I made this graphic for my Redbubble store, simply because every time I hear the name Sarkastodon this is where my mind goes. Non-Ice-Age prehistoric mammals need more love anyway. Pop culture keeps forgetting that there is 61 million years of really interesting evolution between dinosaurs and the Pleistocene. 

I also wanted to render a prehistoric carnivorous mammal with a little bit more of a unique color scheme than I usually see. So much paleoart tends to make extinct carnivores either look like leopards or like tigers, but there are a lot of other coat colors and patterns a mammal can have.

I'm probably the only one who thinks this is funny, I know.

 The other day I was reading about a group of birds called the jacanas, at least one species of which (the comb-crested jacana) has a really interesting parenting behavior--if the male, who is primarily responsible for raising the chicks, thinks his brood is in danger, he scoops them up under his arms and runs away carrying them. If you see a jacana doing this, it looks utterly bizarre until you realize what's going on.

So, naturally, my next thought was that it would be great to see a dinosaur doing this. Here's Struthiomimus being a good dad and carrying his brood to safety.

I'd like to point out that even though some dinosaurs appeared to have been born precocial, or able to move and feed themselves right after hatching, that does not imply no parental care in the species. Many modern species are born precocial simply because their parents are always on the move and the babies need to get going ASAP, but they still receive plenty of upbringing. Consider nomadic herbivores like horses and giraffes, whose babies can walk within hours after birth but still spend considerable time being raised by mom. So it's a mistake to find fully-developed dinosaur hatchlings and assume they were abandoned, sea-turtle style.

(I'd also like to point out that the closest modern relatives of dinosaurs - crocodilians and birds - both exhibit extensive parental care before and after hatching. There is no reason to think dinosaurs stupidly plodded away from their clutches and had no instinct for rearing the next generation.)

Dinosaur paleoartists, study bird behavior. You'll be glad you did.

 Yet another victim of the mad Professor.

(I just thought it would be funny to drastically alter the tone of this scene in the game in light of Oak's comic characterization.)

You've Mastered the Basics--Now What? Part 1

An entry from my Neopian Times work that isn't fanfiction? Yes, but hear me out. I wrote a few articles for the Times over the years, and I wanted to share this one in particular because, despite the Neopets theme, it's full of good solid general fiction writing advice that I thought might be of use to people. I didn't want all these useful tips simply wasting away in the depths of the NT archives. So I'm putting this article here on my blog where it can be accessed and referenced by a much wider audience.

I got the idea for this article when I was reading back issues of the Times and noticed a lot of articles aimed at beginning fiction writers looking to get published in the NT for the first time. The articles covered things like making sure you have good spelling and grammar, understanding basic plot structure, and trying to be original with your stories and characters. 

And while it was wonderful to see so many authors writing articles to help people just starting out with their writing, a part of me worried a little about new NT writers learning the barebones basics of fiction writing and stopping there. That's like learning how to make boxed macaroni and cheese and deciding you don't need any other cooking skills. Just like with all skills, there is always room for improvement in writing. I wanted to inspire and encourage writers to take their NT fiction beyond just good spelling and following the publication guidelines, and craft stories that readers would find truly memorable and engrossing.

So, I decided to put together this guide that goes past the basics and takes some deep dives into prose technicalities, story construction, and how to conduct your writing life. I had a lot of fun with it, and I hope it helps people both with their Neopian Times writing and their fiction writing in general. 

The article ended up being so long that I had to split it into three parts to fit the NT's maximum word count limit, but the editor graciously understood what I was doing when I submitted the parts and published them sequentially. I'm keeping the three-part format here because I think it'll be a little more digestible than one massive textwall (not that I have a history of eschewing textwalls.......).

(Also, the illustration is something I drew for another Neopian Times article. I thought it turned out really cute so I figured I might as well use it here.)

Part 1

If you want to start writing stories for the Neopian Times, there are a ton of great guides for beginning writers in the many past issues of Neopia’s spectacular user-content newspaper. Fiction writing is not an endeavor to be taken lightly, and many NT writers have graciously passed on their knowledge and their experience on the subject to those who have never written a story before, or perhaps keep getting their stories rejected and want to figure out why.

But let’s say you’ve got all of that down. You have multiple golden quills to your username. You know that plots need to have a beginning, middle, and end. You understand why stereotyping Neopet species is problematic. You’ve memorised what is and isn’t allowed in the Times. And you’re ready to take your writing to the next level.

Then this series of articles is for you. I make no claim to being a spectacular writer—but I have been writing fiction for a fairly long time, have accumulated a lot of know-how from various sources over the years, and even get paid for it sometimes in real life, so I like to think I know what I’m doing for the most part. And now I want to share with Neopia some intermediate-level writing tips and guidelines, to help others give their short stories and story series even more life and impact.

 

 Doodled out some ideas for a sequel to Ravenscrag. It would take place about a year after the first novel, and I was toying with the idea of the narrative starting with Tam's high school graduation (and then she irresponsibly decides to spend her summer in a fantasy world instead of prep for college). Carrie and Saturos would attend the graduation, and by that point, they've figured out a shapeshifting spell so Saturos can assume human form and do stuff on Earth with Carrie's family without, y'know, causing mass panic because of his real appearance. So of course I also had to draw Carrie as an oncor.

(As a random aside, Saturos is a tall creature compared to humans--probably about 7 feet tall or so. That's why one of the first things Carrie and Tam notice about Arthabasca is that all the furniture and architecture are weirdly scaled up from what they're used to. But I kind of imagine that Saturos is actually on the short side for an oncor--it's just that with him being the last of his kind for the past tens of thousands of years, there haven't been any oncor to compare him to, so he seems tall by most other creatures' standards.)

Also some design sketches for Nayzak, who is a supremely fun entity to write. Nayzak (whose name is the Arabic word for "meteor") is a sapient space probe built by an unknown (and implicitly extraordinarily ancient) civilization. At some point in its interstellar journey, its programming went awry and it started to believe that in order to most efficiently carry out its directive to gather information on the universe, it needed to dismantle planets and use their raw materials to create copies of itself. In fact, it's totally unknown whether this Nayzak is even the original construct or a copy, as all Nayzaks appear to act as a hive mind and share information.

Nayzak's actions and its effect on the history of Arthabasca play a pivotal role in Ravenscrag; in the sequel, Nayzak is out wandering the stars again (benevolently this time), but it has left a fragment of itself with Saturos in order to stay in contact with him. That fragment bonds with Travis, Carrie's awkward ex from the first novel, who has accidentally found his way into Arthabasca and finds himself accompanying Carrie, Saturos and Tam on a real adventure that makes his D&D campaigns pale in comparison.

Anyway, not sure when I'm going to get around to writing this, but these were fun to draw.

 I just always found it really weird that no matter what time of day it is, that guy's under that Berry tree claiming he's waiting for Pokémon that only appear at a different time of day. It's like he's desperately trying to cover up the fact that he has nowhere else to go.

 My 3-year-old niece has been wandering around the house saying "Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble", so I thought it would be great if we could get her to quote even more Shakespeare.

I also had to include her family's cat, because, always cats.