I’ll begin with my Slavic Tarot update, and then I’ll move onto my semi-good news about the progress on Circle 2: Hidden.
As far as my Slavic Tarot is concerned, I would like to thank all those who have bought a deck already, and the other 16 who currently have it saved in their shopping cart on Etsy (and who I am hoping will hit that “check out” button soon). That leaves just 39 decks left, so if you’ve been sitting on it, now is your chance! I also an extra special thanks to those wjo not only purchased a deck (and those amazing people who also bought the original art that went with it), but left me reviews on Etsy. Your feedback goes a long way toward making me look like a genuine operation instead of a crazy person who can’t stop making things. As much as the latter may be true (as I writer I must admit I often hear voices in my head...namely, my characters), I’d like to think the first is trie as well. If you haven’t bought a deck yet and are interested, you can find them at etsy.com/shop/acjade. Please pardon the shop name...it was a pseudonym from long ago, and my shop is too established now to change it.
And that brings me to my story updates. As I mentioned in my last post, my laptop crashed, and I had been lax in my back ups because I am an idiot. The end result was that I lost the entirety of the three and a half chapters I had written during the past month, all 115 pages of story and another 100 of dialogue and notes and outlines and detailed summary. In an effort to ensure that *never* happens again, I acquired a new laptop, an external hard drive with infinitely more storage than I probably will ever need, and have been diligently saving backups for my backups as I begin the lengthy process of rebuilding the narrative I lost.
I have done a little bit each day to that effect, but I am also approaching the end of the summer (and thus, the end of my free time) when the academic year kicks off and I am suddenly drowning in Russian literature. I will attempt to make as much recovery progress as I can until that point, but I still have about ten books left to read and lots of language study to brush up my skills remaining.
In the meantime, the laptop crash has given me reason to go through all my old notes and sketches for the story, and in one such venture I found the above picture, depicting our fearless heroes, Gren and Mari. I drew this back when I was first testing out my copic markers, and I can’t remember if I posted it to my instagram or not at the time it was drawn (if you don’t follow me already, and you are a fan of gratuitous photos of dogs, cats, chickens, art, and shameless selfies, you can find me @maimurray_is_writing).
That’s all I have for now. Stay tuned for more updates and excerpts as I continue rebuilding what was well on its way to being a beautiful manuscript!