A New Design Collection

I discovered the Power of Cute....

Well, actually, I discovered the right cuties. I already knew that Cute had The Power.

So now I can't stop trying to create more and more images of cute Folktale illustrations in Cute Style.

What is it? Something like this:

This is just a fragment of the whole image. It is from "Teremok: The Animals' Palace", a design that's coming soon to my store at Zazzle. A few others are already up, cards and a mug, and accessories.

With Zazzle, you can use most of my designs on products I don't showcase. There's a lot of leeway in how you can personalize a product to your needs and taste -- and I don't get slighted in the process!

If you want something you don't see, please ask! I'm always looking for ideas.

Long Time No See

I disappeared again... February was another crazy month... I don't remember why. Could be a sign.

And I'm back doing another workshop, this one for Savvy Authors.

There are more upcoming workshops. Check out the announcements at Otter Creations.

In other news, the Graphic Novel has been updated.

What's New?

Tomorrow (Monday, January 31), I start a new workshop at the Black Diamonds RWA Chapter.

It's all about the ancient art of storytelling (and like Sheherazade will teach you, that's the art which indeed is the oldest one, for without storytelling skills, all her other arts and enchantments wouldn't have saved her).

I have more workshops scheduled here and there throughout the year. Check out my schedule at Otter Creations.

In the meantime, I'm still working on my Graphic Novel, which still doesn't have a title. And yes, that's a hint. Help??? You can take a look at it here. And if you have been following it and you want to go straight to the updates, or just to make sure you are up to date, you can check it out here.

And there are pictures of the main characters up in the gallery, too. Just the good guys for now, but I'm trying to get snapshots of everyone else.

There are a few new images in the Art Gallery, too. And samples of the book covers I've started making at Otter Creations.

Am I writing? Yes. But slowly. Life takes up a lot of mental energy, and words don't always want to line up for me. Images seem to work better. So I'm not going to jinx it all by saying anything... But my storypeople are knocking at my door again.

If they can wake me up, they're more than welcome to come in.

Russian Christmas

January 7th, in case you didn't look at today's date.

Christmas Day according to the Julian calendar. In our hybrid household, we celebrated the day as we have since the beginning.

Many Eastern Orthodox countries have switched entirely to the Gregorian calendar and celebrate religious holidays at the same time as Western Christians, but a few, like the Russian Orthodox Church, hold fast to old traditions (or maybe habits) and continue to mark the feasts according to the Julian calendar, 13 days later.

I'm not going to try and explain who is right and who is wrong, and what the mathematical underpinnings of either calendar are -- for one thing, anyone who knows me also knows that I have issues with numbers. It's good enough that I remember there's a +13 conversion from Gregorian to Julian. Besides, it's easy to find out more on the subject.

Now Easter is another story altogether, and another one I'm not going to talk about now.

Anyway, we put up our Christmas tree around Thanksgiving, like most people, but we keep it at least through January 7th, usually through the 10th, because according to Russian tradition, all major (religious) holidays are celebrated 3 days.

С Рождеством Христовым!

More Story: Graphic Novel Updates

Most current pages here.

Or start from the beginning.

Check it Out

Remember the book I reviewed before the holidays?

This one.

Well, it's out. You can get it at Amazon.



If you have any doubts, check out my review. Or head out to Delilah Devlin's home page and see what she's heard other readers say about it.

Happy New Year

So it's 2011. Of course, my fingers are reluctant to type the new number. But for some reason, it looks better than last year's numerals.

Don't mind me. I have a very strange relationship with numbers.

The year, however, has started with a nice number: 4.

Not much you say? But it's a good number to brag about, because it's the number of my pictures that were accepted in the art galleries at DAZ.

Here's one.


There are more images, and more still to come, in the gallery on my site, including some of this month's winners.

I think that's a very nice way to start the year.