Jacob and Lucy

This is an illustration for chapter Two of  my Work In Progress,  Lucy and the Wizards.

Jacob, a time traveller and wizard, has come from the future to take Lucy back with him.

However, the time machine is malfunctioning and Jacob has arrived in the wrong year!

The Princess and the Knight by Jacqueline S Miller. A poem for Valentine's Day

A poem for Valentine's Day about a Knight and his Love.

The Princess and the Knight

Long ago there lived a knight
Who loved a princess fair.
She was a rich king's daughter
With lustrous golden hair.

The princess loved him also
And all should have gone well,
But the king was very greedy
And put the knight through hell.

He sent him on a journey
To kill a dragon bad
And bring back lots of treasure
So she could wed the lad.

He had to kill the dragon
And steal a pot of gold
To win her hand in marriage,
A tale that's often told.

The quest was not that simple:
The dragon, such a brute,
Allied with evil goblins,
Ambushed the knight en route.

Well, greed can spoil a lover
And put troubles in his way.
The dragon proved a monster
And difficult to slay.

But love can conquer everything,
The wicked have to fail.
The Princess had to fight the beast,
Although she wasn't male!

Long ago there lived a princess
Who loved a knight a lot.
The Princess was Fenella,
The knight, Sir Lanceypot.


The ending to my story
Is very hard to tell
For first I'll have to write it.
I hope it all goes well!...


By Jacqueline S Miller

For "Tis love, Tis love, that makes the world go round!"

Happy Valentine's Day!

Artwork Using a Wacom tablet for the first time.

In England, if you buy a Wacom tablet you do not get any software free with it. However, I have discovered that it works with the Paint program which comes free with Windows.

So here is Princess Fenella uploaded from a photo of my original drawing.

This is a picture of the Wizard Erud and the evil sorceress, Viletta. I drew this tonight using a pen on the Wacom intudos tablet and paint for Windows. It is an illustration for a short story that I have just written. The title of the story is An Unusual Quest.

I am still experimenting with drawing using this technology.

Here I have used Paint to give Fenella blonde hair, red lips and a purple outline to her dress. It's all experimental at this stage.

All drawings and writing are copyright Jacqueline S Miller

Princess Fenella wears a crown and a necklace. She has a new little friend!

                                               Princess Fenella by Jacqueline S Miller

Princess Fenella wears a crown and a necklace. She has a new little friend!

Some Art work for my Works in Progress by Jacqueline Miller

Princess Fenella by Jacqueline S Miller

This is a quick sketch which I did this evening. I used black biro on white paper and then photographed it using the camera on my ipad.

 Princess Fenella is a character I've created for some Fantasy flash fiction stories I've been writing via the Mythic Scribes website. I drew her for the first time tonight, and she has appeared exactly as I imagined her.
Fenella is in love with the brave and handsome knight, Sir Cedric Lanceypot, who has gone on a quest to steal a gold cup from a dragon. If he is successful, the king will allow him to marry Fenella. Unfortunately, as usual, "the course of true love does not run smooth", and Fenella may have to go and rescue the knight.
I am now planning to turn this story into a book as a whole cast of characters has evolved with a PLOT. Hurrah! It is quite comedic (as usual) but it's turning serious now.

By the way, if anyone thinks writing Fantasy is an easy option, you need to reconsider. I've been having to learn about battles, armour, weaponry, clothes, chivalry, who accompanies knights on quests, dragons, how to get a knight in full chain mail off the top of a mountain, as well as many other things.



I think I will do some sketches of the other characters this week.
I'm going to experiment with using Art apps to colour in actual drawings that I can photograph and upload.

Unfortunately, Google did not let me upload it from the ipad to the blog, so I have had to send it to myself in an email and then upload it on a pc.
I was considering buying a digital tablet for art, but I think I can use the ipad to colour in my sketches.

                                                              Ruby and Jenny

This illustration is of Ruby and Jenny, in my WIP, Ruby and the Ancient Teacher. Ruby is invisible in the background as she is wearing a magic ring in the picture.It's quite hard to draw a picture of an invisible person!

This drawing was done using a combination of Paint for windows and Apple apps on the ipad. It entailed emailing the picture back and forth between a PC and an iPad. Some of it was drawn using a mouse and the rest using a stylus. The text was added in Paint on the PC.

Both drawings were done completely from imagination.

I'm going to experiment with colouring in the sketch and will post the results soon.

Jacqueline

Prudence, Henry and the Wizards.

I drew this picture of Prudence, Henry and the Wizards, using an Apple iPad. It is an illustration for my Fantasy WIP, Ruby and the Ancient Teacher.

I find that knowing what my characters look like helps with visualisation for writing the story.
Prudence, a magician, is on the way home from her tour when she is stopped by Henry who is being chased by the two wizards in the picture.

Henry tells her he has information about a missing person. He hands her a photograph, a letter and a ransom note. Prudence tries to help him by turning him into a green and brown rabbit. Unfortunately, the wizards who are from a high Order, detect the spell, and arrest them both.

In the back of Prudence's car are cages containing animals and birds used in her magic act.


I did NaNoWriMo last month and wrote the back story of many of the characters in this book. I now have the plots for several books. This will be the third in the series. 
I will be posting an excerpt from the prequel, Lucy and the Wizards, soon.
Thank you for reading this blog and do leave a comment if you are interested.

Happy New a Year!

Jacqueline S Miller

Ps All material is copyright J S Miller January 2014

Creative Writing Review Now That It's New Years Day!

Creative Writing Review now that it's New Years Day!

2013 was a terrible year. I've never been superstitious about the number thirteen before, but I'm glad it's over. However, on a positive note, I discovered that I became very creative and did loads of writing. Some of my best chapters ever were written in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep!

I participated in a couple of conferences and my book started to take its form. It's a fantasy novel about a student at an academy of magic. By the end of the year I had loads of characters, probably over 70, including two rabbits called Flopsy and Dipsy. I had been "Pantsing" along but I knew I had to go back and put in the plot, once I'd discovered what it was. I was surprised to find that my main character was not just ancient as I'd supposed, but was actually a time traveller with an intricate back story.

Then, November came along, and with it NaNoWriMo. I'd never participated before, but this year I decided to take the plunge. Well, I must say it was amazing. First of all, NaNoWriMo stipulates that you must write a new book, so I decided to write the back story of the ancient teacher in my current work in progress (WIP). I, therefore, wrote the prequel to the WIP and this is sorting out the plot of the original book.

I wrote nearly every day and, to my surprise, actually reached the 50,000 words required to "win" NaNoWriMo. The best part, however, was being able to post questions in the forums and become "buddies" with writers and aspiring writers from all over the world.

I've also found my writerly voice and know the genre I want to write which is  MG/YA Fantasy with
some Science Fiction and Steam Punk included.

Fantasy is actually quite difficult to write as you have to create a whole "world" with rules. Also, if it relates to the real world you have to check your facts. My main character is on the run from France with her magician father at the beginning of the book. At first I had set the story in 1870, but then I discovered I had problems with the Franco Prussian War and the enormous bustles that women wore at that time. So I time travelled the story to start in 1899. I still had to research Victorian England and find out lots of little details such as, what the Victorians ate for breakfast. The answer to the question is: a lot if you were rich, but not much if you were poor - maybe a crust of bread or some gruel!

I am more of a "pantser" than a planner and let the characters tell the story. I think that I now have the plots for several books and have a vast cast of characters. This is because I've had to include the ancestors of some of the characters in the original WIP.

Once I have finished the first draft I will edit it into several books as there are a few separate plots that interlink over more than a century.

Hopefully, this will be the year I get published.

Happy New Year!

Jacqueline
Ps Please leave a comment about your own writing experiences, especially if you also took part in NaNoWriMo. I will try and post an excerpt from the prequel.