“Ronan says “I Love You” before Adam does. Adam has a hard time saying it back, to his surprise. With a past like his, will he ever be able to?‘
“And yet, when Ronan uttered the words to him as they laid in the open field at the Barns, surrounded by the silent dream cattle, watching the fireflies brewing their magic in the long grass like a universe of tiny suns, Adam could only stare up. Ronan wasn’t looking at him. And yet, Adam could feel Ronan’s eyes on him all the same. His gnashing teeth, his rough hands that ran with surprising tenderness down Adam’s body, his knife-sharp eyes, his quirking, unrelenting smile. Adam felt Ronan all at once because Ronan didn’t know how to exist except all at once. He was everything all the time. And that was one of the many reasons Adam loved him back. And still, he could not say the words back.”
I’m reading the fourth book from the Raven Boys saga and rkfnkersjrgnerjg hype! So I designed those as a practice. If you like them, they are up to shop in a fffff lot of different products here Thanks you and hope you like them!
My burning desire to dress like fashion icon Blue Sargent vs The weird looks everyone in my small Irish hometown gives anyone who dresses even kind of left of centre: a battle as old as time itself
(The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, The Raven King & Opal)
By Maggie Stiefvater
I was reluctant to read a book about a group of boys, but the dream elements in The Raven Cycle echoed some of the themes in my own book so I decided it would be valuable research. I tend to eschew male protagonists because I surfeited on a diet of them growing up when I longed to read about intelligent, daring, creative women.
ButThe Raven Cycle not only boasts a menagerie of multidimensional nuanced male characters, but also fierce, dynamic, wild females as well. I am so glad that Maggie Stiefvater lured me in with her brilliant premise, lyrical prose and unexpected landscape so that I could appreciate this gorgeous gritty tapestry of teen male kinship (and dare I say the sensuality of cars?) through not just a trilogy, but a quartet of books - plus a bonus short story. Oh, and for all of us that curse the end of a good series, guess what? There is a spin-off called The Dreamer Trilogy which I am enjoying now narrated by the brilliantly pliant Will Patten.
Blue Sergeant chronicles the names of the dead as the pass on the ley line each year. A seemingly ungifted seer in a house of talented female clairvoyants, Blue never seems to “see” anything until she sees the ghost of Gansey. This encounter catapults Blue into an adventure with a group of misfit prep school boys in search of a legend king.
With the kind of grand reveals that make a reader do a double take, Stiefvater builds a wholly unique world full of fantastical nightmares and earnest possibility that exists just a stumble away from our own.
Written with the intelligence of an adult but the poetry and wisdom that we lose as we age, this southern gothic tarot phantasm has the imagination of Erin Morgenstern and the dark possible magic of Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood.
So, let’s hear it for the boys, and for an author who has rendered such vivid multidimensional heroes - and heroines - to add to the canon of YA literature.
The way Adam said it made the fireplace quiver, as if something dark had just rolled off his tongue to engulf the living room. Gansey held his gaze in a comfortable silence. It sounded like a warning.
“What are we doing?”, he said again.
Gansey attempted an innocent smile. “We’re drinking scotch and talking about…”
“You know,” Adam interrupted him, “what I mean.”
—
Merry Christmas with this idea I’ve had in my mind ever since Evermore came out last year. In this post-canon ‘verse, with the gangsey heading towards their thirties, Blue and Henry on the other side of the world, and Adam and Ronan’s relationship on the rocks, Gansey and Parrish both find themselves in DC during the holidays - Gansey at his parents house, Adam just passing by for the weekend. And the road not taken looks real good now.
Like many other stories, this too shall remain unpublished and hidden in my phone notes, but I couldn’t help drawing something from it! Also, I have been so obsessed by this concept that I also made a gifset for it last year. And of course I have an all-TS playlist for Adam and Gansey called yee-haw, 'cause duh.
Hope your holiday season is filled with love and warmth
“We have to be back in three hours,“ Ronan said. "I just fed Chainsaw but she’ll need it again.” “This,”Gansey replied, “is precisely why I didn’t want to have a baby with you.”
“You can be just friends with people, you know,“ Orla said. "I think it’s crazy how you’re in love with all those raven boys.”
Orla wasn’t wrong, of course. But what she didn’t realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn’t all-encompassing, that wasn’t blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she’d had this kind, she didn’t want the other.
“I wish you could be kissed, Jane,’ he said. ‘Because I would beg just one off you. Under all this.’ He flailed an arm toward the stars.” ― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves
Spent about an hour yesterday enjoying the afternoon sun and doing some creature sketches from my short stories:
First is Vaskalamaldus the Raven King, a giant pterosaur and antagonist of my first Tales of Kaimere short story, Death Walks on Broken Wings: https://amzn.to/2Gt4agg
Next we have the baoqu, a mountain-adapted ceratopsid dinosaur that causes havoc in my fourth short story, Koban’s Menagerie: https://amzn.to/2Kl6lmU
Last, but certainly not least, is the bull uktan from my upcoming story, Songbird’s Lament. The uktan is a massive megaraptoran that fills the role of apex predator on the houze prairies. Post link
The antagonist of my first short story, Death Walks on Broken Wings: amzn.to/2GUQHhY
By reasons unknown, a large male titan crow received an injury to his left wing which banned him from the skies. Trapped in territory south of his usual hunting ground, with a wall preventing him to return north, the old crow was forced to wander. Quickly he was drawn to livestock in the farmsteads and towns near the wall. After a few violent encounters with farmers, the beast associated people with pain. After a few more injuries, pain turned to rage, and he found the farmers and lumberjacks of the region to make for an easy meal. After this, it was a short step to surplus killing.
Soon he killed for pleasure.
Eventually his standard hunt turned into a massacre, eating one or two and killing a dozen. The great titan was given the name Vaskalamaldus, Qajarith for Death Walks on Broken Wings. Others called him the Raven King. Three towns have suffered great loss by his attacks, and as they are tied up with war, the senate cannot spare the resources to vanquish the beast. And so he is unchecked, killing as he pleases without fear of retribution.
It was heavy and dark, and he knew he would get drenched if he stayed outside. It was coming from so far away that he had plenty of time to put the mower away and get under cover. Instead, though, he just stood there and watched it approach. Even at the last minute, as he heard the rain pounding the grass flat, he just stood there. He closed his eyes and let the storm soak him.
That was this kiss.
They kissed again.
A redraw of an extremely old sketch that I posted when TRK came out. I never redraw stuff but I´ve always wanted to make a proper rendition of this scene so I gave it a go.
Marc Warren looking magnificent as the gentleman with thistledown hair!
‘Someone was standing in the middle of the room: a tall, handsome person with pale, perfect skin and an immense amount of hair, as pale and shining as thistle-down. His cold, blue eyes glittered and he had long dark eye-brows, which terminated in an upward flourish. He was dressed exactly like any other gentleman, except that his coat was of the brightest green imaginable - the colour of leaves in early summer.’
