In which I post the Picture of Anthony's Machine.

Indeedy. I had to take a picture of the drawing because my scanner didn't work. Anyway, here we are:

Sepia tone and wear are all for flavor. When my friend read the chapter beforehead, he said, "So it's a Nazi AT-AT?" I said, "Yeah....kinda." It ended up being a lot bigger in my mind than on paper. I originally had the idea for both Anthony's and Doom's machine when brainstorming about a story a friend was going to write. He said it was about the orcs and orc culture, and I made up an elaborate history on the spot about an orc warlord discovering steam power, and using crude steam machines to control all the other tribes. He said, quote: "I'll leave the steampunk to you." So I did. I originally started out as a steam machine being built by Laglor and Tony, but this came to me at the last second and sounded so much more negaging, so I went with that.

I'll be getting more pictures up as time goes along. Stay tuned.

In which I rejoice about finding a free eBook program.

Yes, indeedy. The program is Swiftebook, and it's a lot better than I expected. Most programs just have the ability to convert a text file into PDF, but this one lets me put in images and hyperlinks. It's great. For some reason, it linked to www.gurucreations.com, but it's about glass artistry. Yeah, I don't know, either. I just thank whatever saint looks after the Internet, and use it when I get the chance. Once the story is done, I'll take whatever drawings I've done and put them in, and make an eBook. But hey, submit any art you'd like to do now! I'm desperate for it, so I'll take prettty much anything. Just PM me on Heroscapers with a link, or email me the file.

I know I said I'd post a sketch of Anthony's machine, but I lost my notebook. And my good pencils. Yessir, a fine day this is.

In which I explain the reason for my absence and talk about stuff.

I don't know why I do this. It's not like anyone is reading it. Ah, well, better to get this off my chest than just let it fester, eh?

I'm working on a sort of project with some other 'Scapers called the Week@Heroscapers. (that's not a link, by the by. Blogger just says it is) We go through and collect things during the week that are worthy of the front page and compile them together. Then we send them to truth for posting on the front page, then rest a day and repeat the process. It's going pretty well, if I don't say so myself.

Because of this, the purpose of this blog seemed superfluous. So now, I'm turning this blog into something a little more selfsih. That's right, it'll be all me from now on.

Nerds: It doesn't take a lot to make them happy. Anyway.

I've been writing a story for a while now, called Having a Marvelous Time. It's gotten some buzz, brought me in some rep, as if that was important. No, what is important is the way it's changed me.

See, when I first discovered the internet, it was still a huge and mostly innocent place. The first messageboard I went to, a Sonic the Hedgehog board, was started by a person who was then my favorite author. I may have been about eight at the time. At around that time, NetRaptor, which was her username, had around maybe fifteen different Sonic stories. I read them all religiously, sometimes even more than once through. They were just that good; they're still just that good. The best part is that they grew up with me. As NetRaptor got more mature in her writing style, covering more and more topics and becoming better and better, so did I. It was just a magical period, kind of growing up with this as a staple of my life. I know this sounds like stalker behavior, and I hope that if ever NetRaptor reads this she won't be creeped out, which I totally don't want to do. Anyway, as my interest in Sonic weaned (which was directly proportional to the quality of Sonic games as time went on) she started writing less and less. There was a period of time in which she married, had a child, and didn't write for maybe a year. Totally understandable to me. By that time, I'd been scribbling things myself (which I would never post the links to; they suck so badly it would rip a whole in the fabric of the Internet) and the only reason I still had a passing interest in the recent Sonic games was because of her stories. I realize now that I hesitate to call them fanfics, because that has a sort of negative connotation that they don't deserve. Anyway, she writes every so often, and I keep up with her blog and DA page.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that that little slice of the Internet effected the way I grew up, the way I write, the way I think when I make things up, the way I look at the world. I never had the nerve to tell her all that; by the time I realized I could I had enough sense to know I would sound like some kind of stalker. After all the praise and posts I'm getting on the Marvelous Time thread, I'm beginning to realize they're exactly the tone of posts I left on NetRaptor's fics. I'm beginning to realize how she felt. And I'm beginning to realize that I have the potential to become this figurehead of a writer in someone's life like NR became in mine. I don't want to sound high and mighty; I know it can happen because it happened to me. At the very least, I can give people something pleasant to read for five minutes on their break from work or whatever.

So I just want to say to all of you who follow the story, thank you all so much. I really don't deserve anything you guys are saying. It's given me a big head, as you can see. But I've got a lot of plans for the series (yes, series) that can't be revlealed until I complete HAMT. It's given me something to do, thinking about everything...anyway, I have some sort of multimedia projects going on, mostly drawings and sketches and stuff that I'll post here as time goes by. I also want to make future stories more interactive. For instance, I haven't decided if Margrett's child will be a boy or a girl. I'll probably put up some kind of poll in the future.

Stay tuned, if you like. It's going to be a Marvelous Time.