Greetings and Salutations

While I had planned on starting this blog with a post on some of the recent artwork updates I've been producing for the main site I have found that a different item of interest has taken hold of my concentration and imagination like a shiny bauble to a kitten. It infests my brain... but in a really positive way.

Recently I was accepted as a member of a Vocational Group Study Exchange (GSE) sponsored by the Rotary. For this trip I will be heading to Australia (in just under a week). I am fighting off the overwhelming waves of excitement in order to make sure that I accomplish all that I need to do in the short time left before heading out. I will be staying with different families during my travails and travels, and hopefully the trip will give me the final inspiration I need to complete Flight of the Torrah Fonn, one of the short stories relating to The Ever War that I'm hoping to release in a compilation next year.

I have designed special gifts for the families I'll be staying with in Australia and they finally arrived:



It's a single volume hardcover edition of the entire trilogy! Having received it the first thing I did, of course, was get the feel for it in my hands and flip through it. It is an odd thing to see in one single place something that represents so much time and work. Even the cover is an image I painted rather than a commissioned work like the covers of the soft-cover editions, thus making it that much more of an emotional impact. I was so impressed with the overall quality of the product that I will now strongly consider working to make a variation of this edition available for regular purchase.

In the mean time, I have a lot of things to prepare before my voyage. I promise I will work to get another posting up soon, specifically the one that was usurped by this very special post.