It is, apparently, Blog Against Racism week. An excellent intiative to which I have absolutely nothing of interest to contribute – though it seems like a perfect time to share a couple of related links I came across this week.

First off, Justine Larbalestier on the white-washed cover of her book Liar. This has made it all over the Internet, and for danged good reason. This comment is also worth a glance.

Karnythia over at The Angry Black Woman wrote a long, insightful post on internalised racism. An important read, IMO.

The Carl Brandon Society Blog is trying to compose a list of short SF/F fiction by PoC authors as well as SF/F artists of colour.

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Life has been complete chaos as of late; an upcoming break from work should allow me to catch up on the various projects I have going on, but in the meantime, I’m trying to juggle three jobs, portrait commissions, various short stories and my novel Wielders, which I don’t seem to get to spend more than one day a week on at this rate.

On the brighter side of things, I have some lovely art to share! I recently commissioned C. Bernard to draw one of my characters, and she came up with the fabulous drawing on the right. It’s Emily Boyer, one of my main characters from Wielders. I’m head over heels in love with it.

I also adore Shawna Mills‘s interpretation of Merel van Wijchen from Always Read the Fae Print; how cool is this woman’s style, seriously?

Next up, some slightly older art of my own. To the left is a quick Photoshop sketch of Emily I did a while ago, directly referenced from a photo found on GettyImages.

As an amusing sidenote: I first came across this GettyImages model when I was writing the first draft, and loved how perfectly she fit my mental image of Emily. Not until months later did I come across more photos of her – this time wearing braces (like Emily used to) and holding a violin (which Emily still plays). Total coincidence, but I loved it!

And yes, I’m absolutely one of those writers who scours the entire Internet for models or actors that resemble her characters. It’s the perfect way to procrastinate.

Next, I’ve got two pictures of a character of KV Taylor‘s – Izzy Fenwick from The Audio File. Roughly halfway through the drawing on the left, it occurred to me that she looks an awful lot like me – something family and friends also commented on after I finished the drawing. This prompted thesketch on the right, where I consciously used myself as reference and adapted aspects as I went to look more like the character.

Normally, I don’t look this grumpy. It was fun posing!