So it’s all big space news this weekend, with MSL Curiosity making her much-anticipated landing on Mars. It’s got the entire Interwebs abuzz, and NASA’s got an entire set of @NASASocial events lined up spanning 7 different facilities.
But … with all the new fangled tech and social media and everything else, I want to also remember a somewhat older, and less-remembered NASA robotic explorer – The Voyager probes, 1 and 2.
Carrie Clevenger (@texistential on Twitter) has been telling everyone about a photoshoot she has planned for July
So, being the helpful soul that I am, I decided to come up with some pre-visualizations of how the photoshoot might go. After the shoot, if she posts the pics, I’ll link to them here so you can compare my ideas with her reality 
WMATA, the local transit authority, has had a pretty bad rep over time for their interactions with passengers on Twitter. This week, however, there has been an amazing, nay shocking, development – The @WMATA twitter feed has not only had the usual automated alerts of system issues, but whoever is driving it has been actively responding to tweets, and giving more details than just the bare bones of the past.
This change in interaction on Twitter has bemused regular watchers of the #WMATA and @WMATA feeds, but I think I’ve finally discovered the deep dark truth about what has happened!
I have decided, after many years of not actually knowing what a blog hop was, to bite the bullet and actually participate in one. Any suggestions that my decision may be based on never having found out about them in time before are just baseless scurrilous rumors and I deny them all!
So what blog hop, you may ask, have I decided to lose my hop virginity with? I’m glad you asked! It is the wonderful Romance@Random Diamond Jubilee Blog Hop!
Diamond Jubilee Blog Hop!
A “swords and sorcery” fantasy battle scene created for @trollgodfather and Tunnels & Trolls.
The scene was composed so that elements could be split out as separate “snapshot” renders, if possible – “Shall We Dance” is one example derived from this scene, with additional tweaks for the close-up.
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A few days ago I had a brief Twitter conversation with @SueGrimshaw, and at one point she noted something along the lines of “we have the most fun” – we being editors and artists. This coming on the heels of a post on @JodyHedlund’s blog, “Book Covers: Are They Important in the Digital Age?” got me thinking about this aspect of my work.
I asked myself “Do I have fun doing cover art?”. The answer came back to me as a “Yes!” – although admittedly it took some thinking through to be certain. To answer the question from Jody’s blog, I believe that cover art is important, perhaps even moreso in the digital age than the old times of just physical books.
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting Gini Koch during a #scifichat Twitter conversation.
It seems I’m not the only one who writes about aliens getting it on with humans – unfortunately, her visions of aliens are all handsome hunks of human looking beings, whereas I, as you all have come to know, much rather prefer to focus on the beautiful sensuality of the alien forms first designed by HR Giger. Indeed, as discussion grew during the lead-up to the release of her latest novel, “Alien Tango” (DAW, 2010), she described these kind, wonderful creatures as “fugly”!
I was taking a break from editing the manuscript for Chrysalis Emergent, and decided to create a concept rendering of one of the alien races that feature in the Legion Universe, this one also a Starwolf.
It’s not entirely how I visualize both this alien’s species, and the implants of Starwolves, in my head, but it gives you a good idea.
Alien Starwolf Concept Art
With prompting from a few people, I’ve started working on re-tweaking a Legion Universe novel, with the intent of actually risking the dreaded rejection letters again.
But, me being me, I decided to do some cover art as well given the recent release of some new meshes.
Oddly, working on the character from this cover idea helped me to get a better understanding of some of the concepts the Legion Universe explores.
So, as I doubt will come as a surprise to anyone, I present to you a cover for Chrysalis Emergent, long before the words are even close to decent.
I was hanging out in The Knight Agency‘s chat room after the Rhyannon Byrd chat with a few others and the discussion got around to aliens and predators. One of the chat regulars, DianeT, mentioned she’s prefer to go down to predators rather than aliens because she’d rather a quick death than the icky slimy death aliens result in.
Having just finished doing one of the illustration renders for Outsider: Epiphany, I was twiddling my thumbs, so I put together an image fast, and squirted it off to the farm while we were chatting.
