The Most Basic of Human Needs

Hey all!

Just a peak at the direction I want to take with my new Tumblr page when it's up.

I'm working on so much right now so my appearances here will remain spotty until the spring. The novel's first draft progresses as does the increase in business over last year which is very nice as well.

This post was inspired by a statement which I heard made on a podcast the other day by the author Matt Gemmell.

Hoping you find that creative spark in everything that you see!

nicolas


"It's almost a sad thing that a big chunk of society doesn't understand the sheer critical necessity for fantasy; one, for escapism in its own right, but also as a way of reframing what we're seeing in our own lives. I think it's fundamentally critical and a mental health requirement to have fantasy and fiction and stories and escapism. I think it's one of the most basic of human needs."  -  Matt Gemmell

There may not be any one thought about creativity that I agree with more than that.

It's been the constant in my world. From the earliest of days.

My escape.

My true north.

My polestar.

When I was working the minimum wage jobs, bussing tables, pumping gas, prep cook etc it was those creative outlets I returned to at the end of each work day that filled me with belief and made everything around me seem right.

When I was bullied in school, or more likely, ignored, it was the fantasy worlds and the activities dreamed up in my imagination and that I kept in sight that got me through each day.

When, as can happen, my whole world felt as if it were falling apart as an adult, it was the words, the images, the music I made in the space I created to pour my heart into that allowed me the solitude to heal and grow.

The only times in my life I've been mired in darkness were the times, few though they were, that I turned my back on creativity and began to focus on some other ideal, some other dream of a life that belonged to someone else and certainly not me.

 If I were to put all of the requirements of a happy life on the table and try to whittle them down to only the most necessary, creativity would be there after most others were removed. It might very well be the sole survivor.

It's that vital.

I don't regret a single thing I've done with my life. I dreamed big every step of the way, fell short, picked myself up and started again. I've tried more paths than most, failed more than most too, but kept going until I found the one that suited me best.

When you chose a path of creativity, people will question every decision you make. They'll sum up your dream through the lens of their own experiences and life. That's ok, they wrote that script themselves and cannot imagine the experiences of others being more true than their own. The person who gains most from a story is always the person who wrote it. Just allow them that and hope, for their sake, they've gotten as much out of that sporty they tell.

So you? You write you.

In the end, as I think back to all of those well-meaning folks who wondered how long I could go on making my way stumbling through the dark in the creative world, dreaming of something other than a normal job or existence, I am reminded that I've come to know hundreds of people, working in dozens of other professions, who all wished they could be making a living doing something creative but I've never known a single painter, sculptor, illustrator, actor, artist, mime, poet, storyteller, dancer or writer, at any level or stage of their own story, who wished, even for one day, to be anything else.

XO
nicolas

Ghost Stories - The Apartment #1

Hey everyone!

So yeah, still not back on track with a weekly post but its all good. It has been really busy here with family visiting and the book and the shops and the cooking and the garden and reading and . . . ok, you get it.


I've been listening to one of my favorite Podcasts, "Spooked" which is put on by the same folks who do "Snap Judgement", another great storytelling podcast. They're telling one persons ghost story each week between now and All Hallow's Eve.

It made me think about the strange experiences I have had over the years, which as I am told time and again, are more numerous than most it seems and I thought it might be fun to share them here.

I've decided to tell them in order, as best I can recall, meaning from my earliest odd memories on up to now. Some are truly scary, some are beautiful to me, and some are odd.

I won't claim which are truly otherworldly, I leave that to you.

It's no surprise to me that so many of them are childhood memories. We are, as children, in some other world much of the time and my wealth of experiences has led me to think that children really are "watching some other show in their heads" a lot of the time. Once, while watching a group of children on a Head Start field trip to a farm, I saw a young boy, maybe 9 or so, who stodgy himself watching a cage that held three rabbits inside. Now, I love rabbits, am awed by every one of nature's creatures, but this kid? The way his eyes were glued to the rabbits, the way his lips formed words, as if he were speaking to them, the way he smiled as the rabbits stopped and turned their large eyes to look at him. The way his own eyes wide and filled with wonder?

Did they. . . speak to him?

Yeah, he was experiencing something I was not.  I was 28 or so then. And I decided I needed to get that back. To find my way into that world once more.

I try to find that same type of wonder every day now. Trying to reclaim as much of that time, those frames of mind, as I can. It's what my work is all about. My writing. My art. My daily existence. Choosing those realms over the usual adult fare.

And even spooky stories have their place there too, yes?

Other worlds. Thin veils. Connections adults may never regain. . .


"The Apartment - F3"

My mother and dad divorced when I was young, four years old maybe. I didn't know until I was six or so because he was in merchandising and always traveling. He wanted us to move to NY with him for his job and my mother, who has lived within a half mile of her current location her entire 80 plus years, refused.

The apartment we lived in holds a lot of memories. Not all of them good. I am sure there were some repercussions from the divorce but, in all honesty, I never recall feeling anything lacking or that I was "abandoned" etc. My mother was incredible. More than I could have needed.

The apartment was our home. It just wasn't as kind to me as I might like to recall.

So there were a few creepy things in this building. The old incinerator shaft that seemed to go on forever, the basement with it's classic horror movie, water-drip sounds that echoed through the basement halls, the roar of the furnace/hot water heaters, and the old, cage style storage lockers with the dim bulbs casting wicked shadows across the floor.

But those were all avoidable or limited to daylight visits. The apartment itself? Well, when you live IN it, where can you go?

I built a LOT of forts. No particular reason though, looking back now, I wonder if it was something I did for "protection". I'd stock them with my drawing supplies and toys and spend hours there in my own world.

Another favorite place I played was behind the old sofa. There was room between it and the wall because of the old fashioned steam radiators that were in every room. So, there was the picture window, then the radiator, then the couch and, with my mother's never ending fear of fire, the couch was a good foot or more in front of the radiator. This left a nice space between the back of the couch and the wall to play in.

So, one day, I was no more than five or six, I was playing back there and had my usual compliment of toys, paper, crayons etc. I had my Raggedy Andy and Anne dolls too. I rarely played with them as I recall but I did like them quite a bit. Slept with them. They couldn't "wrestle" with me on the bed like the me-sized stuffed bear or act out scenes like my Star Trek, Superhero and Planet of the Apes action figures, but they were calming to me to have near.

So this night I am playing behind the sofa. Its winter and the hissing and clunk and clatter of the radiator is a constant backdrop.

My mother is in her bedroom and she calls to me to come there for a minute. I set my crayons down and moved the dolls so I could climb over the sofa back without stepping on them. This left Raggedy Anne and Andy sitting side by side against the outside wall where I had been.

I went to see what mom wanted and when I returned, I climbed back over the couch to find Raggedy Andy had slumped over, laying across the other dolls lap, face turned up to the ceiling.

I am sure I thought nothing of this until I picked up Raggedy Andy to set him upright and reclaim my wall spot when both of his shiny black "button eyes" fell right off of his face and into my lap!

BOTH EYES.

What I recall is that they were sew on eyes each with it's own "socket', yet somehow they both came off at exactly the same time, threads hanging from the back of the button loop as is often the case when you lose an old fashioned button due to wear.

To me, even then, it seemed as if they had been ripped out and then set back perfectly in place for me to discover when I picked it up.

I might have hit the doll with my foot scoring over the back of the couch. . .but how do the eye both break their threads and not fall even a bit out of place until I pick the old up?  

I showed the doll to my mother who, in her typical mom form, assumed I had been too rough with it. She left it in her room and I went back to play but I just felt weirded out by it and I do not think I spent too much time back behind that sofa after that, which was fine, as I said, I had a LOT of forts!

What makes it so creepy to me all the years later is that these were the only two toys I was really never rough with. Not that I can recall. Those old action figures? They lost arms, legs, heads etc all the time. My bear? I put more stuffing back into him over the years due to all the roughhousing and wrestling.

My grandmother fixed the doll for me that weekend but, if I remember it right, I never took it back to the apartment, keeping both Raggedy dolls at my grandparents house instead from then on.

So yeah, that was my first experience with the creepiness that dwelled in that old apartment. But it would be far from the last. . .

Thanks for reading all, I hope you will enjoy these tales as I go!

XO
nicolas

A Gift from the Faery Postal Service - The Makings of a Maker - Third Friday Post - February 16th

It occurred to me that I meant for these weekly Friday posts to allow for a little more freedom as far as what I am posting and writing about and I've been sticking to the format pretty tightly so far.

This was originally going to be a post about my packaging for the Bewilder and Pine Etsy shop but I've decided that this little tale I have to tell, a true story, was far more enchanting and fits the bill for the Makings of a Maker theme.

The Fairy Postal Service Creed- Neither ogres, nor trolls nor wayward customs officials stays these Fae couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.



In the first week of the new year I received a message thru Bewilder and Pine from a prospective customer in France. His question was how long would it take for a package to arrive in France as he was hoping to have a few things in time for a child's birthday party on February 10th.

This, to understate it, tickled me greatly! I do not think there is anything I love more than knowing my little fairy pieces are going to be in the lives of children (of ANY age, of course) and that they would be going off to France? Well, that was all the more thrilling.

I once spoke French fairly fluently. Enough to get around without a phrase book on my three trips there in my late teens and early twenties. Enough to carry on conversations with people I met in Paris or Nice or Calais. Enough to get around on the metro, or on foot with a map. Enough to sit on a park bench with a sweet, white haired grand-mère in the little picturesque town of Menton on the southern-most part of the Riviera and talk about life in our two countries as well as receive a lesson in French profanity!

Whenever I get a message from someone in France, I try to answer it at least in part in French. These days I have to look up certain conjugations and phrases and I confuse one word for another quite often. I forget the placement of accents and simple sentence structure. But I still try.

All that is to say this meant the world to me to be able to send a package of faery magic bound for France.

All of my shipping experiences within the EU told me that the package would certainly arrive in plenty of time. I wasn't worried in the least nor did I even consider suggesting we use Priority Mail International to expedite the shipment.

Four weeks was more than enough time.
I was certain of it.

It ended up being a rather large order of eight different fairy houses and towers. I stayed up late to pack it all up and the following day I shipped the package off.

Then, I forgot all about it.

For some reason, which I cannot begin to fathom even now, on February 7th, I suddenly thought of the package. Certain it would have arrived by then, I went to the order and clicked on the receipt for the shipping. The tracking loaded slowwwwwly and when it finally showed on my screen, I was more than a bit surprised. . .

I shipped the package on January 12th
It left the US Customs in LA on January 19th (an unusually long time for that transfer)
It arrived in France on January 21st
It then, for some reason, left France. . . and went to ISRAEL. . . on January 22nd

And that was it. There was no further tracking for it either on Etsy or thru the USPS sight.

I was, to say the least, devastated.

I wrote a very heavy message to the buyer explaining what I thought had happened while hoping that, against the odds, the package had perhaps arrived in France without any further tracking having been recorded. That's would not be so unusual for a returned or redirected package

It had not arrived.

The customer wrote back and while he was very understanding that it was not my fault as he could see the strange tracking information, he was terribly disappointed. It was, after all, meant for a birthday party.

I felt so badly about it. I asked him to let me check with my post office on the following day just to see if they could offer any more assistance.

They could not.

So, on February 8th, I sent one final message. I told the buyer I would refund the purchase amount in full and asked if he would refuse the package if or when it arrived in France.

I apologized again and sent the message off feeling rather defeated.

Then something, I have no idea what, nudged me to check the tracking one last time.

I did, and would you believe just as I was sending that last message to France a brand new entry showed up on the tracking list, the first in almost two weeks, and it said:

February 8th - Attempted Delivery Abroad - France

I know this generally means a package was attempted to be delivered and, a note should have been left for the recipient. I wrote again to the buyer asking him to let me know if this was correct and if he was going to be able to get the package in time.

I received a very happy message informing me that, yes, he would be able to pick up the package on February 9th just one day before it was needed!!! If the story needed any more of a happy ending, after all that traveling and bouncing around, everything inside was in perfect condition! The customer was thrilled!

Now, I don't share a lot of my personal beliefs here but let me. say that I don't usually do anything special to ask for favors from the kind folk or the faeries. Some stories, after all, say the Fae folk do not like being thanked. . . it actually is an insult to them.

I have, since I was a child, simply believed — no, I've KNOWN— that they are with me. Watching over me. There have simply been too many instances and encounters, one of which was life saving, for me to deny it. It's been a thread in my life.

I like to believe that all of the magic I put into the world through my creations are the reciprocations of that fateful connection. They are my end of the deal. One I intend to uphold with all my ability for the rest of my days.

And that deal? Ohhhh there's so much more to tell you. . . .another time perhaps?

Thank you for dropping by!
XO
nicolas

The Bewildering Pine - Worldbuilding - Fourth Friday - November 24th

I wrote about it before, quite awhile ago, but I want to get into the specifics of the world building I've done for my novel-in-waiting, "The Ledgerkeepers".

First I want to say that I admit that I am a prime candidate for what is known as "worldbuilder's disease". This is when you allow the task of creating a fictional world to consume you and you never get to the writing of your book, stories, music and what have you because you can't move past the creation. Well, I spent the better part of a year creating the world that is the setting of this book.

I get it.

It's addictive. There were times I couldn't stop and,even with all the details and ideas I've fleshed out, there remains more to be done.

And while fantasy/sci-fi wiring is most prone to this, it needs to be done for any sort of storytelling really. In fact, one of the first novels I read way back when I was maybe 10 or 11 was a true crime story that was so detailed about the era (1940's -50's), the neighborhood (Boston's little Italy) and the characters (mostly 2nd generation immigrants) that I was swept away into it and have never forgotten the "escape" effect it had on me.

But building a world from scratch? Deciding on a subarctic climate leads to the types of housing, plant life, foods, animals, terrain, clothing that are needed. The types of people/elves living there leads to origin stories, folktales, shadowy pasts, familial/community structure and expectation and superstitions.

The magic, if there is any, leads to needing to set the rules, what it's limits are, who can use it and the many ways it might manifest or change the dynamics in a world you worked so hard to build.

Languages, social structure, government, ability to travel, money, trade, politics etc etc etc

And do not even get me started on mapmaking. It's my favorite part and I am in process of making the third full map of this land.

On and on and on. . . and I could be quite happy with just doing that if it weren't that I feel compelled to tell this bigger story.

But the best part of getting past those beginnings and into the writing is that your world gets to be built from within the telling as much as it did when you were building it deliberately before hand. Some of my favorite bits and details of the world thus far came from just writing and not from advanced planning.

Take this passage from one of the first chapters I've completed:

      . . . And while that was all reason enough for his soured opinion of them, what disturbed Yanne most about the Barchan traders was that, save for a few of the youngest aboard each vessel, they had all been fitted with their trademark iron teeth. Those oversized denticles, which they grated together inside their mouths and scraped along the tines of their heavy iron flatware in a most egregious and disconcerting way, were just too much to bear.  Just the thought of the sound they made sent shivers spiraling up Yanne’s spine and made the hair on his neck and arms prickle upright. Their original teeth, those that they still possess when they’re ceremoniously yanked for the fitting of the iron, are fashioned into a choker that each Barchan wears around his neck with great pride. 

          "And that’s no treat to look upon across a communal dining table."

The Barchans unsettled Yanne — and very few things did.

So, before writing that passage I knew only that the Barchans were traders from the outer world who dealt/interacted with the folk in my world very rarely since  the trader docks are located out on a floating village in the vastness of the bay, away from the bulk of the land which is inaccessible by large ships.

Yanne, a main character in the book, fancies himself a storyteller. The Barchans are rude and obnoxious but so, in his own way, is Yanne. So in deciding what aggravates him about the Barchans,  it is of course some of the mirrored traits he sees in them. Yet I wanted something outside the box for him to focus on about them and I needed something visually specific to identify the Barchans later in the book.

Their oversized iron teeth, the chokers they wear made of their pulled, original teeth and the sounds and sights of iron scraping on iron. All of that came up in the writing/daydreaming and, even though it is just a tiny scrap of the world building, now I can't imagine the chapter/story without it.

World builder's disease can present itself in the writing too though. That passage above was around four times as long after it's creation. The rest was unnecessary backstory and filler. More reveal than was needed which, often, loses your readers. (and this is hard for me because I LOVE reading descriptive text even when I know it's a bit much for the story!!)

As world builders we all tend to think the worlds we create are incredibly cool. And most of them may be. But in the writing I am discovering, even in and among my own creation,  a slow unveiling is far more effective than an info dump of history and genealogy.

A great part of the excitement of the process is that I do not know where it will go exactly or what other little gems I might uncover about the folk who populate it as the story continues!

I am glad you're coming along for the ride and I look forward to sharing so much more as we go. . .

Hoping all my American readers had a wonderful holiday and that everyone else in our beautiful world had a magical day, as always!

Keep building the world you wish to dwell in!

XO
Nicolas

 

Inspirations and Oddities - Second Friday - November 10th

“The circus arrives without warning. 

No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.” 

― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus


I intend to utilize these Second Friday post to share short inspirations and links to discoveries in our world that have inspired me and my work, if not become part of the world I create.

This week though, I wanted to share with you just one and that's a book that has instantly claimed a spot into my all time favorites. 

"The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern

I won't make this a review because it's been out for a number of years and many of you may already have read it or decided it was or wasn't your thing. 

I am glad that I did not read it until now. It would neve have had the same effect on me, on my heart, even five years ago when it first came out, though I may have loved it then too.

This is meant to be more of a "thank you" to the author, for every once in awhile a book or other form of media comes along that takes us somewhere unexpected. And in this case it occurs to me how, when we read those first words of a book (like those I began the post with above) we have no idea what is in store. 

Nothing could have prepared me for what lay ahead and how much I would fall under it's spell. And the fair question to ask would be "how do you know it is one of your all time favorites when you just read it?" 

To which the only reply is "Because I simply did not want it to end." 

That happens so rarely. I love books and I love reading but 99% of the time I am quite ready for a book to end. Not in a bad way but in an excited to see how it gets wrapped up way. To complete the narrative and allow me to move on to the next in the never-ending stack on the floor. 

I often wonder why no-one writes and approaches more stories in a serialized version but with no intention of ending it. Of course, when authors do this they are often derided for it. Robert Jordan comes to mind and the words "first of a trilogy" seems to induce eye rolls as often as not these days. When I think of my favorite books, they all struck me this way. I wish they had gone on, not in a grand sweeping story arc. . . but just the world, the characters, the magic. 

The one thing these favorites all have in common is the world they take you to is usually quite enchanting and magical. The Night Circus is no exception.

If I had to choose one other thing I adore about it, that would be the descriptive prose. I have read so many writing advice blogs where people seem to be so against overextending the use of details and description and if that is you, then this book will likely not please you. Every chapter is awash in the details and they are always, in my eyes, nothing short of enchanting. 

It's like the author took every mundane thing in a scene and said "but what if?" and then went two steps furthers. Clocks, tents, clothing, food. . . nothing is mundane and ordinary and yet, it all perfectly works without seeming to be "too much". 

If you are a fan of audio books then this is a must too as the reader, Jim Dale ( he read the audio book versions of the Harry Potter series) is beyond amazing in his delivery, characterizations and accents.  

The book was written originally as part of the NaNoWriMo, over three successive years, and writing it and the following success of it seems to have had a profound effect on the author as well who writes, "I wrote book about a nocturnal circus. . . and then my life became one." 

And it is a book that is really about storytelling itself under it's complex and magical surface. Just when you think the story is resolved as the end draws near, there are more chapters that unveil this aspect very clearly. Passages like:

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.” 

All great storytelling, be it in book form or the stories we attach to our own experiences and lives, shares that truth I think. It's why I am so set on telling a story with/for everything I create. 

Beauty, execution and form may attract but we stay for the stories.  .  . especially the ones we have yet to tell. 

And magic. . . you should of known it was about magic. .  and despite the wonderful magic that is laced through almost every chapter of the book in one form or another, the revelation of the magic is in it's accessibility and presence in the most mundane of things. And I was stopped in my reading tracks at the character explanation as to why it is not more prominent in the world. In our world. 

"All of this, this is not magic. This is the way the world IS, only very few people take the time to stop and note it."

And yes, there is a thread of a love story woven into it too but that's the magic of "The Night Circus" as well, that aspect of the story might be the fourth or fifth most prominent thread and it's written and handled in such an endearing way.  

Alright, that's enough. Next week I will get back to inspirations and oddities the way I intended them to be presented. Thank you, as always, for reading along. :)

And THANK YOU Erin Morgenstern.  I cannot say enough about the magic I found within this book or how it has inspired me. I just wish it had not had to end.  

nicolas


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Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:

1st Friday of Each Month - New work ( New to the shops and a look at the making of one item each month)

2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me) 

3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where being a "maker-of-things" is my full time job.)

4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)

The Bewildering Pine - Fourth Friday October 27th

Welcome to my first Fourth Friday Post. Every month, on the fourth Friday I will be writing about, and sharing insights into, the Bewildering Pine; a world I've been creating, in one form or another, for as long as I can recall.

I should start by explaining and separating the two main parts of this series and that world.

One, the "Bewildering Pine" is the fictional world where my first (in process) novel length book, "The Ledgerkeepers", is set.  It's a fantasy world that pulls from the many influences and inspirations I've had over the years for just such a world. The world is populated by "old world elves",  simply referred to as folk, and not the High elves of modern fantasy.

And the second aspect, the Bewilder and Pine, which is the creative outlet for my miniature making. It's my Etsy shoppe and where many of the larger ideas I have been formulating began.

Here, I really want to focus mainly on the book, that world and it's ties to my childhood and adult life but some parts of that world are derived from the experiences and products in the shoppe, and the shoppe in great part inspired the book and everything else that will come beyond it. . .  so I will want to dive into both over the coming months.

Today, for the first installment, I do want to focus on what the undertaking of the writing of this book has meant to, and done FOR, my own heart.

It would be easy, I think, for an outsider to look at my miniature work, my writing here and my views on life in general and assume I am stuck in a loop of nostalgia and whimsy, not that there would be anything wrong with that. . . and to a degree it's true. :) I've come to a place in my life where I tend to keep most anyone who I feel is too caught up in the outside or "real" world at arms length. Not because I want to pretend that world doesn't exist but because I believe how much that world affects us is almost entirely up to us most days.

Simply put, if  I allowed that world to inundate my daily thoughts and emotions, I could not do what I do for a living. It's not an escape, it's the way I go about and make sense of that very same world while at the same time, giving life to, and protecting, another world I've held within for so many years.

Somewhere along the way I decided that we each have our roles to play, I won't say it's our destiny or our calling. . .  or even our path. . . just that we may choose what we do with each moment we are given and for me, that choice slowly over the years became one of deciding that I wanted to put as much beauty and joy into the world as I can every day.

I discovered early on in the Etsy/maker-of-things world that the more I attached stories to my little creations, the more people responded to them. The more stories I created, the more the world that is now the Bewildering Pine of the book, started to creep in and influence my making and the stories I wrote to go with.  Tart Carts, crooked towers, shop and village names, houses with different architectural styles, little enigmatic elves who live in the woods or in hermit like solitude. Monks with face like mimes. Old tongues and sacred traditions lost. With each addition another little piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Now, this is going back some eight years to the beginning. In the last few years, the separation had begun to widen in my heart and in my creative desires. I started spending more time on the "side project" which, at the time, I could not have told you what exactly it would become. The world of the book is now vastly different from the world of the Etsy shoppe.

There are still bits and pieces that remain constant but as characters, locations and I suppose, most of all, the plot for the Ledgerkeeper's story started to reveal itself to me, I saw the chance to speak about more than just a fantasy world. It's aim is to be a novel that speaks to cultural identities and traditions, how things change, why things change, and, of course, how everything is not what it seems when story is a foggy subject at best.

As for the writing, this has been a crash course. I've never even attempted to write something like this before. Not seriously. Poetry yes, short stories, yes, letters of all kinds to friends and family, yes.

But to sit down and say, "Right, I want to write a novel!" No, that never crossed my mind once really.

What I've learned more than anything in the last year since I took up the task is WHY so many people start writing a novel, a short story, a memoir and then quit. Because it's reallllllly HARD and it requires something I feel blessed to have been able to find in an already busy life. The space and a routine to do so!!

I believe it's the hardest creative thing I've ever set out to do.  It requires persistence, time commitment, belief in it and in yourself. More than all of those, I think, it requires a desire to say something through your fiction. To tell your story or offer a viewpoint.

Nothing has ever brought me face to face with my own resolve and motivations like writing.

I chose the genre of fantasy for obvious reasons. Mostly because at the start of a fantasy story or novel is the world building part of it. That world that only exists in your head has to be fleshed out. Mapped out too. Not all at once but, at some point, you have to think about it all. The cultures, the limitations, the food, the climate, the magic etc.

Often you'll hear writers offer the advice "Write what you know". For some, like David Sedaris, that can mean your close family. For others like George RR Martin, that means the world you've been toying with in your head for your whole life.

To me, the love required is the same and evident in both I think. So yes, write what you love as well as what you know. The great thing is, you can learn so much that you don't know when you start! I may have a fantasy world in my head but it's littered with real world objects and situations that need to be right for the story. How does a water clock work? How were certain vegetables farmed 500 years ago? What happens when you have two moons, not one. The list is endless.

I love fantasy. Myth, legend, magic, the realm of Faerie, elves, surreal nature.

The funny thing is, I've decided to go a whole lot less in the original direction I assumed I would.

I've left magic off the board in this world for the most part. What magic does exist is born more of our own old world beliefs and traditions and the faith of folk in that.  I've seen first hand in my life how powerful that can be. So, if it's tinged with magic in the Bewildering Pine, it has roots in something you may recognize. There are no great powers, no mages and wizards. No dark forces. . .  at least, not magic ones.

The main characters as well as most of the supporting ones are all based on people I have known as well. From childhood friends to folk I know in the small town I live in currently. All wonderfully unique in their own ways and human to a fault.

I personally fall in love with books for the characters, not just the worlds the author created for them to dwell in.

My favorite books of late all share the core foundation of having very strong characters as well as the world around them being interesting too. But that doesn't mean they have to be a total creation of the imagination.

A Darker Shade of Magic
A Green and Ancient Light
The Queen of the Tearling
The Foretold
The Night Circus

All of these portray vastly different worlds: Four parallel Londons,  a non-descript,"post war" European setting,  a realm from our very own possible future, an Amazonian tribe/landscape and the underbelly of 19th century London.

What they all have in common are main characters that are stronger than the need to suspend your disbelief because they are relatable. Now, I won't ask you to read any of those if fantasy is not your thing. . .but if you want a short story that sums that same idea up, of the character being more important than the system of magic and the world, I'd suggest seeking out "The Night Market" by Holly Black. It's simply one of the best short stories I've ever read. It's got a bit of fantasy, a bit of magic too, but it's all revolving around the main character, her love of her family and the ending is the true magic of the story, of the world. . . of each of us in our world. It's well worth the read.

So here I am. over a YEAR into this project and just moving forward every day. I spend two hours each morning from 5:30am to 7:30am sitting in the silence of the early hours at the laptop writing, researching, plot sketching, exploring.

Each day starts with feeding and loving on our cat, Bhu, then venturing out to walk to the old-school bakery which is just a block away from our place and opens at 5:30am ( I know, lucky right?) and the day starts with something like this

French Press and a fresh apricot danish. Sorry about the lighting. . . but it WAS taken before 6 in the morning!

Finding that space, that time and making it a routine was key to getting along with the writing. It has also been the best adventure ever! Bringing this world to life and creating the characters and all the little details is like nothing else I've done. I 'm hooked. It's no longer hard. No longer a chore. It's just one more thing in my daily routine and I try not to let anything keep me from it.

In the future I want to talk about the beauty of routine and how it is such an important part of my days. I learned it at retreats visiting a Zen monastery years ago. Their set hours for meditation, meals, down time, work etc were a novel idea to me who, as a creative soul, could not stand the notion of incorporating that into my own daily creative world. Yet. . .

Immediately I saw why it worked but I still fell off the "routine wagon" very quickly afterwards. In the last 8 years or so, learning to keep to a schedule has become essential with all that I want to accomplish and make.

The routine I have now is set in stone and it has to be a pretty extraordinary thing for me to break it..

I'll also want to discuss finding your "voice" thru writing.  For me, that has been the hardest part of taking up a novel. Different writers create in different ways. It was yet one more reinvention and I seem to have found my own methods to get me there along the way.

At this point in the Ledgerkeepers, I have a prologue and four very strong character chapters. One for each of the main characters. Each also explores a little of the world around them and each, before I found my voice, were wayyyyyy too long expositions of pure world building and description ( a common flaw in fantasy writing) and less of the characters.  One of these chapters, for example, was near to 70 pages of discovery writing which I condensed and stripped away to what is now an 11 page first chapter. I found the characters and found THEIR voices, their motivations and their desires.

I'm excited to start sharing some of that world with you all here. And while I am not quite there yet, I want to put out there that I am going to be asking for Alpha and Beta readers in the coming months. (beginning in January most likely) If you have any interest in being among the first to read what I am creating, you can let me know and I will put you on the list of people to open the early chapters of the story up to as it falls into place.

As an alpha reader, I'll ask you to only focus on,  and give feedback for four distinct things:

1. What bores you
2. What confuses you
3. What don’t you believe
4. What’s cool? (So I don’t accidentally “fix” it.)

That's it! No long explanations are necessary. Just simple observations as you go. No other input is required at that first stage. I'll likely post the chapters here with password protection on them and send you the password when I am ready. I tend to like rather short chapters, 8-12 pages on average so it's not a lot of time commitment with each. 

Here and there I'll be posting little excerpts on the open blog too. In addition to "The Ledgerkeepers", I am also creating a book born from the world building itself. An "atlas",  I suppose, with many of the descriptive details of the villages, architecture, maps, belief systems, flora and fauna, folktales and the ancient origin stories for all of the type of folk who dwell in the world of the Bewildering Pine. As if someone were archiving the world from within the world itself. 

Alright, I think that's going to be good for this month's opening installment. I know it was a bit scattered but we'll find a direction with it in the next month or two. 

Welcome along for the ride! I look so forward to sharing more of the world with you in the coming months on fourth Fridays. I hope you will enjoy it too. 

Thank you for coming by and reading! XX
Nicolas

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Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:

1st Friday of Each Month - New work ( New to the shops and a look at the making of one item each month)

2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me) 

3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where being a "maker-of-things" is my full time job.)

4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)

Book Recommendation - "A Green and Ancient Light"

Some books and stories are just MAGIC. . .

I cannot say enough about this book. Now, I know, I read a LOT of varied books that all delve into "otherworlds", genres ranging from YA to Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Graphic novels and comics, and most of these are inspiring reads in one way or another for my own work and creative world.

"A Green and Ancient Light" defies those categories. Part fantasy yes, but just a very small part that is treated with such normalcy in it's reveal that it seems like it may be us who deems it to be fantasy. At the end I was slowing my reading down because I did not want it to end. . . and that's a rarity. :)

It is  mostly an intriguing story about coming of age, family, discovery and possibility. It's set in a vague time and place, though recognizable, with an interesting choice by the author as to the names of characters.

You won't be surprised to hear it was the cover that drew me to it. . . as often happens with books that go on to be my favorites. A great cover sets apart so many books.

So, if you love timeless and beautifully written stories with nature/natural magic, hints of the realm of faerie, a faun, and a mystery woven thru every page, then this book will be right up your alley.

I guarantee you this, even if it isn't, you will not find many books more beautifully written out there.

I will be keeping this book close as I proceed with my own storytelling, for many reasons, and I can say that I will keep it close throughout the remainder of my life for a gentle reminder if, and when I lose sight, of what magic truly is in the world around us. . .

There are times when I wonder, stumbling upon a book like this, if it is the last I will find that hits this particular spot in my soul. . . I could probably count the number that have done so on three hands in my life. I've read many wonderful books but only a dozen or so have had this lingering internal effect. The tingling of magic. . .

Stories Moving Forward II - A World in 30 Days?

Last week I finished the 30 day World Building exercise that I took on to help me get "started" on my short stories writing project. The goal was to use the exercise to build a deeper background world around the land of the "Bewildering Pine" and starting to collect ideas and outlines for the place, the people/folk who populate it and the myriad of details that, hopefully, will make it rich and inviting to readers.

The results were, to put it mildly, overwhelming.

When it comes to writing I have always enjoyed telling little tales. It's been a part of me since childhood too. And, as I get older, I want to create something that will be left behind in written form. More than just little tales for the items I make and sell but stand alone tales of a place that, at least half of my waking hours, I am immersed in.

And yet,  every time I have tried to get started, I seem to fall short and the momentum and enthusiasm stalls out.

I am going to write about this a few times in the coming month because it is truly too much to try and share in one post. So I will keep this short and we will call this entry, "the outline".

Now, if you had told me before I started the thirty day project, that I would spend about 15 hours in one month on my stories,  I would have told you that sounds great. . . but I am not sure where I'll find the time to do that.

Well, let me say that I did indeed spend between 15 and 20 hours last month writing. First thing each day, 30 days in a row, I sat down and tackled that days world building assignment while having coffee and morning pastry.

Each day is supposed to be just 15 minutes of writing but, some of the exercises were things I had already thought quite a bit about but had never written down. And each of those led, it seems, to deeper and more extensive thoughts about everything from geography and climate to the people, commerce, animals and societal rules etc etc. I spent up to an hour some days, just writing. Moe thinking n top of that.

So much so that I am going through another list of world building questions and expanding the world even more!

The best thing to come out of it all is this.

When I began, the project was going to be a series of short stories, "The Ledgerkeepers" many of which I hoped to illustrate and then make little "zines" from that I could self publish and sell thru my shop. Stories that would appeal to any age or delight anyone with an interest fairies/elves etc and their world. Then, when I had enough stories, to produce a collected, printed book of them to offer as well.

What has come from the last month's work though is a far deeper story that I think is the bones for a longer book. Dare I say. . . a full or mini novel? And the bones of that story. . . the darker, unexpected plot line, characters, the Pine history and lineage and all the details and plot twists, so much of it never existed at all before I did this 30 day exercise.

All of that. . . in roughly 15 hours. . . that I would have sworn I could not have found in my days.

I can look back now and honestly say that I just never had the discipline to do it but also, I simply did not know where to begin.

And that is the thing I want to convey here. I will never let that happen again. I know it's an age old line but it's the journey, not the destination that is the key. Getting from point A to point B is always overwhelming until we take those first small steps.   And I know very well that an organized or structured framework, preferably daily and in small increments, is how we always manage to get there.

I did it with my Etsy shops, making new things every single day to improve my skills (I still do this 6 years later!) and I did it with learning to write music. . . or even running coffeehouses and cafe's. Just do this one little thing, then the next, then the next. . . little small building blocks to get where we want to be. Like so many, I can give up n things because that end goal seems so far of.  It seems to be the same for people with exercise plans, diets, career goals etc etc. Point B can seem so far away. . .

I think most new things seem overwhelming until you get in and wade thru those dark waters of uncertainty and self doubt.

So, I hope to share some of the deeper details with what I have been working on with you soon but let me leave you with just this one little aspect of my world that I just came up with in the last day or two of the exercise.

I knew that I wanted a "sport" for my world since games and sports were such a huge part of my childhood. But I also made up so many of my own variations back then. . . so I wanted something more personal than just a simple twist on a current "Earth sport".   Nothing close to what we know as being sports in the here and now. Nothing violent, nothing requiring extreme physical skill or physique. In fact, the long lithe elf would be a better suited candidate than the big strong ogre. lol But still, something that could be played by any creature. Elf, Hob, Dryad, etc etc with an equal chance for success.

That "sport", still unnamed as of now, is a combination of Hopscotch and Hackey Sack. I envision it being played on a huge, elaborately tiled mosaic version of the French hopscotch layout which is a winding snail shape play area ( in researching hopscotch, I learned that in France they call the game Escargot for the shape of the playing field!!) with, in my game's case, 21 numbered spaces leading to a gold circle in the center. The game I've invented is played with two teams of two defenders, one pitcher (a position that requires only tossing accuracy so any age folk could be this player!) and one sacker (that's the person who tries to score) on the game field simultaneously. Each little village has it's own "Shtyri" (a Pine term, from the "old language" for the four player team) and it's a dream of a number of the folk in the Pine, young or old, male or female, to become part of their town's team.  Young elves all over play it on dirt fields, adults at picnics, traders on leave. . . etc etc

Anyway, that's too much fun! I'll probably make a scale model of the playing field in the future too. I've come a cross some wonderful "villager" elf 1:72 scale figurines that I could create it around.

So, more on the world building to come!

For now, here are a few little creations to share this week. . .

Have a lovely week dear ones! MAKE MAGIC!!!

xo
nicolas

Stories Moving Forward

I've been creating stories all my life. Since I was a child really.

At 11 or 12 I had two of those old Radio Shack single cassette players and I would write scripts for plays or stories and then, going line by line, I would record them by first speaking one line into one tape player then, stop, press record on the second while pressing play on the first, and then adding the next line of dialogue after the first tape played. And so on and so on for the entire length of the story. I'd do all the voices and all the narration. Even feeble attempts at singing improv theme songs on occasion. lol  :)

Now, all these years later I found myself really feeling ready to create a book of short stories, or at least several small zines, that are centered around the worlds I have built thru and alongside my Etsy creations the last 6 years.

The Bewildering Pine
The Ledgerkeepers
Kitsurada: Land of Foxgoyles
The Troll Troubles
And many more

But as an adult, there are new challenges. Mostly an uncontrollable tendency towards self editing and doubt. Uncertainty about how to build a complete world because, after all, I am not 11 and I see the holes where they should be and what I have YET to create to make these stories work.

So how to get started?

Well, 10 days ago I began searching for that help.

It came in the unexpected form of a 30 day writing primer called the Fantasy WorldBuilder Guide. Thirty short exercises to help you start to flesh out and think about those things that make a "world" complete. Everything from climate and political atmosphere to, of course, the map, timeline of historical events, the people, the languages etc etc. Now I have seen these in one form or another before but none felt as helpful as this. In part, it helped me realize I HAVE thought of much of this but, the truth is, I am ready now and committing to the 15-30 minutes a day to do the work.

And the guide has sent me off in research directions I never would have thought of due to the links, ideas and great summaries about each section/exercise.I can't explain why but I recognize the difference in this guide is that it really allows you a range of investment. 15 minutes is all they ask and it's fine if that's what you want to spare but, if you are game, it is easy to se how an hour or more each day can be spent deepening the daily ideas on your own.

I have, I would say, doubled my world's depth in the first 10 days this way.

What the old world language is, what the trade and commerce and resources of the world are, how exactly my world's magic works, what the major conflicts have been (and I have to say, I am intent on writing a non-violent story/stories, so, that came with it's own interesting challenges!)

Best of all, the pieces I already had have started falling into place. The map being further and further fleshed out. The characters and types of creatures and myths. . . it's been truly exhilarating thus far.

20 days to go.

After that I will get back to the start again and go thru it once more, for 30 more days, and expand it all some more. I have plans for a large wall sized timeline/map/storyline to begin to be able to visually, in one place, see it all. And then,of course, time to start filling in the stories.

At this point, I am partial to a first book of short tales, sort of like Shaun Tan's "Tales From Outer Suburbia."  and I know that the last tale will be either the lead in to a second book of shorts or, the basis for a larger novella to follow. It is, If I can say so myself, a very good "hook". :)

Many of you know I am completely invested in the idea that stories are what creates demand for what we produce. Be it organic produce, fairy houses, quilts, handmade books,  masks, jewelry, etc etc. And we ALL tell our own tales our own way so I never think anyone should follow my lead if it isn't their thing. . . but I would also recommend a perusal through Austin Kleon's newest book, "Show Your Work" , where he says,

"Artists love to trot out the tired line, “My work speaks for itself,” but the truth is, our work doesn’t speak for itself. Human beings want to know where things came from, how they were made, and who made them. The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel and what they understand about your work effects how they value it.

You should be able to explain your work to a kindergartner, a senior citizen, and everybody in between. Everybody loves a good story, but good storytelling doesn’t come easy to everybody. It’s a skill that takes a lifetime to master. So study the great stories and then go find some of your own. Your stories will get better the more you tell them."

I, of course, agree totally with this as I feel my stories are as much a part of my ability to make living as a maker-of-things as anything else. Second only to never being satisfied with "good enough" and going all out in every way I can to make the buying experience wonderful for the recipient. 

So maybe that is what has held me back in writing these new, larger stories. It's a total package for me and I do not think I believed I had any idea how to create that complete world with just stories and illustrations.  Or perhaps it was just that I couldn't find the start line among all the floating pieces? 

Well, the 30 day exercise certainly changed that so I want to recommend it to anyone who has any sort of  make believe/fictional world you want to enrich and any stories you want to tell. You can find the exercise and thru it, many wonderful links to other great resources, here:

http://www.web-writer.net/fantasy/days/index.html

And to close, just a little peek into two new pieces for you all today too!

Happy day to everyone and I hope the magik of Spring (or Autumn if you are down under) is shining brightly in your world and in your hearts!

xo

nicolas

Another colorful version of what has become quite the popular item. And the flowers just keep getting more out of hand! :) 

A blue-roofed Enchanted Tower seemed a nice change of pace. I want to play with different roof colors this summer.

Enchanted Dragon Towers

Many of you know I am HUGE when it comes to stories. . . especially in relation to the thing si create.

Well, I just finished this little tower and it's dragon guardian, Amethyra, the other day and wrote the accompanying tale to go with it this morning so it is now listed in my shop.

This is rare. I have, at last count, a dozen completed items here that are awaiting stories before being sold/listed in my Etsy shop. Some have sat for weeks. . . waiting.

I cannot seem to list anything if it does not have some sort of tale to go with. The stories are, ultimately, what I feel give a bit of spirit to the work. I don't want to define everything I make in detail because part of that is, indeed, for the new owner. . . but at least something to offer a starting place for their own adventure to take root.

I am trying to get better at letting go just a bit on it but, when a story comes together like the one for these towers did, I feel like it is worth waiting for when it is not exactly there at the start.

So, without further delay or blather on my part, here is the Enchanted Dragon Tower and it's accompanying tale. : )

It's 6" tall and about 3" at the widest point of the dragon's body

I've been wanting to make dragons for some time but think I finally like the version I have here.

Coiling it around the tower works well but I also intend to make a few with the dragon perched/coiled on the roof top!

 I really enjoy the look of the offset doorway for an even more enchanted effect. :) 

¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨  The Enchanted Dragon Tower  ¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨

There are so many stories and tales about dragons in the world that to try and convince you there might be one more you haven't heard would seem a bit presumptuous. . .

But this little enchanted dragon tower is really born of a dragon story unlike any other that I, personally, knew of before hand.

Seems that a little, creative elven girl named Alythia had been having a hard time of late with her magic studies. She wasn't really very much into the books and lessons that other young creatures of the Pine seemed to so easily grasp. It wasn't so much that she felt badly about this as she had many, many other things that interested her far more than study.

For one, she loved to tell stories that she made up during her time alone at home. She also loved to spend as much time as she could wandering the countryside and talking to all of the creatures she encountered. Fauns, fairies, brownies, gnomes, sprites, goblins. . . made no difference to Alythia as she had a real knack for making friends and she often found herself telling her made-up stories to the new friends she met along the way. They always hoorah-ed and clapped at the end. . .

One day while venturing further into the surrounding forests than she ever had before, she came upon an old stone tower deep in the pines. It looked like it had been abandoned for eons with browned, dry moss, dead weeds filling the flower boxes and a lack of luster that only comes with years of neglect.

Stepping up to the door she recognized the faint markings she found there from one of her "Ancient Spells" textbooks. Theses symbols were enchantments that, as she recalled, were supposed to keep whatever had been locked inside.  .  well. . .  inside. The seals had been broken though and so, ever the adventurous spirit, she cautiously forced opened the heavy, creaky wooden door and found her way thru the dark lower level and up the stairs to the lookout window high above the forest floor.

When she got to the top, she was completely transfixed by the view! Such beauty and gentle hills sprinkled with wildflowers all around for miles. She had never known the landscape to look like that from the ground.

She made a wish, right there an then, that she could spend her life in a tower like this one just creating her stories day after day for it was truly the thing she enjoyed most of all.

Well, after a bit of daydreaming, Alythia eventually made her way back down the stairs but, as she did, she felt that something was. . . different now. . . the tower itself no longer seemed old, musty and dilapidated but, instead, seemed light, airy and almost like new!

She walked outside to discover the outside too looked rather refreshed with bright green moss and colorful stones and, the flower box that had only held dead weeds when she entered, was now overflowing with juicy red flowers!

And as she stared up at the beautiful scalloped rooftop with it's clinging moss, she felt a warm East wind blowing on her neck. . . except, it turns out, it wasn't an East wind at all.

Nooooooo, it was, as she saw upon turning around, a very beautiful, purple dragon with golden horns, eyes and wings!

The dragon, without speaking with a voice, introduced herself as Amethyra and she told Alythia that she was the guardian of the enchanted tower.  A tower that could grant almost any wish a being made while looking out it's "dream Window".

Alythia was startled. . . but not afraid. "But what of the sealing spells on the door? So they not speak of "keeping something inside"?

"Ahhh" said Amethyra, "Actually the spell was a warning to keep folk OUT of the tower. Because what is kept within is the power to grant the enchantment of one wish. But the spell is a little. . . off, shall we say? It grants the wish, but it only does so if the wish-maker stays within the tower."

"So", Amethyra continued, people have wished for great wealth, great bounties of food, fine clothes, great power even. . . but they may only have such things as long as the remain in the tower."

"And what is your part in this?" Alythia asked.

"Ohhh, I am the guardian of the tower" said Amethyra. "It is my charge to protect the tower and anyone who dwells within it. But should they leave, all they have wished for ends up turning into dust."
 
"I wished I could stay here forever and write stories." said Alythia "Can that really be a dream that the enchantment can make come true?"

Yes, that is why I appeared to you." Amethyra answered, "If you wish to stay, you may. The tower would be your only home and you would want for nothing as long as you remain inside and do not break the seal once the enchantment is enacted."

Alythia thought long and hard about this while Amethyra coiled around the tower to await her decision. In the end, after much internal debate, Alythia decided to take up the offer and she lived, for the rest of her many years, in the solitude and beauty of the Enchanted tower.

She thrived in the solitude and she was quite content with Amethyra as her only company. She took very good care of her little tower home and wrote stories, every day, without fail.

It is said that what she created lives beyond time and measure. The root of those stories, older than can be traced and forever retold in our times thru our own creations, link us together across worlds and dimensions.

Her gift became the very essence of what we call inspiration and, to this day, people seek solitude (mostly sans dragons like Amethyra, sadly) for the time and space to create their own stories and offerings to the world.

Loss and Gain - Inspiration

This week has seen both. . .

It is almost impossible for me to imagine the world we live in without David Bowie.  He's just always been there. . .  the thin white duke. . . the man who fell to Earth. . . Major Tom.

He taught us to dance under the serious moonlight. . .

It's taken me three days to figure out what I'd like to say because I wanted to offer something meaningful and heartfelt. Something to sum up his place in my own world. What I can think of is this. . .  Growing up we all had this small window of time when, for most of us, music was just this magical thing that was a part of our world. Before we knew of radio stations, MTV, Concert tours, the business of it, the sometimes disfunction and self-destructive tendencies of it, the money and politics of it.

A time when it really was just pure sensory bliss.

For me, there is no other artist that sums that time up in my life like David Bowie. Songs like Starman, Rebel Rebel, Changes, Golden Years, Jean Genie, Young Americans and Fame were all over the radio stations and became the soundtrack of my single digit youth. I'd often sit in my room on weekend nights at age 10 and 11 and pretend to be a DJ with my own radio station on my old red plastic record player and I'd look so forward to playing those songs in my "rotation".

There were other artists and songs that stand out, to be sure, but there was something so magnetic about Bowies songs. And in my pre teen years, getting my first look at the visual world of Ziggy Stardust or Alladin Sane. . . well I, and my hair, at least for the next 20 years, would never be the same again. : )

And I am reminded how at my first cooking job at an Italian Restaurant the gregarious dishwasher named Rudi who was literally straight off a boat from Italy, and who seemed so out of place and spoke so little English, warmed up to me and my flame red hair right away and pretty much from his first day just called me, "Bowie".

And no doubt, due in great part to that chameleon aspect of Bowies public image, I've also changed personas over the years. Reinvention is how I have always thought of it but, when one phase of my life ended, I tend to move on completely and reinvent the outer/social/expressive me to suit my new environment. Keeping the best o the past incarnations and leaving all of the rest behind. Those days are far behind now too in all likelihood but, with his passing, I am reminded of it all again.

This is one of my favorite quotes from David Bowie. It has served me well for years in many facets of my life and perhaps never more so than now. . .

"I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me." - David Bowie

And then, this past Wednesday, I received a book in the mail that I have been waiting awhile for. I know many of you probably are not very interested in the world of comics today but, if you'll bare with me, this may be one of the most wonderful art books, period, I have ever seen. 

In 2006 a friend of mine, and employee at the coffeehouse I owned then, handed me a comic and said,"I just think you might like this." That comic was the first issue of "Mouse Guard" by David Petersen.

I had not read or even considered a comic book for I don't know how long and was not prepared for the effect it would have on me. The art is, as I think the cover of this hardbound collected edition alone shows, simply amazing.

If you were ever a fan of Redwall or any animated animal series, DO check this out!!

David Petersen draws, colors and writes the entire series.

It inspired me
It lifted my soul
It righted a listing vessel which was, in many ways, my whole life at that particular point in time and it steered me back towards the possibilities and wonder of my youth. 

It was just the first of many comics I would come to love over the next few years (comics today are such a far cry from what I grew up with!)  and, whenever things felt a little dark or I lost sight of the connection between those early days of imagination and where I was at the time, I'd just pull out those issues and let them take me away again. 

Mouse Guard reminded me of my love of Redwall as a child and brought back a sense of purpose to the world I wanted to create as an adult. And, it led, indirectly and with many other little factors and influences, to what I create now. 

To this world I live in now. 

Never happier
Never more certain
Though, these past few days, a bit of sadness. . . missing Mr. Bowie and realizing time is always and endlessly marching forward for us all. . . 

“Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming”  ― David Bowie

xo

nicolas