What's Going On?

Well, the first draft of the next book is kinda done - mostly done - sorta...

Sssssh.... It's resting.

Which, honestly kills me.  I know it's a good idea, necessary even, to let a manuscript rest and cool down a bit before you start working on it again.  Just as it is a good idea with any design to walk away for a few days and then come back to it.  (That's when that stupid thing smites you in the eye. "How did I not see that?" you exclaim.) Rest is needed.

But.

I hate it.

So I'm moving on to making illustrations.

I've been really enjoying making linocut prints!  And, making it even more fun, Santa brought me new really spiffy Japanese carving tools - so much better than the standard tool kit I had before.  These make the experience feel like butter carving... smooooooth.  Lovely.

Notice the bright red baron?  A super special custom 3D printed tool with ball bearings on its underside to pressure the print's paper against the linoleum 'plate.'  Another joy to use.

On the theater front?

I just accepted a new play to design for October!

(Can't announce it yet - but it should be fun.)

Secret Projects... Well, Not Yet Ready to Reveal Ones Anyway

I've needed to cut back on theater work for the next few months, but I'll be staying busy with other projects.  The biggest of these is writing a sequel to a novel that a friend and I co-wrote last year!

A fantasy novel set in the world of Aenoriia.

That's the world I've been showing you in Minecraft form since... well, since I discovered it during covid.  Then (also in a break from theater work) I joined an international group of Minecrafters building a fantasy city... now a continent.  And now a novel.  Or two...

Not quite ready to pull the tarp off of that first novel yet (still tinkering under its hood), but pretty soon now, once I've formatted the ebook, and built the website, and solved a fussy little technical glitch... (You know those stripey scanner codes on the backs of books? Eeeevil little things!)

But.

Today I'm working on the map for Book 2, so, as a teaser, here is the map from Book 1,

AKA 

Ptolith in the Time of Rain

Map of Ptolith copyright Clare Floyd DeVries

If you want to see / learn more about Aenoriia, check out these sites:

https://www.instagram.com/astrophagymc/?hl=en or

https://www.youtube.com/c/astrophagymc

Close to the Bone

 Art and life sometimes come uncomfortably close.

Sitting through the Designer Run of Kitchen Dog Theater's new play, Dream Hou$e, was... 

was weird was what it was. 

The premise is that two sisters who recently lost their mother and inherited the long-time family home agree to let a reality TV show rennovate it for sale.

The IRL is that two designers who recently lost their mothers and have/had to deal with the family home watched and tried to seem all professional an' stuff.  (Basically, not weep all over the rest of the design team.)

Sometimes theater hits too close to the bone.

I have a visceral memory of watching another play called The Marriage of Betty & Boo, decades ago when I was very pregnant.  I have no remembrance of what happened in that play - except that every couple minutes (it seemed like) Betty would have another miscarraige and the actors would bounce a rubber baby doll off the stage.  That I remember. 

(The other couple, who had picked the play, apologized to the pregnant lady all the way home.)

And I know of at least one person who saw I play I designed, Natural Shocks, who told me later that it had shown her that she needed to get out of bad relationship.

It's not just safely sitting in a plush theater seat where this happens either...

On a trip to Europe once, when I happened to be in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, actually, on a free day with nothing planned... I got a call from a theater asking whether I was interested in designing The Diary of Anne Frank?

What are the odds of that?

Of course I said yes.  And, suddenly, the day had a plan: visit Anne Frank's house, or rather, the warehouse where her family hid during WWII. Which I had intended not to see.  Because wimp.

So I toured the Frank's hiding place and felt all the things I had intended not to feel...  But, because I was viewing this site professionally, I had just that little bit of distance that allowed me to be touched but not... well, blubber in public.

The other night, watching that Designer Run?  I wrapped myself in professionalism.  I took notes and, when the actresses cut too close to the bone, I sketched a random sketch.

Dream Hou$e, Kitchen Dog Theater, playing now!