Update kinda thing
Been a while since I posted stuff so... I'm not dead or lurking in the abyss. I kept meaning to set up the cross-posting thing (just in case peeps are still using LJ) but I am chronically lazy. However, since I'm on vacation this week I have time to do that shit so....
I have finished writing Some Velvet Morning *heaves huge sigh*. While not nearly as long as Dreaming Of The Void (which is a beast at slightly over 360K words), Velvet still comes in at a respectable 242.5K words. To put that into perspective, that's roughly the size of 3.5-250 page paperback novels. I will be getting Dreaming ready for prime-time and releasing it as several books (just because of the sheer size of it) as publishing rights have reverted back to me. I will certainly post when that happens.
I've also been asked to post another story to Yaoifix.com in the fall. That one is Escape Velocity and for those of you reading Velvet, you may be happy to know that it features Tohan and his lover, Warrick. I've already got slightly more than 20K of that written. I will be looking for beta readers for that, too.
In other writing news, I've been trying to get to The Fire (Saraf & Edenlei's story) while I'm off this week but I needed to get Velvet done first. Hopefully I can work on that some in the few days I have left of my vacation *fingers crossed*.
I have managed to get my hot little hands on one of my grail dolls. For the uninitiated, a grail doll in the BJD world is a doll that you want but for some reason were unable to obtain and getting it after the fact is very difficult. This is usually related to the price of the doll, the limited nature of the doll or because the company that produced it no longer exists. Or even some combination of those things.
This grail of mine was the Impldoll Miguel the Demon Hunter in grey resin. He was limited to 100 dolls worldwide and when he was released, I did not have the $500US that I would've needed to bring him home. He was the visual base for the character Orajin from my novella, Slip Of The Tongue. His partner is my other grail, a Unidoll Ark in white resin with his fantasy ears. This one is even tougher to find as he wasn't a popular sculpt and not that long after his release, Unidoll folded.
Flash forward 7 years and somebody puts their Miguel up for sale on the DoA marketplace. The owner had spray painted him black and he no longer had the human right forearm and hand as the owner swapped it out for a mecha arm. The price was lowered drastically because of the missing arm piece (although he has the mecha arm instead) and because of the black spray paint job. I dithered a little and then said fuck it and bought him with the intention of removing the black paint. I got him for about 1/3 of his original purchase price. Score! Funny enough, a week after I get the grail home, the Ark pops up on the MP *groans*. I didn't purchase him though as I feel he's overpriced and I'm okay with letting that ship sail off into the sunset.
So far, I've put in 17 hours of work removing the black paint as well as water colour pencils and another type of acrylic paint. I'm nearly finished the initial paint removal with just one piece left to do. I'll be doing that later today when I get more supplies (I've gone through 300 make-up removal pads, 1.5 magic erasers, 2/3's of a 750ml bottle of 99% isopropyol alcohol, 1/3 of a 950ml bottle of Windsor & Newton brush cleaner and a metric fuck-ton of elbow grease).
Because of all the nooks and crevasses in his sculpt, many of the pieces require more than one cleaning session. It also means I'm using a toothbrush to get into some areas and a toothpick with a teeny bit of cotton wrapped around the end. It is a very tedious process but I expected that. I'll also never be able to remove all traces of the black paint and get him back to pristine grey resin. That's fine though and I never expected him to be pristine due to the paint job. He's also not going to be the same character that I originally had planned for him and I'm more than fine with that. I actually like this new character he's developing into.
He is liking the name Mkhai (no, that's not a typo. That's actually his name and means "fight".), he's a god and part of my Divine Worship world. He's the God of Warfare and he's the fraternal twin to Ra-Sui, God of Decay & Guardian of Souls. I'm not sure yet of his lover, but it will be either a general in the army he commands or some totally green, wet-behind-the-ears, recruit. Both options have the potential for a LOT of fun story-wise and I'm not sure yet which way I'll go. I have seen the head options for his lover (funny enough they are new works by Impl but not yet released) and they'll go on the body that Wu-Tyr rejected that I never got around to listing for sale. Yea! for laziness helping me to acquire more dolls.
Because of all the nooks and bone projections and my not being able to completely get him back to pristine grey resin, he actually fits really well the mental image I have of a god of warfare; that being looking a little battleworn and definitely NOT pristine, so I'm actually fairly pleased about that. I may metal leaf his horn bits but I'm not 100% sure of that as leafing is VERY labour intensive/time consuming when done on a doll of the scale that I'd be doing. I'd also need to leave the Mod-Podge to cure for 6 weeks to ensure maximum hardness/protection of the leafing before re-stringing him. I believe I have his eyes, which are looking to be the ones that didn't work out for Tohan, which is awesome, and I'm trying to decide on his wig.
Rhas-Khan is currently out for a face-up by the talented Angel Toast. I plan to purchase Eilam, a SoulDoll Vito Rail, at the end of August. It'll be a couple of months before he'll arrive home, but I'm quite excited for that. I'm STILL waiting on Wu-Tyr's body from Dollshe *sighs*. I had emailed last week to see what was going on as the sale I got the body from stated a 2-3 month shipping time and when I sent the email, it had been 3.5 months. The response said the body would ship this week and here it is Thursday morning (Friday 1am in Korea) and my order still says "processing". Dollshe is known for it's hideous wait times but the price of the body was too good to pass up at 50% off. I just hope Dollshe doesn't continue to disappoint and actually ships the body out by the end of this week as promised. I'm not holding my breath on that though.
Other doll purchases likely won't happen this year due to funding as this is a stupidly expensive hobby. I still need to get Ra-Sui a body, buy the head for Mkhai's lover (which ever one that turns out to be, when ever they release them) and buy Ra-Sui's lover (Lume Meissa boy). Additionally, I need to get Tohan a face-up and minor ear mod, Wu-Tyr needs a face-up and when I finish cleaning Mkhai, he'll need a face-up, too. I also need to make some clothes for Mkhai that shows off all that gorgeous horn sculpting. Of course, when I get Wisp and Mkhai's lover, they'll need face-ups as well and clothes. They truly are wallet vampires.
So that's what I've been up to lately. Congrats on making it all the way to the end of that wicked long post.
I have finished writing Some Velvet Morning *heaves huge sigh*. While not nearly as long as Dreaming Of The Void (which is a beast at slightly over 360K words), Velvet still comes in at a respectable 242.5K words. To put that into perspective, that's roughly the size of 3.5-250 page paperback novels. I will be getting Dreaming ready for prime-time and releasing it as several books (just because of the sheer size of it) as publishing rights have reverted back to me. I will certainly post when that happens.
I've also been asked to post another story to Yaoifix.com in the fall. That one is Escape Velocity and for those of you reading Velvet, you may be happy to know that it features Tohan and his lover, Warrick. I've already got slightly more than 20K of that written. I will be looking for beta readers for that, too.
In other writing news, I've been trying to get to The Fire (Saraf & Edenlei's story) while I'm off this week but I needed to get Velvet done first. Hopefully I can work on that some in the few days I have left of my vacation *fingers crossed*.
I have managed to get my hot little hands on one of my grail dolls. For the uninitiated, a grail doll in the BJD world is a doll that you want but for some reason were unable to obtain and getting it after the fact is very difficult. This is usually related to the price of the doll, the limited nature of the doll or because the company that produced it no longer exists. Or even some combination of those things.
This grail of mine was the Impldoll Miguel the Demon Hunter in grey resin. He was limited to 100 dolls worldwide and when he was released, I did not have the $500US that I would've needed to bring him home. He was the visual base for the character Orajin from my novella, Slip Of The Tongue. His partner is my other grail, a Unidoll Ark in white resin with his fantasy ears. This one is even tougher to find as he wasn't a popular sculpt and not that long after his release, Unidoll folded.
Flash forward 7 years and somebody puts their Miguel up for sale on the DoA marketplace. The owner had spray painted him black and he no longer had the human right forearm and hand as the owner swapped it out for a mecha arm. The price was lowered drastically because of the missing arm piece (although he has the mecha arm instead) and because of the black spray paint job. I dithered a little and then said fuck it and bought him with the intention of removing the black paint. I got him for about 1/3 of his original purchase price. Score! Funny enough, a week after I get the grail home, the Ark pops up on the MP *groans*. I didn't purchase him though as I feel he's overpriced and I'm okay with letting that ship sail off into the sunset.
So far, I've put in 17 hours of work removing the black paint as well as water colour pencils and another type of acrylic paint. I'm nearly finished the initial paint removal with just one piece left to do. I'll be doing that later today when I get more supplies (I've gone through 300 make-up removal pads, 1.5 magic erasers, 2/3's of a 750ml bottle of 99% isopropyol alcohol, 1/3 of a 950ml bottle of Windsor & Newton brush cleaner and a metric fuck-ton of elbow grease).
Because of all the nooks and crevasses in his sculpt, many of the pieces require more than one cleaning session. It also means I'm using a toothbrush to get into some areas and a toothpick with a teeny bit of cotton wrapped around the end. It is a very tedious process but I expected that. I'll also never be able to remove all traces of the black paint and get him back to pristine grey resin. That's fine though and I never expected him to be pristine due to the paint job. He's also not going to be the same character that I originally had planned for him and I'm more than fine with that. I actually like this new character he's developing into.
He is liking the name Mkhai (no, that's not a typo. That's actually his name and means "fight".), he's a god and part of my Divine Worship world. He's the God of Warfare and he's the fraternal twin to Ra-Sui, God of Decay & Guardian of Souls. I'm not sure yet of his lover, but it will be either a general in the army he commands or some totally green, wet-behind-the-ears, recruit. Both options have the potential for a LOT of fun story-wise and I'm not sure yet which way I'll go. I have seen the head options for his lover (funny enough they are new works by Impl but not yet released) and they'll go on the body that Wu-Tyr rejected that I never got around to listing for sale. Yea! for laziness helping me to acquire more dolls.
Because of all the nooks and bone projections and my not being able to completely get him back to pristine grey resin, he actually fits really well the mental image I have of a god of warfare; that being looking a little battleworn and definitely NOT pristine, so I'm actually fairly pleased about that. I may metal leaf his horn bits but I'm not 100% sure of that as leafing is VERY labour intensive/time consuming when done on a doll of the scale that I'd be doing. I'd also need to leave the Mod-Podge to cure for 6 weeks to ensure maximum hardness/protection of the leafing before re-stringing him. I believe I have his eyes, which are looking to be the ones that didn't work out for Tohan, which is awesome, and I'm trying to decide on his wig.
Rhas-Khan is currently out for a face-up by the talented Angel Toast. I plan to purchase Eilam, a SoulDoll Vito Rail, at the end of August. It'll be a couple of months before he'll arrive home, but I'm quite excited for that. I'm STILL waiting on Wu-Tyr's body from Dollshe *sighs*. I had emailed last week to see what was going on as the sale I got the body from stated a 2-3 month shipping time and when I sent the email, it had been 3.5 months. The response said the body would ship this week and here it is Thursday morning (Friday 1am in Korea) and my order still says "processing". Dollshe is known for it's hideous wait times but the price of the body was too good to pass up at 50% off. I just hope Dollshe doesn't continue to disappoint and actually ships the body out by the end of this week as promised. I'm not holding my breath on that though.
Other doll purchases likely won't happen this year due to funding as this is a stupidly expensive hobby. I still need to get Ra-Sui a body, buy the head for Mkhai's lover (which ever one that turns out to be, when ever they release them) and buy Ra-Sui's lover (Lume Meissa boy). Additionally, I need to get Tohan a face-up and minor ear mod, Wu-Tyr needs a face-up and when I finish cleaning Mkhai, he'll need a face-up, too. I also need to make some clothes for Mkhai that shows off all that gorgeous horn sculpting. Of course, when I get Wisp and Mkhai's lover, they'll need face-ups as well and clothes. They truly are wallet vampires.
So that's what I've been up to lately. Congrats on making it all the way to the end of that wicked long post.