East Meets West Meets Angst2/12/2024 Not a lot of people who know me in real life know I write books. Far more of them know I create digital art, but I've actually been writing for longer than I've been using a computer to make pretty pictures. It's so incredibly satisfying to be able to do both now and illustrate my stories with the visions I get in my head as I write the words. My family occasionally asks me how my books are doing and if I'm still writing. And while I smile and answer the questions as I inwardly lament the fact that they seem to forget my website exists, I remind myself every time that it doesn't matter. The stories and characters are in my head anyway and I write them because I have to. I don't have to share them with the world but I do, just in case someone else might enjoy them. Creativity is a need for me, a way to feed my soul and manifest happiness. Releasing my creations is like putting little pieces of myself out in the cosmos for others to discover. It's accomplishing something, sharing my art with the universe. For anyone out there who might read this... Thanks. Just like Tsubasa up there, it makes me happy to think my art might connect with others' emotions and allow us to share something special. I create because I love it, and that's what keeps me going. And for my next labor of angst... For anyone keeping track, Hinode is my twenty-fourth published title. It's a story I was itching to write after my trip to Japan last spring and which now functions as a de facto prologue to the Galactic Explorers series. That's why I've called it both a companion story and labeled it as Book #0. Nothing in this book should spoil any plotlines of the series, but I very much wanted to explore the complicated relationship between Ren and Ethan which is alluded to in the primary books. As I've done for the last few releases, I'm sharing some of the art I've created to go with the book. If you want to read about a few of the places which inspired this story, you can find that and several of my trip photos in my last blog post. Hinode is a story told entirely from Ethan's point of view and, as he is a young man driven by intense emotion, this one is a roller coaster, so be forewarned. As someone who's become rather familiar with the inner workings of that character's mind, and him having taken up residence in my head in turn, I can tell you that my heart aches for him constantly. He's so plagued by doubt and uncertainty that he sabotages his own happiness at every opportunity and honestly finds little inside himself that he thinks is worthy of love. He's entirely wrong about that, of course, but that's why this story is so important for his personal growth. My poor, angsty Ethan needs to endure some necessary self-discovery to realize his true potential. I'm just the narrator of his emotional journey. The image above is the one I did of Ethan's rainy hike to the summit of Fushimi Inari shrine. I tried to recreate the site as faithfully as I could, but ultimately, I was trying to capture the emotion of the moment. Following the trend I established about a year or so ago, Hinode features a unique cover image for the paperback version, which is the nighttime scene above with the floating lanterns. Before I started working on this piece, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for the print cover, but I already had an idea in my head inspired by the wishing lantern scene in the book. I liked how this turned out, so it got to be the print cover. I actually did this one while I was still writing the book (which, honestly, is how most of these pieces happen anyway). I get these vivid images in my head that I need to create. They don't always turn out the way I pictured them, but this one definitely did. In fact, the descriptions of Ren and Ethan's club attire in the book came from this, and not the other way around. I did the art first in this case. I'm really pleased with the lighting in particular. So, yeah. From Ren's electric blue hair to Ethan's glowing body piercings to the ever-so-subtle wandering of Ren's fingers... This was the image which spawned the Shibuya clubbing scene. Incidentally, I did create Tsubasa's setlist from their show at the club. I spent some time selecting and ordering songs into a Spotify playlist, which you can listen to here. For a more DJ-like experience, I experimented with the crossfade setting and found that a crossfade of 8 seconds gave a nice transition between songs. It's not at all what a DJ set would sound like in real life, but I gotta work with what I've got. *sniff* This one makes my soft heart weep. Ethan and Ren love each other so much that them having to say goodbye will never be an easy thing to do. You might think that after writing so many books, I wouldn't be so affected by my characters' heartache, but I still am. Every time. They all deserve happiness and love, and it genuinely pains me to witness their torment. As much as I love these two, though, they were never meant to be together. Sometimes, I wish they could have been. So, let's end on a happy note. This piece makes me extremely happy because it shows Ren and Ethan's relationship the way it should always be--filled with laughter and acceptance. This image has been inside my head for months and I finally was able to render it out just yesterday. I don't have much else to say about it except that it came out even better than how I'd pictured it. I love this one so much.
All the vendor links on the Hinode page are now live. I hope everyone enjoys this one and, in the meantime, I need to get back to the next book. If you thought Nashira was long... Yeah. Book four will take a bit longer to finish, I think. For now, though, stay safe, happy Valentine's Day, and thanks for reading!
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