Alas, blogging is only a piece of what I do, and I believe in writing posts that have a bit of meat to them. I could throw you a bone every few days but since I seem constitutionally incapable of writing a “short” post, even a brief effort will eat up most of my workday. Today I’ll serve up a smorgasbord of news to nibble on.

(And yes, you correctly guessed that I haven’t had breakfast yet!)

BUFFALO CASTLE
Ken St Andre commented on the previous update, telling me I ought to tell you all how the auction turned out. All in due time!

The four slots I offered were taken, and in fact I will be doing six portraits in all. I’m already underway and having a blast with it.

TRAVELLER
I get asked for a lot of fantasy art, but most of January’s work was science fictional. For several months now, I’ve been working on Marc Miller’s new edition of Traveller and I did a dozen new pieces for him last month. They ranged from small spot illos of various robotic brains to a full page, full-color plate that Steve Crompton and I collaborated on. The picture below is the centerpiece of a poster advertising an insert-a-chip-in-your-brain full-immersion “experience” where, like Cinderella, you wrap up the night’s festivities with a head-spinning final dance with the Prince himself. Roll-check your SAN!

The inkwork is mine, and then Steve and I spent a few days knocking emails back and forth to develop color schemes and how to light the scene. Steve did the color work based on our discussions, and he came up with the lush textures of the woman’s dress, which were then echoed in other elements of the picture.

Steve said this may be one of the best colorizing jobs he’s ever done, and I am entirely pleased and proud to have his signature beside mine on this piece. Both of us are hoping more of our clients will be interested in this kind of collaborative work from us. It just blows me away to see what he can do with my simple line art. The man is an amazing talent.

ROBOTS
James Maliszewski also had me doing a bit of Traveller-related artwork, scheduled to appear as the chapter-opener in a book called Thousand Suns: Technology. The chapter is all about robots and playing them as characters. James says the book will probably come out in April or May.

I was really happy with how the picture came out, and James posted a few words about the picture in his Grognardia blog because he was pleased with it too.

The comments to his post left me bemused, though. George Takei? Droopy breasts? I succumbed to responding there (which, really, I ought to know better, but sometimes it’s hard to fight the black hole gravity well of OMG someone is wrong on the Internet). What I didn’t say there but will say here is “Oh? Do you really think all Asians look the same?”

More charitably, you could argue that Hollywood still offers us a very white landscape of faces in science fiction, so any Asian in a space setting is going to evoke a mental jump to George, but still…really, guys? Really?”

James’ art direction for the piece was clear: “a single human being, preferably a woman, shaking hands with an anthropomorphic robot… I don’t want him/her to look like a supermodel or an action hero … I also like the people in any art to be of varied and/or indeterminate ethnicities.”

And just to be perfectly clear, the other inset picture is the actual reference photo I used, from Thinkstock. Posing two figures shaking hands is more problematic than it seems at first blush, if you want them both to be fully depicted. Funny how the women are Asian but don’t look a thing like George Takei. Must be the sunglasses.

MORE NEW WORK
When I finish this post, I will load up an extended assortment of my recent work into the Newer Artworks page, and move some of the earlier pieces into the regular gallery.

And while the majority of my time is going into my assignments right now, I also have a sketch started that may grow into a painting I’ve been noodling about with for rather a long time. I rarely get to do work “just for myself” but I’m trying to give it my Google 20% time, which doesn’t get nearly 20% of my attention these days. I haven’t been writing much fiction since my laptop died — a conceptual problem that irritates the hell out of me, because that work shouldn’t be dependent on what machine I’m working on — but I am still trying to use the time (when I get it) for other things that sharpen the saw, that restore my creative spark, that ensure I never get bored doing what I do.

If the sketch grows into more than a glint in my eye and some chicken scratches on paper, I’ll tell you more about it!

Le Grog, an influential and amazingly extensive French-language “Roleplayer’s Guide to the Galaxy,” also repeated my offer in their news and announcements for the 24th of January, after Patrice alerted them about it. Since the art is going into a French edition of the game, it seemed only fitting!

(Seriously, if you can read French at all, the site is absolutely amazing. Aside from those pages offered with English translations — read their Mission statement — you can always use Google Translate to get the gist of things.)

SIGNING UP
If you recall, I offered to draw individuals into one of four specific illustrations, out of the twenty new Buffalo Castle pictures.
 

The original illustrations were nothing to write home about — that’s why I’m re-doing them, after all. A surprised statue in the medusa’s room, a sly leather-clad highwayman-bandit, a quavering coward, or big strong fighter are all options on the table. Make a choice — or let me choose! — and for $20 minimum bid, you can be immortalized in this edition. If you bid at least $45, you get the original art itself. I just need to hear from you by midnight, February 5th. Other stipulations are in the previous post.

Right off the bat, let me say “Thank You” to those who have already asked for one of the pictures.

All three of you.

*ahem*

I really do appreciate all the folks who said what a cool idea this was, but I honestly thought there would be a few more people asking for a spot.

Was my minimum asking price too high? Are the pictures too small? Does Buffalo Castle just not excite you? Do you think you’d not be able to compete against the dozens of other bidders? Well, if it’s the latter, let me say there is at least one position to be had for minimal cost!

Since there is still time before the Feb 5th deadline, consider making me an offer. Yes, I am trying to raise some extra funds right now, and this seemed like a winning proposition for everyone interested. All you have to do is drop me an email: liz -at- lizdanforth -dot- com.

UPDATING THE INFO
I checked with both Rick Loomis (author of Buffalo Castle) and Patrice Geille (translator and publisher), and both are perfectly willing to adjust the wording in the solitaire to reflect the possibility of having a female character in the pictures that presently show (and speak of) a male character.

Moreover, Valentine’s Day is coming. Might this not qualify as one of the geekiest presents evah for your boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse?

Several of us involved in the project are rather hoping to see the revised book brought out in English as well. That will be up to Flying Buffalo, though, but I’d really hope to see the new version made widely available (and from a legitimate publisher! Beware of knockoffs!).

I heard a rumor that there may even be some new or revised encounters in the solo. But you didn’t hear that from me.

SWEETENING THE POT
Something that showed up on Ken St Andre’s blog yesterday gave me another idea. He came across an old, old piece of mine, done back in 1977 when I was a precocious wee infant barely able to wield pen and pencil. He probably bought it at a convention art show back in the dawn of time. The piece is called the Peacock Fan, and it certainly counts as one of my earlier pieces of art out there.

It is inkwork with colored pencil. That’s something I’ve done since, now and again, but am out of the habit of. Photoshop colorizing is faster, easier (for those skilled in the practice) and perfectly print-friendly but there is no colored original art, just a printout. For many, that’s plenty. For some, that’s not “an original” but just another kind of print and definitely not one of a kind.

I’m going to expand on my offer here: if you bid at least $65, I will hand-color the original drawing for you OR, if you prefer a bigger or more polished image, I will color one of the previously printed sheets of the Sky Lord or Sky Noble images I did for Namaste/Storybricks. (I am exceptionally proud of those two pieces.) Even on a print, the hand-coloring makes each picture one of a kind.

Of course, if you simply want to order a Sky Lord or Sky Noble colored print all by itself, I’ll color you a print for $25 plus postage. I did one of these as a raffled give-away during GenCon — that’s the picture below, shot with my phone under less than optimal conditions, but it will give you can idea of what you can expect. I’ll include a copy of the Sky Lord below (in his B&W version) for you to consider as well.

 
It’s interesting to see the manifest similarities — and differences — between the art of 1977 and its echoes in the piece I did hardly a year ago.
 

Does the idea appeal more now? Let me know what you think.
 
 

Quite a while back, Patrice Geille commissioned me to do some fresh illustrations for his new French translation of T&T, and I’ve shown a few samples here on the blog. Steve Crompton is presently laying it out and what I’ve seen so far looks downright awesome. I can read French, a bit, but even if I couldn’t I would want a copy of this edition — I think it is just that cool.

In an email to me, Pat observed, perceptively, that the players will want adventures to play, so he’s worked on new translations there too. He started with Buffalo Castle, which has always been the “starter solo” for T&T. However, he gently suggested that not all the art was quite the quality people expect today. (He did this in the most polite terms imaginable).

And he is absolutely right. I did the original illustrations for Buffalo Castle back in 1979. The glowering orc, in my previous post, is one of the pictures from that solo. That fellow doesn’t look too bad, but some? *Shudder*. Was I really drawing with ballpoint pens? Some are cheesy, some are lame. Some are just… well, some seriously suck.
 

NEW COMMISSION
Both Pat and I want to bring all the pieces up to the quality of the better illos already there. He has commissioned me to redo about twenty illustrations to put into the new translation. (Whether the English-language edition gets revised hasn’t been discussed.)

Two of the illos below are among those on the chopping block. The guy fighting the octopus has been deemed “good enough” (barely).

BACK TO THAT HALF-NAKED BODIES QUESTION
As I went through the art in the solo, I was amused to see that the Buffalo Castle illustrations feature more half-naked men than half-naked women. That Medusa is the only female example in this book. While I can’t really defend the sexism of the flimsy clothing of the Medusa, at least the solo offers you the chance to “wake her up and talk to her” and not “sneak over and molest her.” (Is that what you were thinking? Whatever gave you that idea?)

I won’t even get into the whole “sex = death” morality either, a trope that is endlessly popular in Hollywood horror and many adventure movies. You only wanted to talk to her, right?

THIS IS THE GOOD PART
I know a lot of old-school T&T fans read this blog so…

…how would you like to appear in the new artwork for Buffalo Castle??

I have four pictures among those twenty that I’m willing to draw someone into. Some may appeal more than others. And I’m going to ask you to bid for the privilege because, really, it’s easier to just draw whatever is in my head but mainly because “freelancer” is a synonym for “mercenary”, and that’s what we do. It is also a consequence of the changing reality of today’s Internet world, where simply making and selling one’s work is no longer sufficient to make a comfortable living. We have to come up with interesting ways to offer different services, and I honestly hope you’ll think it’s cool, too!

The last time I did such a thing, for a Magic the Gathering card called “Freyalise Supplicant, the piece was bid up to $1500. That was back in Magic’s heyday, it was for a children’s hospital charity, and it was a full-blown painting — not just a small ink illustration. I intend to tell the story of that painting one of these days in a Pictures Have Stories entry. It is a rich tale with its share of drama, a grand little convention, and the passing of a dear friend. But that’s for another time.

HERE’S THE DEAL
Bid by emailing me directly: “liz–at–lizdanforth–dot–com”. If you simply want me to work your picture into one of the illustrations described below, bid at least $20. If you want the original ink drawing when I’m finished, say so — and bid at least $45.

I will take the highest bid for any given image that I receive before midnight (MST) on February 5th 2012, if it meets my criteria. One of those is that the picture is of you, or if it is not of you that the person in the picture affirms to me their consent to being depicted in this illustration and for this use. All pictures must be of adults over the legal age of consent in their country of residence. I reserve the right to decline to accept a bid or picture. The publisher has final say on the inclusion of any illustration. If you purchase the original artwork, you are getting only the physical item with no transfer or licence of copyright, and no publication rights.

If you get outbid before the deadline for a particular image, I will email you to say so, in case you want to increase your bid — bidding early will be helpful. If you win, you will need to send me one or more photographs to work from. If I don’t get your photos or scans by Monday, February 13th, you’re outta luck and I go to the next lowest bidder who will have to respond immediately. I have a March 1st deadline for all the art, including these, so I need time to work on them.

Bear in mind that you’re not getting a lot of picture here. These will be small pictures, maybe 20 square inches or so (4″ x 5″, depending on the piece). You do NOT have to pose like the original sketches. I’ll modify my sketch to give you the best showing I can while still illustrating the scene.

THESE ARE THE PICTURES TO CHOOSE FROM

Do you like this idea? Would you like me to do more of this kind of thing? Let me know in the comments, and happy bidding.

Then, Ken St Andre wrote in his blog about the cover last week himself, after he unearthed the original he’d bought many decades ago. The synchronicity of those two things leads me to talk about this in my post today.

Here’s the picture. Follow me over the jump for my thoughts on it.

ANCIENT HISTORY
First of all, one’s early works always make an artist wince. Cringe. Want to spork one’s eyes and bleach the brain. In many ways, this is like that for me.

Yes, I can look at it knowing it was the best I could do at the time but I’m glad that I’ve gotten better. Moreover, I can see elements that have stuck with me. It’s funny to see I was still using “e. danforth” for my signature, and not the simple “danforth” it evolved into. This was one of my first published paintings (the date looks like 1976), although I’d been selling them awhile at convention art shows.

For those of you who don’t know what Monsters! Monsters! is — and I expect most of you wouldn’t have any reason to — it was regular fantasy role-playing turned on its head. Rather than playing adventurers fighting their way into dungeons deep and dark, players took the role of the monsters who came out of those troll-holes for a little payback. Where else did the dungeons acquire such a store of gold, gems, and magic dornicks for the adventurers to loot the following weekend?! The rules were T&T’s basic rules for combat and magic — the races of the characters being played was what made it different.

Flying Buffalo still sells the original game. While you can find it for sale elsewhere (for less), no other publisher has the rights to this game. Should you want a copy, I encourage you to pick it up only from the publisher (Buffalo) who supports the creative efforts of the people who wrote and illustrated it. (‘Nuff said.)

Ken says he can’t remember why I painted this piece. Well, I remember. It wasn’t something I painted randomly that he decided to attach to the game. The cover and all the interior illustrations were commissioned by Steve Jackson (now of Steve Jackson Games) who was working for Howard Thompson’s Metagaming company. Ken says Monsters! Monsters! came out in 1977, so I’d bet we were working on it the previous year, given the date on the signature.

I’m also betting Ken paid me fairly well for the painting. He was gainfully employed whereas I was perhaps a minimum wage cashier at a Wendy’s knockoff-clone. I had been making and selling art regularly, and Steve Jackson had already had me illustrate the first edition of Melee, but it would be years before I could call myself a serious career-freelancer.

While I often let originals go cheaply to friends, I believe in the oft-repeated edict that people value what they pay for more than what they get for nothing. It is a lesson artists (and all creative people) must learn, to value what they do, to respect themselves enough, to expect others to pony up their own hard-earned wages to acquire a piece of what we do.

THE SCENE IN QUESTION
There’s a lot about this piece that amuses me in various ways, today. The main thrust of the painting is to illustrate the conflict between ordinary adventuring types (the man and the woman) versus the “monsters” typified by the orc on his beaked mount. Don’t ask me what that rider-beast is; I have no idea. I don’t think I had any critter in mind, in particular, when I painted it.

We were playing at least as much M!M! as regular T&T back then. We tended to roll up new monsters for each session, not building a stable of individual characters. One memorable occasion, our monster-characters razed the city of Khosht, burning down the metropolis most of our adventurers called home. Bear Peters, playing the GM of Khosht, rebuilt the place through the unofficial city magistrate and local head cheese, the wizard Bjorn the Great (who was also Bear’s main adventuring character). Bear is a superbly fun GM — if you ever have opportunity to play with him, do it! He often runs adventures at Flying Buffalo’s micro-mini T&T convention each summer (July 20-22 this year).

THAT GEM
The red gem in the picture was a nod toward the awesome magic dornick my main character had in the regular T&T world. We all played multiple characters, but inevitably a few were played more often, leveled up higher, and acquired more weird shit along the way. For me, that character was Random, a distant Shadow of Amber’s princeling (for reasons that should be obvious if you read my discussion of the City of Terrors cover).

He — eventually “she” because Steve McAllister couldn’t keep the character’s gender straight while me-a-female was sitting across the room, and in a paroxysm of GM-godhood changed the character’s gender one session — had all manner of amazing stuff, including the gem that became relatively iconic for her, floating along in midair behind her shoulder. The M!M! cover needed something beyond the fighters, and the gem fit the bill rather nicely as something for them all to be fighting over.

Those of you who read my tale posted in the Fiction department of this site, Imp Possible Situations, might recognize another iteration of that fabulous gem.

TECHNIQUES
When I say the painting makes me cringe, it isn’t false modesty. It’s because in many ways, this isn’t a painting but a colorized graphic design. I thought it was a painting because I dipped a brush in damp pigment to create the colors, but the resemblance ends there.

I recall the piece was painted in gouache on illustration board. Why that medium? I can’t rightly recall. I know it was a medium of choice for many old pulp cover painters. I liked being able to lift off flat color to produce highlights — that’s why the cobblestones look like they do. I used gouache for a lot of my earliest color work.

Mostly I see a complete lack of knowledge about color theory, shadow-and-depth, background/foreground, shape and value, and pretty much every other technical aspect aspiring painters would learn in Basic Art School 101. For better or worse, I am largely self-taught, and even now some of that remains elusive. My greatest strength, now as then, lies in composition and design.

Yet even there I remember having made a conscious decision that seemed right at the time, but isn’t. I see Frazetta’s influence in the triangular composition, and in the woman’s headress and costume (although I made damn sure to imply that she just was as dangerous an opponent as the man). The composition is nicely balanced, but too stable for the combat action it is supposed to be about. It’s much too static.

HALF-NEKKID PEEPLES!
Speaking of the woman and her costume — or lack of it — I have not forgotten my promise to talk about fantasy clothing and armor, sexiness, sexism, and gender issues back in September’s post about The Summoner artwork. Every time I tackle it, the topic gets all turny and twisty, and will probably take more than one post. I may just have to make it an on-going series, the way I have these “Pictures Have Stories” series.

For the moment, I draw your attention to the fact that my sense of gender balance about half-naked people simply means the guy is no better dressed than the woman. Did the monsters’ rampage get them up out of bed, and they threw on the nearest clothes before charging out to defend their neighborhood, weapons in hand? Maybe. And she’s wearing that headgear because… um… let me think…

See, this is why they pay me the big bucks to come up with stories and games.

*chuckle*

And that’s the story of this picture.

IT IS TRICKY, setting out to say certain things. The new year has been ushered in already for many folks, yet as I begin to write this, it is hardly noon on New Year’s Eve for me. Be assured that whenever you are and wherever you are, I hope that 2012 will prove a fine upstanding year with many good things for you and yours.

At the very least, I expect it is going to be an interesting year for many… with “interesting” being one of those dodgy words that means exactly what one secretly wants it to mean.

As I said in my last post, 2011 was a memorable year for me, with changes and challenges. I undertook a new approach to many things that I intend to pursue further this year. While I’m pleased overall, there is plenty of room for improvement.

But I couldn’t have done it without a lot of support from friends, associates, colleagues, and people whom I met in the course of the year, or have simply gotten to know a little better. So you’ll have to excuse me while I do two things here: (1) get briefly sappy and sentimental; and (b) risk hurting someone should I fail to remember them, someone really relevant. It is certainly not my intention to slight anyone, so I will simply do my best.

These names are really in no particular order, although roughly grouped by context. Librarian-trained or not, I don’t want to be alphabetizing simply to be politically correct. I just want to say thank you.

SHIELDMATES
Tara and Earl have been good friends for quite some time, and endlessly supportive and helpful this year despite life pressures of their own. Jen and Lisa have been wonderful to hang out with, although too rarely. I’m still looking forward to the day I meet my friend Els face to face, because our correspondence has been phenomenally engaging for many years now. All these folks deserve my deepest thanks for more than words can say.

My old friend Jennifer moved to Tucson at the start of the year, and I am glad to be able to see her more often than when she lived on the other end of the state. She has been a pillar of support through many of the ups and downs of dog-drama I’ve had in my life this year.

WISDOMKEEPERS
In Libraryland, Brandon takes on the mantle of games guru for Library Journal, and as I set down that burden, I am content that it is in good hands. I have to thank colleagues from LJ, particularly Raya, Heather, Dee, Michael, and Josh; and am particularly glad for some extended correspondence with Andy from OCLC after the Play Learn Innovate seminar.

Getting to show Ellen Forsyth around my corner of Arizona, when she came visiting from the land of Oz, was a wonderful day that netted her many pictures of cactus. I don’t know how I came to deserve the friendship of Ian M and Terry B, gamer-librarians that they are, but I’m glad we connected. I hope to have another opportunity to meet Phil Minchin, another gamer-librarian, when I’m not so exhausted as I was at GenCon.

WIZARDS
I’m less in touch with Monica Valentinelli than previously, because both of us are drilling down to concentrate on our respective working lives. She continues to inspire me and others.

My thanks to Christie G for giving me a solid reality check about my fiction. I intend to buckle down harder on it this year, and some of that renewed determination will be guided by her words.

Matt Forbeck has done much for me this year, directly and indirectly. His endless kindness is a Light in a field that sometimes has a few too many not-so-nice people who don’t deserve to share planetary space with the far greater number of seriously good folk.

As a fellow artist, Gilead has given me some interesting tools and ideas that I am starting to put to good use.

Gazimoff has been endlessly patient with me about upgrading the Oakheart site when I haven’t had time or funds to make changes I would like to make. Jeff and Ragnar have given me help time and again. Knick and Charles E have also contributed their help here, and Knick has entertained me with many more emails than I can keep up with.

Lisa Poisso was a surprise to discover perched in my Inbox, gracious about my novella-length answers to her interview questions, giving me 15 unexpected minutes of fame and the information that shifted me into using a standing desk. That continues to work out and I wonder, how did I ever manage otherwise!?

NOBLES
I have to thank the friends and compadres who have asked me to work on their projects over the last year. I’ve met a few of Namaste’s team in person, spoken with several more by Skype, and found each of them professionally and personally delightful and often quirky (in the best possible way): Rodolfo, Brian, Stéphane, Kelly, Matt, and also John and Kat. I’m glad to be getting to know you, and I hope to get to know others on the team. I’m looking forward to 2012 with considerable anticipation.

Marc Miller of Traveller fame has had me hard at work much of the year, and it’s a pleasure to be doing science fiction again. I always liked SF as much as fantasy, but have had far less opportunity to work in that genre over the years.

Rick Loomis has heard me rant and rave a few times and, thankfully, he is still supportive about work past present and future. I’ve been in touch with Ken St Andre and Steve Crompton more, seeing them and Rick at GenCon and pursuing several projects. Steve in particular continues to impress me with his skill and I’m really happy to be working with him as much as I have recently. Patrice G has gotten some projects rolling that I’m pleased and proud to participate in. In addition, he picked up one of my original artworks, and it’s always good to know one’s work is getting a good home.

Several people whom I knew little or not at all when the year began have purchased artwork or placed private commissions this year. I am profoundly grateful for the support given me by Arnie S, Iljoon, Kevin E, Kevin B (Quoghmyre, several times over!), as well as other Trollhallans Mark, Stan, David, Gianmatteo, Mahrundl, Misha… and if I duplicated or missed someone, ascribe it to befuddled confusion over names real or trollish.

TEAL DEER
This post risks the tl,dr of bookish acknowledgments or Academy Award speeches that go on too long. But I am sincerely grateful to these folks for all they have done, and to others whom I may have forgotten to acknowledge. I believe in saying Thank You when thanks are due. So even if this post is less about you, Dear Reader, than it is about me looking back on a really incredible year, I hope you will take it in the spirit it was intended.

Perhaps more to the point, read between the lines to interpolate what kind of year I’m hoping — intending — to make of this coming year. As Hugh McLeod drew it: “Life is Short. Make it Amazing.” I’m going to do my best.

I’m glad I did, and in retrospect I see it as one of the key steps on the path I’ve travelled this year. Year’s end is a time of rumination, looking back and then forward — thus the title of this post.

THE MADERA MANIFESTO
When things began, I wasn’t deliberately setting out to make big changes. I knew some changes were needed but life is always about change. I didn’t see it as anything more than that.

I’d been going through a stressful period, and a friend recommended I take a vacation. I checked into a little casita (think “studio apartment”) in southern Arizona’s Madera Canyon for four days and three nights.

Madera Canyon is out in the boonies, the canyon itself so narrow that I had no cell phone service, no Internet, no TV. I could do any damn thing I wanted except connect with the outside world. I hadn’t planned to be quite so isolated, but that’s how it worked out.

When not catching up on my sleep, I spent most of the time writing on my laptop (no problem having electricity) with a sidebar of sketching. The last evening, as my steak sputtered on the little Weber grill on the porch, I found myself musing about how I’d spent these few days doing exactly what I pleased, those things I loved to do most. Writing. Drawing. MAKING. I started putting my thoughts down on paper, and when I was done there were three pages about what made my heart soar — and what did not.

Eventually I gave the document a name — the Madera Manifesto. It really didn’t have any action steps but I had reached a clear understanding about what — not to sound pompous — gave my life meaning.

FINDING THE TRAIL
I understood what I wanted, but it took longer to learn how to start making things happen.

One of the best tools turned out to be Laura Vanderkam’s book 168 Hours, which I wrote about in It’s a Question of Time. Knowing how I had been spending my days, in detail, I could make realistic plans to change how I used my time so it reflected the principles I had identified in the Manifesto and on my 100 Things list, a related document suggested by Vanderkam’s book.

I continue to struggle with the fact that, despite the author’s assertion that “you have more time than you think,” this ongoing exercise has shown that I have much less time than I think. I’m not going to ignore or outsource feeding the dogs or taking showers, and I still work part time with the library. I see friends, I game (less than in the past), and I acquired concrete evidence that adequate sleep is as important to my creative productivity as oxygen.

Conversely, things I thought I could do quickly take twice as long as I expect. Start some laundry? Ten minutes, and that’s if the dogs don’t assume I really meant to play with them awhile first. A small drawing? I think I can do it in twenty minutes, except I look up and find an hour has passed. A quick email? There is no such thing in my world, apparently. I budget my time, but sometimes things just don’t stay bound to my expectations, and then something else has to compensate. A week has only 168 hours.

I do what I can with what time is left.

WALKING THE WALK
A year ago, despite the bravado of the Reboot post, I had no idea if I could really pull things off. Yet I can look back and see many changes I set out to make came to pass, or at least that I moved them forward.

Freelancing is front and center once again. I’ve been doing art and idea-slinging for Namaste’s Storybricks, and that’s pretty damn exciting. They’ve just announced that the skeletal version of the toolkit — the first beta, in other words — will go live in February.

I’ve done several rounds of art for Marc Miller’s new Traveller, and in the latest part of that project, I’ll again be collaborating with Steve Crompton. He’s the one responsible for the magnificent colorizing on some of my black-and-white inkwork, and we’re making a color plate for Marc that should be a blast.

Steve is right now putting together a really gorgeous edition of that French translation of T&T I’ve talked about before now, and I almost wish we were re-doing the English language edition as well.

He also talked me out of an old favorite piece of art for the anthology related to “The City of the Gods” project he’s been involved in. The picture will be illustrating a story about Circe written by M. Scott Verne and Wynn Mercere, the original authors of the novel.

The personal front has seen changes as well, downsizing inside and out. I’ve dropped 30 pounds since early summer, and made inroads into divesting myself of excess “stuff” that I’ve dragged from house to house over the last couple of decades. Some of that “downsizing” has been painful, losing both my oldest dogs in the course of about five weeks. The new youngster in the house is working out pretty well, keeping me and my other dog on our toes.

With guidance and advice from a friend, I have been re-organizing my office and living quarters so that “being a Maker” is that much easier. It doesn’t help to have matting and framing tools so buried and scattered that I spend as much time hunting for things I need to work with as I spend doing the work itself! And at the end of the month, I will wrap up my stint as the gaming guru for Library Journal after nearly three years. Not only have I accomplished much of what I originally hoped to do there, but I want to put that time to other purposes.

STUMBLING FORWARD
Certainly there’s lots I’ve aimed to do and have not. I had intended to blog here weekly; that certainly hasn’t worked out. There’s still no sales cart and the gallery needs attention. The standalone novel hasn’t moved past the still-thrashing-around stage, despite the hours I’ve put into it. My Google 20% for innovation is one of the first things that evaporates when I get time-stressed, but sometimes the paying work (or a good night’s sleep) just has to come first.

But I am in a different place this year than I was this time last year. I’m more driven but calmer overall, paradoxically. More dedicated to what I am doing, even if I’m doing fewer different things than previously. Graphic novels and sculpture works are still on the “I want to make time for this” but not at the expense of things that matter even more, like having a little time with the dogs or starting a new series of paintings. I fully intend to keep moving forward now.

I ask myself a lot of questions these days, questions I never used to think about. “What is the future you want to create?” and “If you could make just one change today (this week, this year) — what would it be?” Sometimes it’s that growing-into-a-cliché “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” Like the Madera Manifesto and the 100 Things, my answers serve to keep me going in the right direction.

At the end of the day, though, the number one question I ask is “What did you make today?” Because that’s what Makers do.

The marvelous Patricia Briggs was Guest of Honor, and I met her when she introduced herself to me in the art show. She spoke enthusiastically about how much she enjoyed reading (as well as using and, I think, abusing!) the old Grimtooth Traps books from Flying Buffalo (which are being re-released even now). Another gamer-author, FTW!

Her husband remarked on how much he liked one of my Magic: the Gathering originals. In the end, they took the painting home with them, which pleased and honored me considerably. Thank you, Pat and Mike — what a pleasure to have met you!

ARTISTS AT WORK
For reasons I’ve never entirely understood, I typically spend sf/f conventions talking with writerly folks and friends more than my fellow artists. This convention was the exception, and I spent a lot of time with old friends from Phoenix: artists Gilead and Larry Vela.

Larry was helping run the art show, and has always been incredibly supportive of me and my work. He was interested in how I was handling my freelance time management (which I first talked about a year ago in It’s A Question of Time). I was happy to share what I’d learned about myself and my work, and the changes I’d made over the last year and a half.

But it was Gilead who really knocked me off my feet. At the risk of telling a story that is his to tell, I’d like to share what he said.

I’ve known Gilead over two decades, and while I’ve always respected his vigor and determination, his ideas and willingness to give of himself to strengthen the artistic community, much of his art left me a a bit unmoved. The inks were often overworked, the paintings lacked a certain luster and liveliness. He was always striving to improve, and I could see talent there, but not the execution.

After he listened to me talking about some of the insights I’d had recently, he told me of his own epiphany. He had spent years working a day-job painting holiday windows on storefronts and house murals, all the while seeking to improve his “real art” — fantasy drawings and paintings for publication in books and games. The sign painter was just the workman, not an artist, and was firmly shut out of the studio.

The shopfront work kept him busy, but there was a lack of outside enthusiasm in what he most cared about. He did thought-exercises and goals work, including periodically answering the question “What is it you MOST want to do?” Usually the answer was “fantasy art for publication.” One day, in a hurry, he simply said “fantasy art.”

That’s not the same answer. Not by a long shot. And he knew it.

FINDING ONE’S PASSION
He started making fantastical art without consideration whether it had narrative (which most illustrations do), a veritable explosion of work. And he invited the sign painter into the studio — the guy who had buttloads of experience, was truly “the expert” whom he’d kept locked out for who knows how long. The sign painter did everything “wrong” by most artistic rules — pure colors, black outlines, and more — but it worked. See for yourself on Gilead’s website. He was invited to show in formal art galleries in trendy Scottsdale, and swiftly got a one-man show. The pieces sold hand over fist.

The change is remarkable. When I first walked into TusCon’s art show, I saw some pieces and thought “gee those are different, pretty nice stuff — I wonder who did them?” I had no idea they were Gilead’s. I don’t like every piece, and I still see traces of the old artist who was trying too hard, but I like many of the pieces. There is a lightness, a freedom, and the vigor of his personality shines in the artwork now.

WHAT IS IT YOU MOST WANT TO DO?
Gilead’s path is not mine, I think. I do like narrative in my artwork — perhaps it’s related to why I like to write as well as draw. But this question (and others) intrigue me.

Identifying goals is something I wrestle with — I do things that interest me, and wind up following my nose as much as planning my journeys. It has made for an interesting life (in all definitions of “interesting”). I’m not unhappy with the results of trusting my instincts, but sometimes I get tangled up making decisions that put my heart and my head at odds. Knowing what outcome I want makes troublesome decisions easier.

I call myself a Maker, and it’s the most rewarding part of being me: making things that no one else can make quite the way I do, whether art or telling stories or a game scenario or anything else I’ve ever had the pleasure to create. That’s the obvious answer to “What do you most want to do?”

However, I’m curious what the not-so-obvious answer(s) to this question might be. If I find out, I’ll let you know.

ART DONE JUST BECAUSE
I rarely do art that isn’t done to assignment. I usually have enough on my plate that free time to do “whatever” goes into things like writing — the Google 20% I talked about in A Fifth of My Time has pretty much all been fiction writing, even if a lot of it keeps veering off into fanfic instead of standalone work.

Now and then I do art that isn’t “for” anything, though. One of the pieces I hung at TusCon was an experimental canvas print of a piece I call “Cloaked in Dusk and Twilight.” I did the painting, in part, to practice some of the skills David Cherry taught me when I visited him years ago. I hadn’t had many painting assignments, so I gave myself an assignment to see what I could accomplish on my own. It sat around, half-finished, until I did the last bits in 2004. The original sold at the first convention I hung it, which was at TusCon that same year.

I always meant to make some prints of it, but hadn’t gotten around to it. A few weeks before TusCon, Netted by the Webbys (who come up with some great stuff) had told me about a company called CanvasPop. There was a special offer, and I thought it might be interesting to give this a try for the con. I was busy though, and lacked a proper Round Tuit. Yet from the info on the CanvasPop website, it seemed I could get a print made in time, and for a reasonable price.

So I figured to test the waters. On Thursday, a week before the con, I loaded up the info and got nearly to the end of the order process when I realized there was no way I could get it in time and keep the price reasonable. I closed my order, incomplete, and figured I’d go back another time.

Imagine my astonishment when I got an email next morning asking “Liz, is there anything I can do to help?” It was from Chris Rayburn, the sales manager of CanvasPop.

BEST PRACTICES
Businesses talk about “best practices” and “engagement” but you could have knocked me over with a feather when I read that email. I sent back a reply, explaining why I had cancelled my order. My own dawdling was at fault, not any problem with what they were offering or expecting. The uber-fast shipping would add to my costs enough that I didn’t think I could expect to recoup the cost, and more to the point, it would be touch-and-go whether I’d get it in time to hang at the show early on Friday.

Chris phoned me to say they’d make it happen, and cover the cost of shipping as well. I received the print Thursday and hung it Friday with the rest of my work.

Only rarely have I ever had such individual attention and service, or such an astounding level of personal interest from a company that, to my knowledge, had no reason to know me from Adam or expect me to become a big client down the line.

BUSINESS
I do a lot of reading, observing, and thinking about “business” these days. Some of it is as part of the library’s Emerging Tech committee, because libraries must market themselves and learn from regular business practices as never before. Some of it is related to questions of motivation and leadership, related to my professional interest in games and game design, and how these things intersect with the real world.

Some is part of rebooting my freelancing life, which is really just entrepreneurship on the hoof — and I’m approaching it more thoughtfully than in the previous three decades I spent doing things by hit or miss.

There was nothing hit or miss about Chris’s efforts on behalf of CanvasPop, and he won my respect — and my business. In return, I’m writing about them here, just as I mentioned them on Twitter and Facebook while this was going on. Word of mouth counts for more than conventional advertising, according to the business sources I read, and I want to say this company knows how to treat people right. I acknowledge Chris and his compatriots for being good and doing good, and I hope that translates to the company doing well over time.

PRINTING NOOB
Now, the fact is that the canvas print of “Dusk and Twilight” didn’t sell at TusCon. As Larry Vela (whom I mentioned above) said, “The colors are a lot more vivid than you usually use.”

That was an understatement. The print was wildly oversaturated, too neon-bright and vivid. This was not CanvasPop’s fault — it was my noobishness about the difference between print media (CMYK) and screen colors (RGB). I got a proof (on my computer of course) so the RGB colors looked fine, and I approved it happily. But the final CMYK print colors were ‘way off.

I know this stuff, but I didn’t think about it until I got a short run of photomedia prints from my favorite printshop guy down the street, also part of my planning for TusCon. His first efforts to make prints for me were also insanely oversaturated, and he had to work a lot of magic to make the prints match the colors of the original painting. Those look pretty good, I have to say.

MY CLEVER PLAN
So here’s the deal. I was very grateful that Pat and Mike Briggs bought my MtG original, but that’s the only thing that did sell — and I had hoped to sell a bit more than that. Holidays are coming — for me and for you. Here’s your chance for a nice piece of art that doesn’t appear in any publication — art done just because I wanted to make it.

Buy my prints. Please. The canvas prints are 9″x16″, same size as the original painting. I have 20 photomedia prints on slick cover-weight paper — image 6″x10″, signed and numbered, starting at 1/20.

I am going to offer a first-come, first-served option to get a short printrun of canvas prints, newly-made from CanvasPop, to be signed and numbered. I’ll be working with Chris and his design staff to get the colors looking like they should.

You can have one of the canvas prints for… Name Your Price, as long as it is at least $100 to cover my basic costs (plus s/h to your location). You decide exactly how much it is worth to you. Think of it as supporting your friendly local artist and an awfully nice company alike. I will take orders for up to 20 of these. (Order by November 27th and you should receive them in time for Christmas if that’s your celebration!) This name-your-price offer is only good through December 31st, 2011. After that, as I fill out the edition of 20, the price will be higher.

You can order one of the 20 photomedia prints for $25 each, plus s/h. I have these in hand already, so if you order by December 8th, I should be able to get them to you promptly.

HOW DO I SIGN UP?
I’ve been meaning to get a sales cart installed on this site for awhile, but things remain in flux around here. Therefore, we’ll do this old-school. Email me at etdanforth-at-gmail-dot-com. Be specific about whether you want a canvas print or a photoprint. I will assign prints in the order I receive your requests. I will take PayPal payments made to that same email address. I will make an addendum here if and when either of these sell out.

AND A PERK!
I’ll send something special with every order I get by the end of the year. If you pay more for the canvas print than my minimum, you might get a Magic: the Gathering whiteback artist proof card (available only from the artist) … maybe with a sketch on it. Or a deck of cards with my picture in the mix. Depending on your enthusiasm, I’ll scale up the pot-sweetener further — you never know what I’ll decide on, but I hope it’ll be something you’ll enjoy getting as a lagniappe!

Most of all, you will get my sincerest thanks. With luck, this will help everyone end the year on an up-note. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

*For the record, the town is Tucson. The convention is TusCon, for “Tucson Convention.” So yes, we know the difference.

A wonderful fellow librarian, whom you can follow on Twitter as @Miriella, snapped a photo of me the last day of the TechSource Symposium a couple years ago. She liked my t-shirt, being also a fellow WoW-geek. The shirt is something I often wear on any long return flight because… well, I really wish it was that easy to get home!

Miriella’s pic was a good one but the Library Journal art director thought this would be a good opportunity to have something that wasn’t a photo. And while I’m not too terribly vain (I don’t think), it gave me a nice opportunity to improve on a few lines, shall we say.

I also want to go back to that hairstyle. It looks better than I remember.

NAMASTE SKETCHES
The second pic is a montage of a few of the sketches I’ve done for Namaste’s Storybricks. I’ve been hitting all over the map, ulta-realistic to ultra-quick-sketchy. Matt is the fellow who is tasked to eventually make real people, visual assets, of the people I’ve been knocking out. He has been trying to get me to loosen up, to create silhouettes identifiable at a glance, and it’s very different from what I have done in the past. Fun, but very different. We’ve gone back and forth, and (in theory) when some basic forms begin to strike his fancy, we’ll work on developing them into something more.

I got a kick out of doing the lanky guy in the upper left of the Newer Artworks page. I was out in the woods with my sketchbook and saw the most curious-looking maple tree just throwing on its crimson headdress for autumn. I decided to see if I could make a character out of that tree — this guy is the result.

I also was amused to think “if I were going to draw a stereotypical nerd, what would be body type look like?” … male and female alike. That’s the two stick-limbed characters, here on the left.

This is just a fraction of the bodies I came up with. Most look like the super-quick ink sketches, exceedingly unfinished, exceedingly gestural. Not quite sure if this is going to get us anywhere, but Matt seems to think it might. It’s all new to me.

TRAVELLER ART
Final set of new pics on that page are a few of the graphics I did for Marc Miller and his Traveller update. There were a number of items, and an array of “manipulators” that various interstellar species might use as we use hands.

Arguably, the page has two “self-portraits” since that hand is, yes, mine. Easiest model for me to hire, cheap at twice the price, and one who never argues with me about posing.

WHATCHA BEEN MAKIN’?
I’ve been doing some more artwork for Marc Miller’s current Traveller project. All simple graphics lately but, as he told me, he didn’t want clip art and he did want a consistent style. I was really pleased when he said “I like what happens when you touch pen to paper.”

I’ve just started some new character concept work for Namasté and the Storybricks project. I got off on the wrong foot, trying to come up with the single basic body type from which others might be tweaked, whether for PCs or for NPCs. Instead, I’m now trying to make a number of bodies with distinctly different personalities, recognizably individual bodytypes even if only glimpsed momentarily or at a distance… yet (for now) all human. It’s an interesting challenge, favoring my caricaturist skills over my more realistic styles.

I had a nice meeting with Rick Loomis, head of Flying Buffalo Inc, and we talked about many topics and several projects. Over the next year, I’ll slowly be doing some art for a couple of dinosauroid Lost Worlds combat books, starting with Stegosaurus and then a T. Rex.

I also talked with Ken St Andre and S.S. Crompton about Ken’s T&T companion book Trollworld, and pulled out several paintings that had never found a real home elsewhere. Steve’s considerable skill with Photoshop stitches together two of those paintings to give Trollworld a new Danforth cover at a price they could afford and a timeframe I could afford.

I have a couple of commissions on the back burner, just in case I run out of things to work on.

ON THE HOME FRONT
I had to send one of my old dogs to the Rainbow Bridge a month ago, and it hit me pretty hard. I have a new young boy, just 8 months old, to keep everyone company. The new boy is one from Jennifer Roberson’s Cheysuli bloodllines, and we’re co-owning because she feels he’s too nice not to put in the show ring. (I love my dogs but I’m not a show person.) However, the pup and I, we’re having… um, some training issues. He’s an absolute sweetheart, one of the most affectionate-but-self-sufficient dogs of the many I’ve had, and eager to please — so I have little worry about getting the issues dealt with. Eventually.

Sadly, the Google 20% that I wrote about back in July, and writing in general, have evaporated under recent time demands. I’m fighting to get back to it — it’s important, and I know it — and I started a new story earlier this week. The would-be novel mocks me. So do many other possible projects I’d put under the G20 umbrella.

WHATCHA PLAYIN’?
My gaming has also taken a massive hit, and I’m playing about 1/3 as much time as in the past. WoW is hit or miss… sometimes I still really enjoy it; other times I don’t. I refuse to play anything if I’m not having a good time (assuming I’m not playing for work reasons, in which case I judge the time spent by entirely different standards.)

I am not impressed with the WoW news coming out of Blizzcon. The whole Panda-people thing always struck me as WTF since I never played Warcraft II, and the idea of WoW-as-Pokemon “gotta catch ‘em all” with our vanity pets doesn’t sound like my kind of game at all. No doubt the Asian market will love it, and those who played Warcraft II and the Pokemon games but this is the first time I’ve been completely unmoved by news of a fresh expansion.

In my limited playtime, though, I managed to finish Dragon Age 2 for the second time, winding up with my warrior Hawke as viscount of Kirkwall. I started a new mage in DA:O in hopes of actually finishing the game, finally. And I started a femShep in Mass Effect 2. People were right about her being a more interesting character for being better voice-acted.

I’m watching the approach of Skyrim, Guild Wars 2, and Diablo III with interest but no enormous enthusiasm. Even SWTOR, though I know I’ll never play it.

WHATCHA READIN’?
I’ve come across several particularly interesting books lately: A First-Rate Madness, (about leadership and mental illness), Sex at Dawn (on the evidence for the evolutionary grounds of our sexual behavior) and Why We Get Fat which sounds like a diet book but is actually a hard-science journalist’s look at how food recommendations and healthy eating have been presented over the last 200 years… and how just a few voices speaking loudly may have sent us all completely off-track biochemically, starting in the middle of the last century. All three of these books have some unconventional and arguably controversial themes. I’m finding them all fascinating and, frankly, compelling in their arguments.

My TBR and am-reading pile is much deeper than those, including a re-read of Daniel Pink’s Drive, two volumes of Icelandic sagas, a Dortmunder mystery, a collection of “scary stories” from around the world [I want to know what's "scary" according to other cultures] and The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village which looks really interesting although I haven’t touched it yet. I’ve been listening to Charles de Lint’s The Onion Girl when I’m working at the art table. And yeah, more.

AND HERE ON OAKHEART
I’ve been planning some server shifting and the consequent revisions of the website. At the beginning of September(!) I mentioned that Gaz of Mana Obscura offered to do some nice tweaks to the site, and I’m still hoping that will work out. But when I prepared to get him going, I ran into other problems that have to be dealt with first. Lack of time, lack of money have kept me from doing it just yet, but it’s still one of those things hitting my radar every few days. Very distracting.

Last thing I’ll mention is about writing here. One of my “blogposts to do” has been a piece on Sexism, Hawtness, and the Art of the RPG. As I said among the comments to my blog entry about The Summoner artwork, replying to Ed Heil, I’ve been thinking about and reading a whole lot about the general subject. It seems to be on everyone’s mind right now, either a watershed moment or merely the current zeitgeist. There is the Tumblr about women in reasonable armor (which I love), and a lengthy rant I came across decrying the non-stop use of hypersexualized boobies as a purported sales device at GenCon.

I’m female. I’m feminist (by my definition; perhaps not by yours, since the word gets used in wildly diverse, sometimes incompatible ways these days). For approaching 40 years now, I’ve drawn sexy women and sexy men.

I make a distinction between sexy and sexualized/sexist, which seems obvious to me and not so obvious to some. I can clearly see there are many points of view spread over what I consider a bell curve that is only black or white at the extremes. I’m troubled, trying to find a place to stand in the context of this complex discussion. From all my notes and collections of links, I would be unable to talk about this in a single post — not least of which because I have a certain cognitive dissonance about the whole thing. And since I’m doing character visuals for Namasté, as I mentioned above, this is highly relevant stuff.

Question is, do you really want to read all those musings? Putting it in readable form would be very time-consuming. Would you rather see me invest that time in making new art, guided by my thinking on the subject (which has always been true) and let the fur bikinis fall where they may?

THE BROADER QUESTION
No pun intended.

I can tell you people are reading my words here, with decent numbers of people coming to the site whenever I post something new. You’re coming from all the English-speaking countries and from Germany and Spain and Japan and Scandinavia and elsewhere. (Greetings to you all!) You read the blog. You look at the commissions page. You bounce around other pages too.

What most of you do not do is comment. So I’m going to pose a direct question: what is it you’d like to hear more about from me? I started to write suggestions of categories of things but I’m going to leave this open-ended — otherwise, the answer I’d get is “yeah, all that!” which is not helpful thankyouverymuch. Look through the posts I’ve made over the last year… there’s a little of everything there. Then tell me which ones you enjoyed most. Which ones have something you’d like addressed again, in form if not in content. Tell me what I haven’t done that you wish I’d write about.

This is your chance for Q/A if nothing else, so hit me with your best shot! Meanwhile, I’m headed back to the art table. Right now, that’s my primary job.

If it’s true that, as I said, some pictures “ask you to delve into them,” then this is one of those. Still, you must prod your imagination for this one.

Today’s piece — I call it “Into the Tunnels” — offers few of the hooks present in “The Summoner.” Here, the mystery is just an opening, a portal, a moongate. The characters are poised, weapons drawn and ready, and the fairy is pointing at… something.

But exactly what’s beyond? That’s for you to decide.

INTO THE TUNNELS
This artwork, available now on eBay as promised, does not have the storied history of some other works I’ve offered. It was published on the cover of the first boxed set, the hard-to-find black and gold box. As published, the delvers DO have somewhere to look forward to exploring — they are looking into a stalactite-laden cavern. Lying out there in the open, unattended, is a glowy mound of treasure. Not a monster in sight but … surely they know it won’t be that easy.

That cavern was drawn as a separate piece of artwork, then fitted into the opening. I was so pleased with the main drawing of the delvers, I was scared to death to “ruin” it trying to make an image within. In 1979, which (as near as I can tell) is when this piece was done, I had a lot of confidence in my ability but it wasn’t at the point where I could be sure I could pull off everything I could imagine.

This poster hung on my wall for years

My work has always been very graphical, very designy — a reflection of the Art Nouveau-style of book illustration I learned to ink from. Aubrey Beardsley, Alphonse Mucha were effectively my mentors. Complex, multi-dimensional images posed a challenge for me.

In this case, I admit it — I blinked. By doing the other piece separately, if it didn’t work, I hadn’t ruined this original. I have to say that more complex scene never really did a lot for me. The cavern wasn’t “right” for the rest of the picture. “Into the Tunnels” might lack a certain something, the expectation that something more should be going on inside that gate, but I still like it just the way it is.

BLACK AND GOLD
The box the art went on was widely lauded as having real visual impact. Slick, shiny black paper with gold ink. In the days when RPG book covers were a riot of often garish color — the beautiful work of Parkinson, Elmore, and others was just beginning to be seen — the black and gold of the T&T box was very different from the rest of what was on the shelves. That was the point: simple, sharp, refined, and elegant. Classy.

It was also a one-color print job that the company could afford better than full four-color reproduction! WIN! As I recall, it was Ugly John Carver who came up with the idea, but we were all inordinately pleased with ourselves — and evidently the fans liked the box as well.

So if “The Summoner” original isn’t a piece to suit you (it is still available to be bid upon as I write this), perhaps you would like “Into the Tunnels” instead. It comes from the same time period, and if the stories that it comes with aren’t as elaborate, perhaps the moongate opens the doorway for your own stories to be told about where these three adventurers might be going.

After all, T&T always was about the stories you could make.