters before the beginning of the story; I referenced it quite a bit, along with the map.

I liked the character development in this book. The main protagonist, Wilek, strains against living the way his father, a morally corrupt king, wants him to. Instead of having many concubines and such, he has one, and boy is she more questionable than she first sounds. In the beginning, Wilek considers her a friend, but she is very manipulative, so I never really saw her the way Wilek did, but that may have been intentional on the author's part; she didn't present any of the immorality as acceptable, and other characters blatantly condemned immoral behavior.

After (view spoiler)[his concubine Lebetta dies (hide spoiler)], Wilek really starts to develop positively as a man and slowly starts to turn to one of the gods, (view spoiler)[who is the only real god in the pantheon while the rest are evil spirits (hide spoiler)] whose name is Arman. He is captured by a magic user, or mantic, named Charlon, who is supposed to be impregnated by him to fulfill some prophecy for her tribe and the spirit she serves; however, she's terrified of men from past traumas, and has a hard time persuading Wilek, or herself, to sleep with her. She was my least favorite POV, as she was so focused on doing this one thing that it disgusted me; good thing she's (view spoiler)[not one of the good guys, so it's okay to dislike her. (hide spoiler)]

My favorite character was Trevn. He's also one of the princes, and Wilek's half-brother, as the king has several wives. Right from the beginning he sees through the corruption and immorality in his father's court, and is highly reluctant to practice having concubines and a harem and whatever. He's taught by a goodly priest who has just barely preserved the true teachings of Arman, and though Trevn didn't realize that at first, comes to look to Arman and risks his life to preserve what's called the Book of Arman. I also liked his interactions with this love interest and one of the main characters, Mielle, who I also enjoyed reading about and had good development.

There were several other characters, some of which didn't seem to be important, at least not to this story. I'm assuming they'll play a larger part in the second collection of the Kinsman Chronicles, King's Blood.

The story itself flowed pretty smooth, but I thought the last several chapters were pretty rushed. The action and plot were pushed really fast and condensed, so much so that some of the descriptions confused me and I had to reread them.

A lot of the story focused on the sexualization of characters, and while I feel the author portrayed it in the right light, it got pretty repetitive after awhile, and I became eager for more plot points and devices. It wasn't until probably the last half to the last fourth of the book that we got some really interesting action and a better look at the spirits of the world and their relation to their magic users.

I liked how much the setting played into the story. The whole land is riddled with tunnels from a huge plant called evenroot, which, when ingested, helps the mantics interact with the spirits and use “magic,” which is really the spirits interacting with things invisibly. Because of the excessive mining of this plant, among other things, the land is literally falling apart. It presents a desperate background for the characters to develop in, and really shows a hopelessness from greed and power struggles.

There's a lot more going on in this story, including a prophecy, but I won't go into all of that here. Once you understand the moral of this book, and why the author wrote what she did, it's an interesting read. I look forward to seeing where this series goes next year.

I received a free copy from Bethany House in exchange for an honest review.



View all my reviews

Mountaining

Hello everyone!  I'm sorry for the lack of updates.

I've been enjoying our new home this year.  As well as having a cozy house, we live in a beautiful location.  I'm literally right down the road from a trailhead, and I recently explored a trail that went up the side of a canyon.  I went up in the morning as the sun rose, and while there was a fierce, cool wind blowing on the way up, the view was worth it!

Sunstone and the Grand Novel Contest

Hello everyone!  I learned about a contest Inkitt is having called the Grand Novel Contest.  I've entered Book 1 of The Legend of Draconite: Sunstone to this contest, and I encourage everyone to go and read it.  It's free to read!  Sunstone will still be available on Createspace and Lulu, as I still retain all the rights, and it will be available for free on Inkitt for the duration of this contest.

Do you like the book?  Go ahead and vote for it!  Know anyone looking for clean, quality fantasy!  Share it!

Thanks for all your support!

Sketch and Update

I hope everyone is having a fabulous Saturday.  I have a sketch to share with you!

This character's name is Luci Arualeyette, who plays a historical role in the Legacy Incarnate, mostly in Book VI.  I actually have a colored and much more detailed and elaborate painting in mind for this character, which I may base off of this sketch, but for now, it was fun to sketch her out.  I don't think I've ever drawn her before.

Luci is part of a race of elves from northern Tyrell, who lived before the Borderwall fell, and she became the mother of three major nations and a harbinger of Libera's Gospel of Zarem to her people.  Readers will learn more about her descendants in The Legacy Incarnate.

I'm on the third read-through with Gift Search, and will probably be publishing it start of June.  As I prepare it for publication, I will be jumping back into the Legacy Incarnate series with Book III: Incarnate Memory for revision and editing.  Boy howdy am I excited to revisit LI!  As I work on LI, I plan on going back into Hammer of Fire and In Chaos Forged to continue the story there too.  Lots and lots of projects to work on!

Second Read-Through

I'm happy to say that I've finished the first revision of Gift Search and have started a 2nd read-through of the manuscript.  This time I'll be mostly looking for grammatical errors, although I will also be adding details here or there.  I've added all the major parts and deleted other parts to make the manuscript more cohesive and to make the story as a whole more coherent.

I was thinking that maybe after my 3rd review I would ask for beta-readers.  A beta-reader would take the time to read through the pre-published manuscript and critique it on things like story, characters, flow, style, grammar, etc.  I was thinking about giving prizes to beta-readers, like a free copy of the finished Gift Search.

However, it's still a ways away, but if you're interested in seeing me do something like that, please sound off in the comments below.

I'm so excited to work on this second revision now that the hard part of fixing the major plot holes has been done.  Thanks to all my readers for your support!

Pony-fied

Is it "pony-fied," or "ponified"?  Oh well, I did it!  I finished the ponying up-ifying of my character, Sabra the Incarnate, and she turned out super cool.

Unlike other My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan art that I've done, I made more of an effort to emulate the show style. I've found it hard in the past to draw MLP:FIM style ponies, as I'm so used to drawing more realistic equines.  I'm glad this picture turned out more like the show style.

Taelifoe Art Trade

Hello everyone!  I wanted to share an art trade I did with fellow author and artist W.A. Johnson (Taelifoe).

This is a creature from her Legends of Destiny fantasy series called a Gan-Do-Gan.  The hardest part for me when drawing this creature was making his wings realistically big and fitting them onto the canvas.  I managed to get a good pose in, as well as some perspective with his near wing.

I loved drawing him.  I had to do some research on what harpy eagles and roan-colored horses looked like to get his coloring and physiology correct.  I love drawing horses and horse-like creatures.  Gan-Do-Gan are such interesting beasties, and I enjoy reading about them in Taelifoe's stories.

You can see her art blog and her half of the trade on her Art Dump.  She did one of the villains from the Chronicles of Libera, and it was wickedly cool to see Taelifoe's interpretation of her.

Everyone have a good evening!

Narrowing the Focus

Today I've decided that I'm going to focus all of my writing efforts into finishing the revision and edit of Book 2 of The Legend of Draconite: Gift Search, and put In Chaos Forged on a temporary hold.  I have some ideas for how I'll finish ICF written down, so I'm not too worried about returning to it later.  I'm feeling kind of burned out on it right now anyway, and if I'm going to revise and release Book III of The Legacy Incarnate: Incarnate Memory this year as planned, I need to get Gift Search done soon.

Lately I've been wearing myself out with a combination of the Insanity workout program and my work as a custodian.  I like the physically demanding work, but my knees are hating me.  Weak knees are kind of a thing in my family.  I got some braces to help, and hopefully I can get back into the workout program soon.

I've completed the Libera Battle decks, and everything that goes with the game (counters, manual, etc.) are ready to go.  I'm just waiting for the funds to buy the game, test it, and publish it on The Game Crafter.  In the meantime, you can look at the shop site for Libera Battle.

We adopted two cats soon after our new move, and they're wonderful kitties (and wonderfully house broken too!).  One is a big Maine Coon Blue Russian mix called Smokey Bear, and the other is a little black and dark brown tabby named Shadow.  They're like brothers, and it's fun to watch them play together.

It's been a pleasure having the cats around the house, even though our little boy likes to harass them quite a bit.  Smokey is a very tolerant cat, and I try to teach our son to treat him nicely.

Anywho, everyone have a nice evening!

Chronicles of Libera brief introduction

Something I've been meaning to post on here is a video I recently made and uploaded onto Youtube.  It's an introduction to the Chronicles of Libera that briefly explains some important lore and background on the stories in general.  Please enjoy!

Tons of Pencil Art!

Hello everyone, and welcome to a fun post where I will guide you through various pencil pictures I've done before 2016.  We recently got a scanner/printer like new for $3 at Deseret Industries, and tonight I scanned a bunch of pictures, many of them I would like to share with you!

One thing you'll note is that several of these pictures have weird shadows on the borders.  That's because the sketchbook they came from actually didn't fit on the scanner bed all the way.  However, I've still tried to make the drawings themselves visible.

Onward to art!

Moved and Still Alive

We just barely got internet for our new home, so now I'm back online!  I've been searching for job opportunities, as well as writing, editing, and drawing.  We also got a new washer and dryer, so now I'm able to wash a week and a half worth of laundry.  Hooray!

Source: mlp.wikia.com

Lately I've had a hunger for doing My Little Pony fan art.  On Sunday I worked on a painting that's a tribute to a character from the Equestria Girls series, and I'll share it on Xenithar's Lair once I'm done with it.  I have an idea for another painting I want to do, also based off of My Little Pony.  They're larger paintings, and they're a nice break from the Libera Battle illustrations. (Although I've enjoyed doing those as well!)

I'm actually nearing completion of the Libera Battle starter decks.  I'm planning on purchasing the decks and components for testing with my hubby to see if the mechanics work out as well as I've written them.