No Disassemble Number Five!
Life is NOT a malfunction
Beautiful Animal... Canine... Dog... Mutt.
This last month has been so damn hard. As I write this, it has been exactly one month since Tali was laid to rest. The silence has been the hardest to adjust to by far. Even when she was asleep, she would grumble and grunt constantly. As I said in last month’s newsletter, she was a presence. I especially miss her cuddling with me in bed; every night, without fail, she would whine at me until I lifted the covers so she could get under them and fling her body against my leg with a huff.
There’s a lot of little moments too, like when I’m relaxing on the couch and reach my hand over to softly scratch a flank that isn’t there anymore. And when it’s meal time, no one answers the question, “Where’s your bowl?” with an exasperated paw slap.
We set up a little memorial to Tali in our kitchen, and we got her ashes back a couple of weeks ago. So she’s home, again. Our favorite vet tech even made sure to give us her Tali mark, the black shock of fur that was on her tail, in a small vial.
She was an amazing dog, and the whole world was robbed of seeing her grow old and mellow.
Added to that has been Athena, who has been showing early signs of sunsetting and increased mobility issues. She’s still happy and relatively energetic, but she doesn’t have as many days ahead of her as she deserves. And as hard as losing Tali has been, losing Athena will break me.
It has been really exhausting for Nikki and I this month. We both grieve in very different ways, and we have been under a stupidly titanic amount of stress and strain since last August. Job problems, car problems, dog problems, cat problems, house problems, family problems… just a proliferation of pernicious problematic predicaments.
We need an escape. A vacation somewhere that isn’t a reminder of the soul-crushing despair that has been grinding us into dust. We’ve been struggling for the better part of ten years at this point. We never have been able to afford a significant vacation on our own at any point. Even our belated honeymoon was thanks in large part to the largess of a friend.
Growing up everyone told me I was going to be a shining star, a success, and more. But really I just feel like I’m a sputtering stain, a failure, and less. If I was so smart, surely I’d have found a solution to even one of the issues we face.
Two Excellent Books. May I Have These, Craphead?
Due to the overwhelming nature of the last eight months, I had to push back my “deadline” for my beta readers on Pallas Chase. One, because I know that several of them have also had a lot going on in their lives too. Two, because I know that I do not have the spoons to collate and manage critiques right now. As a result of those two points, I made the decision to give my beta readers an extension to August.
That said, I did yet another editing run of Pallas Chase and somehow a few small typos remain. I swear a gremlin is sneaking into my files and slipping them in when I’m asleep. I did some minor restructuring of some plot points, but mostly I have been working on the front and back matter. That’s the fun stuff, like the title page, acknowledgements, dedication, glossary, and so on.
I have had a couple of critiques back from my beta readers already, and they brought up some good pain points that I can fix with very little effort. So while the beta readers have longer, I also have more time to tighten up aspects of the book. I’m hoping that by the time August rolls around, I’ll be in a position to finalize changes to the text and be ready to publish in short order.
The hardest part remaining is complicated. The cover art needs to be done. When I first published Pallas Lost, I had commissioned a 3d artist on Fiverr to make a model of the Ruby Shift. At the time I was pleased as punch, it was the first moment that I, as someone with aphantasia, had actually seen the ship. I had some problems with the design, but I wrote it off (ha) and pressed forward with publishing.
I did the cover art myself, and I’m not too unhappy with it. I wanted to hearken back to the days of older science fiction novels. But the truth is, it’s not a good fit for modern audiences. As such, I have been kicking around two ideas:
One: Hiring a new 3d artist to make a new Ruby Shift model.
Two: Hiring a cover artist to design a new cover for Pallas Lost and Pallas Chase. (Possibly doing a cover for Pallas Found at the same time if I can get a discount)
Unfortunately this requires money. And with no job money is rather hard to come by.
A reputable hard surface 3d artist would be somewhere between $100 and $500, depending on skill level. I need a single asset that is a solid piece, so I can take photos at different angles and also print it on my 3d printer. I eventually want to have small models of the Ruby Shift printed so people could buy them. That means it needs to have realistic topography.
It also means I’ve got to literally go back to the drawing board and make some new sketches of what I want the Ruby Shift to look like. I like the front of the current model, but hate the back.
The cover art problem is pretty wild. I found a Ukrainian company that doesn’t use AI and is affordable, but the problem is the use a lot of stock photos. If I can provide them images of the Ruby Shift, I’m hoping that can make the covers affordable, in the $50 to $100 range each. If not, a good cover artist ranges from a few hundred to a thousand or more.
As always I am 100% against the incorporation or use of generative AI at any point in my process. That has, unfortunately, made it difficult to find affordable artists. The lower price point used to be a great place to find an up-and-coming artist who was building clientele or new to pricing, and I loved being able to help someone at the beginning of their process out. But now that price point is flooded with slop.
Once I have a job and a paycheck, I’m hoping to be able to set aside some money to get this done. My priority is the modeling, because that is not something I can do quickly or easily. I could always do the second cover in the same style as the first, and push the style change off until the third book. I’d just like to do it sooner rather than later.
Doing a BackerKit or Kickstarter is not an option right now, really, because I want to save that for after the books are done. My grand plan is to have an expensive box set done for the series, complete with silver edges and custom artwork. That will be pricey, and hopefully by then I have a wider audience. It would be a super limited print run though, like 25 sets.
But that is future Jake’s problem.
Goals Update:
Despite the transcendental horrors of this year, I still want to release Pallas Chase before the end of 2026. It would be tight based on scheduling, but my optimistic worst case is to give myself until May 4th, 2027. I kind of love the idea of all the Pallas books launching on Star Wars Day.
Thank you so much for following and reading! Don’t forget to subscribe, like and comment. Let me know what you want to see more of from this newsletter! Engagement is crucial. I look forward to posting throughout the rest of 2026!