Yes, it’s true: after much gnashing of teeth and a token resistance to the inevitable, I decided it was time to do serious experimentation with AI, especially after hearing multiple reports, all good, about Anthropic’s Claude. To be clear, I continue to think the legal repercussions of the training of AI models on unlicen...
2024-03-19 21:18:13 +0000 UTC View PostAmanda unfolded herself from the nest of blankets her pony-self slept in while the caravan lumbered down the road. Getting off a moving wagon was fun when she didn’t have to worry about breaking a leg, and she hopped down with a wave to the team pulling the wagon behind hers.
As she expected, her son was loping out of...
2024-03-15 12:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Another from the archives, this beachy girl is a Le'enle (my kirin species). I thought it would be fun to do a seashore-themed palette for her. And yes, as you can probably tell from the scan, I painted her, then carefully cut out those windows, and then painted a background on a separate sheet and put it behind her so that i...
2024-03-12 12:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostEven had Jonah not trained her with an understanding of human emotion, she would have sought that information on her own, the better to execute her function. Fortunately, Jonah had foreseen how vital comprehension of human motivation was to predicting the average player’s reaction to the game she had been coded to improve o...
2024-03-08 13:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostNick sent them an entire line of random emojis and tossed the phone aside. Another muffin, a shower, and a drink later, he set the wireset in place and sank onto the bed. The forest emerged first as an impression of sunlight on leaves, and then warm brown shadows and the rustle of wind, tossing the highest boughs. He sat up a...
2024-03-01 13:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a preview of the planned frontispiece of the new book (obviously unfinished)!
2024-02-27 13:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostRay leaned back in his chair and exhaled with all the satisfaction of a job done amazing.Not only had the game spun up a miniboss for them to fight in the Veilgrove, but it had improvised a graveyard, a crypt, and a hidden quest to clear out the evil presence that had been attracting the ghouls to the area. Goldie an...
2024-02-23 13:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostIf you want a sticker (or the original), go grab one. International backers, this one should be affordable for you too!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcahogarth/orange-cat-energy-stickers?ref=...
2024-02-20 16:49:26 +0000 UTC View PostBeing able to taste things in the game was amazing, so of course, his mother had to ruin it. “I’m not sure how I feel about all this.”
“I don’t know why,” Nick said. “It’s the best stew I’ve ever had.”
“That’s what bothers me.” She poked her spoon at one of the browned lizardhen chunks. ...
2024-02-16 13:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
One of the Jokka (and an anadi to boot) from my archives, with a bowl of... stuff. Alien foodstuffs, I guess. Just an excuse to paint more nouveau stuff, and I thought an anadi deserved to be seen in a positive, happy light, as a bringer of life and fruitful things.
Shirtified this one, and there are magnets and sticker...
2024-02-13 13:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
This weekend my latest round of brushes gave up the ghost in the push to finish the book cover for the next novel, Fireborn’s Legacy. This set has been holding out for a year or so, supplemented by the last round of brushes: every time I buy replacements, the previous brushes become the ones I use for the parts of ...
2024-02-13 00:09:29 +0000 UTC View PostVideo game characters couldn’t cook.
Amanda wasn’t shocked by this. She might not have been a gamer, but she wasn’t an idiot either. If the point of games like this was to kill things in order to gain power, than the writers of the game had to give new characters with few abilities something within their measure t...
2024-02-09 13:53:39 +0000 UTC View PostI'm planning on launching this one at the end of February... maybe the 20th? So if you're into cat photos, stickers, or art, you can use the link to be notified when the project goes live. 😸
2024-02-05 14:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostThinking of making this my patrelocals serial! Updating every two weeks. Previous episodes here, via the gamelit novel tag, or the collection:
https://www.patreon.com/mcahogarth/posts?filters%5Btag%5D=gamelit+nove...
2024-02-02 20:42:10 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm trying to clean up my newsletter and make sure more of the people who stay on it are getting only the news they're interested in... if you're subscribed, please fill out my form! And if you're not and you want to be, here's a sign-up page: 2024-01-30 14:49:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Leaning hard into 'weird book cover vibes', here's where I'm at with Fireborn's Legacy (Qora's novel, and the final Fallowtide book... also Fire War #0).
I'm trying to avoid doing the cover *after* finishing the book because the temptation to rush it is strong. So I'm developing it while writing, in the hopes they'll be...
2024-01-29 14:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
A brief digression now about why it’s taking me so long to make myself a Stardancer cup like the ones Taylitha’s always filling at some meeting… because not only have I drawn her and the women of the Stardancerwith those cups for years, but I’ve wanted one for about as long! But Fleet ships have coat...
2024-01-22 15:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Going through my archives... here's a painting of a Changeling character, Hadara, and... I have no memory at all of what she was like or why she's apparently romancing an elven king, but there you are. XD
Gouache, as usual, and yes, I did the designs on her robe by hand, not with a stencil or a computer.
I shirtif...
2024-01-16 13:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Kickstarter backers funded this short story about how Reese's relatives came to live on Escutcheon... I hope to one day use it as a seed for a new collection about Reese's activities during the Fallowtide. In the meantime, enjoy!
2024-01-12 19:21:30 +0000 UTC View PostSay I'm serializing a long form story here. Tell me your preference!
2024-01-10 14:50:42 +0000 UTC View PostI hope everyone's having a great start to 2024... let me contribute, with the draft of the Kickstarter-funded short about Reese's relatives! This is the draft... if you'd like to wait for the cleaned-up version, I'll have that in a week or so.
It was my plan to spend December goofing off, and instead somehow I’ve been knee-deep in projects. How did that happen? I think I got tired of my own complaining, to be honest. I was doing the equivalent of the South Park underpants gnomes: step 1, write. Step 2, publish. Step 3…? Step 4, profit! And then when step 4 wasn...
2023-12-19 17:44:49 +0000 UTC View Post
I continue to experiment with the Amazon AI beta, which I broke three times now, but it's (sort of) working again. They added four more voices, and one of them was a sweet-tempered British girl so I picked that one for Coracle... and when I started listening to it in the car to see how it sounded, I just... kept listening. It...
2023-12-12 17:09:10 +0000 UTC View PostDecember’s not usually a busy work month for me, but this year I have a bunch of projects simmering! Here's what's up:
Isn't this the best review ever? What more could you want in a holiday collection?? 2023-12-06 17:21:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Wool-gathered child, who walks
as if through cloud-cloaked air,
and dances thoughtlessly
in dreams that shroud the light:
you forget your flesh,
and then in slow naivete
you wonder how
the world around you runs.
The rules of Earth are mysteries
to you, unknowable, a ...
2023-11-28 12:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostWhat's better...for big reveals to be known to the reader before the characters know, and to see the characters figure it out... or to be surprised at the same time as the characters?
2023-11-20 13:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
I used tracing paper to extrapolate Jeasa's profile from Jahir's... and had so much fun I figured I'd add Kolvin (on the left) and Amber (on the right, behind Jahir) as well.
Amber's supposed to take after his maternal grandfather a bit.
These were fun! I put them on the wiki.
2023-11-16 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
After years of saying I'd update the species line-up for the back of the Pelted books, I finally picked up the sketches I started three years ago and finished them! The results are much higher quality... and also far too large for the back of the book. I was forced to chop them up into separate pictures...!
Here, then, ...
2023-11-13 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Trying to return to old habits of just randomly finishing things without any attachment to how they turn out and what they're for... so naturally, it was a picture of Alysha.
Believe it or not, this one was such mixed media: marker, color pencil, gel pen, technical pen, and even acrylic gouache (making up for my poor ey...
2023-11-08 13:47:27 +0000 UTC View Post
My little doodle of my game character from the con. XD
2023-11-06 13:55:32 +0000 UTC View Post
