Tearna’s Journal
It’s hard to believe that it’s that time once again. These weeks just keep flying by, and I’ve given up hope that I’ll ever feel caught up with anything, but onwards I press! As evident by both the title of this blogpost and the posts on social media, Tearna’s Journal is finally in the spotlight! When I started digital painting, one of the first pieces I did was of the Karasi desert, and while that art piece wasn’t the best by any means, it did spark an idea. In order to get more content on the website and expand my coverage of the Krysheek homeworld, why not make a new short story through the eyes of a new character… well, at least semi-new. From there, the idea for a dossier-style short story popped into my head, and, after all that time, here we finally are, so let’s dive in to Tearna’s Journal and what in the world this means going forward!
A Truly Short Story
One thing that’s been weighing on my mind of late has been word count. I’m aware that my books are large, and my short stories aren’t short. It’s one of those things that I sorta can work around, but not really. Something I really wanted to do was to prove to myself, and prospective agents, that I do have the ability to be small when I want to be. When I came up with the idea for Tearna’s journal, I knew that I wanted to make this a truly short story, and that’s where the idea of a dossier entry came into play. In past stories, I finished them typically somewhere north of 10000 words, but with these smaller entries, Tearna’s first entry clocks in at under 5000! That’s quite a drop, and I was quite pleased with myself. It’s a very quick read, but also a very interesting read because so much ground is covered! Literally! There were a lot of opportunities with this, but instead of getting mired in details and musings, let’s jump to the actual story for a little bit!
Tearna
Starstruck explorer extraordinaire! That is the easiest way to describe Tearna, one of the most famous and renowned explorer’s in all of Krysheek history. While her presence is certainly new in the Sapphire Universe, she’s not completely foreign. During Sapphiria’s younger years, she spent many, many hours reading explorer notes and journals about locations all around the world, and one of the one’s she constantly returned to was in fact Tearna’s notes! In a way, Tearna did have a massive, indirect impact on the story, but there is no universe in which these two characters will ever interact, and that’s not because I don’t want them to. Quite simply, Tearna lived almost 800 years in the past!
Tearna was born near Orden, the Krysheek capital city, and had a rather uneventful upbringing, but rather unique compared to a more modern upbringing. When she was young, the world was still recovering from the Crisis that nearly shattered it. Just 200 years prior to her birth, the Clockwork Crisis had kicked off in a full, a large scale war that saw the invasion of a mechanical army focused on dominating the entire planet. Almost seventy percent of Krysheek society was wiped out, and their species was very nearly rendered extinct. While they managed to survive, the lingering damage was catastrophic. Cultures were wiped out, cities erased, and thousands of years worth of knowledge were completely burnt away. Their people were effectively sent back to the dark ages, forced to rebuild their society from the ground up all the while recovering from the trauma of such a horrific event, and that’s where Tearna comes into play!
As she grew up, she ended up going to the academy in Orden and became a widely successful scholar. She specialized in flora and fauna of all varieties, and made it her mission to research as much as she could about the natural world. While such efforts might have seemed pointless given everything else still happening around the world, the emperor at the time saw merit in it. As their world slowly began to heal, he realized how much had truly been lost. They had very little in terms of records of what their world actually looked like, and even what was on it. While recovering such knowledge had been a low priority before, all of that was beginning to change as towns were rebuilt and society began to recover. In order to regain what was lost, a special expedition group was formed to rediscover the entirety of their planet, and Tearna was quickly recruited for it! With a spring in her step, she joins the rest of the expedition and heads off to brighten the darkness clouding their world, and their first stop on their massive adventure is none other than the Karasi desert!
The Karasi
About a day or two ride north from the Krysheek capital, the Karasi desert is an indomitable landscape. Across their entire planet, it reigns as the only desert, and it is an incredibly harsh environment. Nearly the entirety of it is covered in dunes, and water is borderline non-existent. While it is a brutal environment, the Krysheek owe it their lives as it was the clockwork advance through the desert that was its ultimate undoing. With the war over, the Karasi is little more than a barren wasteland, but there is beauty to find amongst the golden sands! Between the merchant convoys, cities built around collecting water, and some of the unique methods of travel, the Karasi has many wondrous sights to offer, especially for any fledgling explorer! Given its proximity to Orden, it made sense for Tearna’s expedition to start in the desert, and while many weren’t all too happy to venture to such a hot environment, Tearna was more than enthused to shed some light on one of the most brutal places in the world!
Dossier Entries
Given the nature of Tearna’s expedition, it made sense for her to record all of her notes in her journal, a journal that will ultimately serve as a crucible of knowledge for the rest of her people. Each story that she tells will be in at least a partial dossier format and will go into the flora, fauna, and any interesting landmarks that each area has to offer. There will not be an overarching Crisis that she needs to deal with or any quest for some world saving cure. All these entries will be are fun adventures meant to shine light on different parts of the amazing planet that Sapphiria and her people call home!
For now, the Karasi is the only entry in this journal, but, as time goes on, I hope to create more entries that will all get their own banner in the journal. For those of you inclined to view the world map, you can probably guess where she might go next, but let me give an extra hint and say that I hope you don’t mind… muck.
Currently, I have no plan for a scheduled release of these dossier entries. I will write them as I am able, but I would like to get on a more regular release cadence for them, especially since I can fully write and edit one in a single day. Stay tuned to social media for updates! Speaking of which…
House Keeping
With Tearna’s new journal out of the way, let’s quickly touch on some housekeeping! I’m planning on doing an overhaul on the landing page of the website soon, so keep an eye out for that, but, most importantly, I’m planning on expanding my social media presence. I already have twitch and twitter, but… twitter is kinda going downhill. Getting promoted on it as a small account is truly impossible, and most of the sight has become not quite so reputable. While it is unfortunate, adapting is key to survival, and adapt I shall! I plan on expanding to bluesky, mastodon, and possibly deviant art as well over the coming weeks to help expand my outreach, so if you happen to have any of those social applications, feel free to toss a follow to your flying fennec! Beyond that, we’ll see, but I definitely have eyes on a couple of other potential social sights to help grow.
Art Stuff
I’m sure it’s obvious, but I made a few new art pieces that I wanted to talk about real quick because I’m proud of them! First of all, we have Tearna’s journal itself. This piece took me a couple of nights to make, but I’m very happy with how it turned out. I think I captured that leather texture nicely, and the only complaint I have are the edges which are a little too… thick maybe? Something is off, but, overall, I do genuinely think it looks quite nice.
Also obvious are the bookmarks representing the different journal entries. I thought the idea of having most of it look like a normal page but then fray apart into a top down image of the terrain was a unique idea and helps convey the area she’s exploring. Obviously a desert is a little difficult to make interesting, but we have quite a few unique possibilities coming down the line. Drawing a marsh offers a few interesting options, and even an ocean has something fun I can do.
On the side, I’m going to start working on Atom’s piece so he can have his face on the site, even if it’s not as professional looking as the art I had commissioned of Sapphiria or the piece I did for Vargoth. Birds are… tough for me to envision, but I’m working through it and hope that I truly capture his magnificence in all its glory. After Atom… I’m not really sure what will be next, but… a certain villain keeps catching my eye. We’ll see how I feel later on!
Real World
For those tracking it, I’m still fighting the battle to find an agent. I’m finding it to be… a rather soul-crushing process, but I’m working on trying to come up with a gameplan. So far, I’m starting to think that I might need to explore new options, such as crunching the book down even more (EEK) or at least re-evaluate the opening chapters. I will continue to endeavor to get it published, but, in the meantime, I am nearly done editing the second book down. It’s still WAY too large, but I want to get onto the third book and work on crunching it at least a little bit, so that is what I shall do!
Conclusion
There is more I could chatter about, genuinely, but I think that’s enough for one week! We have a new short story, new art, and multiple paths forward that I’m looking forward to exploring for the book (see what I did there?) Next week will probably be a little quiet, but the long weekend could surprise me. That being said, Age of Mythology just dropped, and WoW is still fresh, so we’ll see if I can actually peal myself away! For now, that’s all I have. Enjoy Tearna’s journal, and look forward to the next entry whenever I get the chance to drop it! As always… CHEERS!
The Flying Fennec