Tag: books

Workaholic Est. 0422

Posted on by

Workaholic Est. 0422, making and creating!

I sort of dropped off the face of social media lately (how people manage to do ten million things and still have energy to tweet up a storm on Twitter is beyond me, and I will forever admire them for that ability!).

Here’s the scoop

I’ve been working on several exciting projects that I’m thrilled and pumped about! Believe me when I say that I’ve been working non-stop on these projects for the past few weeks!

Beneath the Red Lamp & Other Tales


The short sequel to The Year is Now (TYIN) will FINALLY see the light of day. I’m working on an ebook of short stories set in the empire before and after the events of TYIN.

Beneath the Red Lamp explores what becomes of Elly after the Battle of Pluto.

Details on when this will be released will be coming soon. I don’t like to give out dates like candy. I need to make sure that thing is polished before I let it join the dating scene 😉

*This is not the final cover, just a placeholder. 

An Actual Website

I’ve been building a website from scratch. I am PUMPED for this. I cannot wait to let you all see it!

It’s almost ready, but I plan to release it into the wild to coincide with Beneath the Red Lamp, so keep your eyes peeled. Oh, and don’t worry, The Command Deck will always be around because the blogger platform is easy to use for, well, blogging! It will be linked to the site.

Sisters

This project is my baby. I haven’t been this emotionally attached to a story for a long time. It’s set apart from the rest of my works because it does not take place in the empire. It takes place in another alternate reality, a much grimmer one than our own world and Elly’s.

*This is not the final cover, just a placeholder. 

“Sisters” as I’m calling it, is in its infancy. Yes, this will be a full fledged novel. I’m going to do something I’ve never done before and live tweet my progress on it. Follow #sisters422

With that being said, it is on the back burner right now (you have no idea how much it pains me to put it aside while I get Beneath the Red Lamp up and running! Copy-editing and formatting are the most tedious tasks ever, and I cannot have any distractions).

Weekly roundup: 2014 edition!

Posted on by
~A quick recap of things around Empire Earth over the past week. 2014.
Yes, folks, this is an annual “let’s recap last year” post!

Okay, so I had to do one of these of Elly and Major Pierson after that Elrond and Thranduil one. I just have a soft sport for making party glasses and sparkle gifs!

2014 in…

Personal Art Goals
If you are an artist, you will understand me when I say that there were certain things that bugged me about my drawings. I was determined to improve my characters’ eyes and facial expressions. Trying to draw realistic eyes on a cartoon face can turn into a massive case of FAIL. I felt that my characters had “dead eyes” a lot of the time, so I set out to fix that!

January’s beauty has a case of dead eyes, but you can see improvements as the months progressed!


My favorite drawing of 2014

Writing

Anyone who follows this blog knows the huge news of my debut novel, The Year is Now! I’ll keep this section brief. I had been working on that thing since 2010, so when I held that first copy in my hands, I was filled with a great sense of accomplishment and excitement.

Want an autogrpahed copy? Head on over to Contact Me! Want to check out the first chapter? Read it here: The Year is Now – Read the First Chapter!

2014 favorites
Things that came out in 2014 or things I read/watched/saw/experienced in 2014

Movie
I am horrible with keeping up with current movies. I saw two movies in theatres last year (just to give you an idea). Out of those two, my favorite was The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (technically it came out in 2013, but I saw it in 2014).

Book
Hands down, The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. Yes, it beats out George R.R. Martin’s hefty (but awesome) tomes. I devoured that book and was obsessed within the first few pages. Needless to say, I now own it!

Show
Attack on Titan. I discovered it on Netflix at the beginning of last year. If you like anime and don’t mind reading subtitles, go watch it! I liked it so much that I got myself a Survey Corps jacket and cloak.

Travel Destination
Washington DC. I still have one of the pictures I took of the White House as my wallpaper on my computer. I want to visit that place again. Hoping on a train and going to Union Station was by far the most awesome experience I had in 2014. You can read my post about it and see some pictures here: Star Spangled City.

What were your favorite movies, books, shows, and experiences of 2014?
 Post your favorites on The Command Deck’s facebook page!

Video of the Week
When I see a title like “Kim Jong Un is flying a plane,” I have to click on it. I can’t understand the announcer, but she is very excited about this.

Let us not neglect “Putin flies with rare cranes in an ultralight.” Sadly, there are no excited announcers or cheerful music for this one.

I scoured YouTube for fitting Barack Obama videos. This is what I found >.<  Mr. President, you have until 2016 to learn to fly a badass fighter jet and post it on YouTube!

Return to Tomorrow: May

Posted on by

I’ve been busy, but in the good sense of the word! Now…let me just rub a rabbit’s foot, throw some salt over my shoulder, cross my fingers, pinch-poke-you-owe-me-a-Coke, and stop a black cat from crossing my path, because every time I mention the word busy, the unwanted type of busy throws itself my way, and I seem to jinx myself even though I don’t believe in silly things like that…Or do I?

Here are some snapshots of this elusive, good sort of busy:

Books read:
Get ready….Start the drum roll, please!

5/3 – Yep, that’s right! I surpassed my goal. My New Years resolution did exactly what I wanted it to. I’ve made a goodreads account to help me stay this way. You can follow my profile here: Goodreads!

Other News:
I’ve made some improvements to the right panel and tweaked the links a little bit.

Return to Tomorrow: April

Posted on by

I spoke too soon in my last update!

At any rate, I was able to get one drawing in for April, Omega Police, as seen in my last post. So far, so good as far as New Year resolutions go! I’m glad I’ve been able to keep up so far.

Books read:
2/3 — I finally finished The Watchers out of Time by HP Lovecraft and August Derleth.

I give the book 3 stars out of 5.

The collection of stories was mostly Derleth’s work. He’s okay as a writer, but his stories were just too similar to each other. I only recommend this book if you are a hardcore Lovecraft fan dying for anything with a hint of Lovecraft; just don’t expect Lovecraft…

…Or if you just want something easy/light to read to pass time.

I don’t recommend reading this like a novel because of the similarity between stories. You’d probably get more enjoyment out of it if you read a story or two from it, read something else by another author, go back to this collection for a story or two, and so on.

Return to Tomorrow: February

Posted on by

I am glad February is finally over! To say that this month has been stressful, would be a severe understatement. Well, it’s onto month number three, March. Here’s to hoping that it turns out to be a great month!

So far, my New Years resolutions are holding up. A look at February’s projects:

Tensor, said the Tensor – posted on the 15th

“Life Tree”
9 in x 12 in || 1.5 hours || pencil

This was done for a friend at work. My cameras did not want to take pictures of this for some reason and kept running out of batteries. I kid thee not! I was lucky that this picture made it into my old camera before the batteries went out!

I’m happy to say that my coworker loved it! It always feels good to know that someone enjoys your art!

Books read in 2011: 1/3
I’m currently working my way through The Watchers Out of Time by H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (it’s a collection of short stories).