Imaginary creatures. While drawing a superhero web comic some years ago, I got tired of drawing explosions. “Can’t I draw some puppies or kittens for once?” I groused to my co-creator. Nope, just more overturned cars and speed lines. Sheesh!
My first full-length novel is in the layout stage right now and it’s time to make final interior art decisions. I put on my art director’s cap and took a good hard look at the completed pieces, then redrew whatever wasn’t good enough. Some pieces get left behind because they’re not good enough, don’t follow the book’s design aesthetic, or just don’t need to be in there. In this case, I’m thinking about a lovely rabbit-man who’s important to an early section of the book. Is the drawing cute? Yes. Is it needed? No. The words do the job. And it’s better that they do. Honestly, imagination is much better than spelling it out for the readers. So, bye-bye to the cute little pen & ink drawing. But that’s okay because he helped me to visualize the character as I wrote him. Now it’s time for my words to carry the pictures — and that’s where the real magic happens.
—SLW
Wondering about sharing something online.
Henry Clive was an Australian artist who created illustrations for The American Weekly, a Sunday newspaper supplement published by the Hearst Corporation. I’m very fond of Clive’s work. His imagery is wonderfully “Hollywood,” and copying it is a fun and challenging test of my skills.
On June 18, 1933, as part of a series imagining cupids in different cultural settings, Clive created an illustration showing an Indian maiden in the Southwest with a chubby cupid standing near a saguaro cactus. Cupid wears an eagle feather in his hair and carries a bow with a beaded arrow holder. The maiden herself has a dramatic and glamorous headdress of eagle feathers.
Seen today, the whole scene reads as wildly un–politically correct.
But the illustration is also charming, and beautifully composed. My own copy—done in paint markers and colored pencil—is both artistically successful and extravagant. I like quite a bit it but it may be one of those pieces best framed and kept quietly at home.
—SLW
Illustrations left on the cutting room floor.
Of all the illustrations that didn’t make it into Out of the Aethers three are my favorites. The first is the original inspiration piece, showing an astrolabe and a cartographer’s hand done in pastel. It was rough but the colors and design of the piece make it one of my favorites. Another is a pencil sketch of the rabbit-man, Mrrv. I debated doing another of higher quality for the book but ultimately rejected the idea. The third is a high-quality pen and ink illustration with limited color showing the founder of the Agaereons—Agaer. That piece may be seen in the subsequent Time Keeper novel where he is a major character.
—SLWD
“Cross saddle” instead of “astride”
“Cross saddle” is a new expression to me. Cleary, it is in comparison to “side saddle” but the term I’m familiar with is “astride.” Here is the quote: “Fay was equipped for the journey; she as riding cross saddle in a khaki riding suit and leggings. and she looked like a beautiful boy until she rode up and the two men saw her eyes and the braid of dark hair that hung below her waist.” —Mark Turns West (Chelsea House, 1926) by Mary Imlay Taylor. Did the author make it up for her book or was the term in common use? This is the only reference I’ve ever seen to it.
—SLW
Westerns
I have noted that books taking place in the Midwest, Northwest, and Canada were also categorized as “westerns” during the 1930s and before. Their dust jackets did not necessarily reflect this. For example, Mark Turns West takes place in the mountains of the west where there is timber and no cowboys. The dust jacket shows a cowboy riding down a slope after another rider with a packhorse. It’s a great image but not entirely accurate to the book.
—SLW
Shared Fields, Opposite Instructions
Last night’s episode of The Librarians: The Next Chapter, titled “And What Dreams May Come,” places its characters inside a collective dreamscape filled with personal nightmares. The shared mental space is framed as hazardous territory—something to be endured and contained.
Nearly a century earlier, in 1929, Lilith Lorraine’s novelette The Brain of the Planet appeared in Hugo Gernsback’s Science Fiction Series. Gernsback had founded the modern science-fiction magazine with the explicit aim of placing scientific possibility at the center of popular storytelling. Lorraine’s narrative treats the same concept—a planetary field of interconnected minds—as a medium that can be deliberately refined. A carefully designed apparatus broadcasts coherent thought across that field; once the improved pattern is established, the device is voluntarily switched off.
The two stories occupy the same conceptual ground. One models constructive engagement with a conductive shared field. The other models caution and lockdown.
The earlier text assumes the field can be improved. The contemporary episode assumes it is best sealed.
I find this dichotomy interesting in light of the rising Dwapara phase of the yuga cycle.
—SLW
Exit to the Exhibition Hall.