At last! After months of planning and pondering, my new fantasy book is underway. Under the working title The Unexpected Traveler, the story follows Rainier, an elf who doesn’t want to become king. The unexpected traveler is photographer Peter Wright, a human who thought he was completing one last photo shoot when he runs into Rainier. The first chapter, “The Curious Little Man,” sweeps both our elf and Peter into the land of Orgon and into a heap of trouble. Things have changed while Rainier was away.

As a five senses exercise, think through walking along a deep mine drift (tunnel). It’s a “wet” mine, meaning water drips from the ceiling and down the walls, creating a small stream underfoot. The drift inclines sharply. It’s lit by electric lights every ten feet. What does it look like? Drippy. Light reflected in the water. Shadows. Wood beams laying helter-skelter. What does it smell like? Damp. Dirty. Rotting wood. The plastic smell of your waterproof jacket and pants. What does it feel like? Wet. Cold. Rough rock that leaves bits of sand on your fingertips. Your own sweat. The hardhat pressing into your forehead. Cramped. Claustrophobic. No breeze. What do you hear? Water drops and splashes. Loose rock crunching underfoot. Your breath. The waterproof gear rubbing against itself. Machinery running in the distance. What does it taste like? Well, don’t taste this water–it’s too full of toxic minerals to be healthy!

Fantasy, Writing: Style

Instead of writing a fourth book in the flying broomstick series, I’m redirecting my thoughts to a “full-blown” fantasy novel, complete with a fantasy world. The working title is The Unexpected Traveler and it will have the usual elves, dwarves, dragons, and occasional talking animals. I think I’ve got some cool twists and I’ll be blogging about it as I write.

But…

One cannot write of elves and such unless there is some special language in which they write. Now my elves are not Tolkien’s elves and don’t have nearly as pretty a script, but surely elves don’t use roman characters! I looked around the Internet for runic and other interesting fonts, but nothing comes up other than various attempts to duplicate what Tolkien and others have already done. And given they own those fonts, I can’t use them.

What to do?

What to do turns out to be simple. Why not design my own font? Is there software that makes that easy? Yes. The one I found is called Scanahand (as in ’scan a [sample of your] hand[writing]‘). Mind you, so far I’ve only been playing with it. But the image shows some things Scanahand can do. The first two lines are simple. I printed out the template that Scanahand provides, then I printed Read more…

Fantasy, Fonts

(NOTE: There’s an update at the end of this post.)

Our thanks to Office Depot for being the model of customer service! Our three-year-old, much-used Okidata war-horse-quality color laser printer was pretty worn out and insisted it needed some expensive new drums, so we replaced it with a Lexmark 540n from our local Office Depot. The difference in printer generations was immediately apparent; the Lexmark print quality was superior and the photographs much better. We quickly went through the toner in the “introductory” cartridges and paid a king’s ransom for another set (which is to be expected), and had just installed them—about $280’s worth!

Alas, there was one difficulty. Just 14 days after we purchased the printer (today) I was printing our Christmas letter when the red light came on with a message saying there was a jam and I should open the paper tray. I did so and to my surprise, sitting in the paper tray were a little wheel and a couple ball bearings. Oops! Close inspection with a flashlight revealed that indeed it was not just parts coming loose; a little retaining mechanism had in fact broken. Read more…

Writing: Business

This paragraph about Mt. Sneffels Press’s book, Narrow Gauge Railroading in the San Juan Triangle: The Rio Grande Southern, the Ouray Branch of the D&RG and Otto Mears’ Silverton RR, appears in the January 2010 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. You too can have your own copy by clicking on this link to our catalog. Click here to go to the Railroad Model Craftsman website.

Mt. Sneffels Press, Railroad