I Can't Believe I Did This....

 I can't believe I did it, folks. Recently I finished drafting Book V of The Legacy Incarnate: Incarnate Truth! After our trip to the Redwoods, I got on a writing high and I crafted the rest of the story. There's still some rough spots to work out, but I got the most important stuff in and I'm pretty pleased with the rough draft. It's a TON better than the original BV draft I completed back in 2011 or so.

Will it be published anytime soon? Probably not. I can't even promise it will be released next year, and will most likely be a 2026 release. I am revising and editing Book 3 of The Legend of Draconite right now, and I still need to get the Legacy Incarnate anthology (Book 4.5) ready, which has some key elements to help the reader understand some things in Book V. In the meantime, I plan on posting related artwork and excerpts so you, my reader, can take sneak peeks at these books in progress!

A screenshot of B3 of LOD in
Scrivener, the primary software I use for my writing.
The red is my first edit through. I highly recommend
Scrivener for serious story-tellers!

Doing that much writing caused some burn out for me, and I'm trying to get my creative juices flowing for editing E'lsra again. I was partway through the first edit when I got the drive to finish LI BV, and now it's time to jump back in. One way I've been doing this is the inked illustrations I've been sharing, and I want to focus more on illustrations for E'lsra. I've written several ideas, and would love to do two illustrations per chapter. To start with, I based it on a scene near the beginning of an excerpt I've already shared on here,  "Tournament of Swords".

"Henry hummed and kissed her, breathing her in. She had recently bathed and smelled of her favorite rose-scented soap, and against the chill of the morning, she was so warm and soft in his arms…but he would have to wait to indulge himself any further with Sabra until after the Tournament."

As well as the general composition and pose of the characters, I focused a lot on symbolism. If you're familiar with classical art, you'll find the character poses inspired by "Il Bacio" by Francesco Hayez. I wanted to emphasize the warmth of Henry and Sabra's embrace and kiss.

 

One of the major elements is the painting in the background, of two Molouk lovers reaching to each other, one of them ascending to heaven. The Draconite's wings have Erskan characters inscribed on them that read "Sabra Life," "Joy," and "Henry Death." If you're familiar with The Legacy Incarnate, you'll have a pretty good understanding of what the painting generally foreshadows.

On or near the ground are a child's drawing and crayons, a couple of which are broken, hinting at Sabra's difficulty with child-bearing. Around Henry are four ribbons, indicating his participation in the upcoming tournament, along with the scribbled-on sheaf of paper on the ground.

There's lots of other stuff too, but I won't explain it all here, because that's the viewer's job! What sorts of things can you infer from this picture?

I realized in hindsight that this illustration isn't completely accurate to the drafted scene, so I may need to do some fix-up there, but it still turned out great!