I recently commissioned character art from Omphalos by the talented Ashley Nava of Quicksilver Creatures. I knew the dreamlike, mythic quality of her art would be perfect for this novel, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The piece below features two of the main characters, Ember and Bishop, at Tian Lake.
Click here for the full version.
For the cycles before his death, it seemed endless words poured from my grandfather’s mouth in a slow trickle. I lapped up his brine-soaked legends of translucent, tentacled beings, and of underwater civilizations filled with intelligent, bottle-nosed, flippered people who spoke in song.
My soles have always been red with the blood of this place— its loam and clay— but water ran in my veins.
… Now, there was only desert beyond the shields of the city. Vast, rolling dunes and sand-laced wind hostile enough to shred flesh. They said the air out there was poison.
(From the first draft of Omphalos. Abridged excerpt to omit major spoilers.)
Today, Gabrielle Morabito completed a character portrait of Elizabeth and Aspect from Unidentified. It’s lovely! I’m particularly pleased that she included Aspect playing with Elizabeth’s hair, since he does it often in the novel.
I know people tend to be fairly surprised that the extraterrestrials in Unidentified aren’t exactly small, contrary to popular ideas about “little” grey men. Gabi did a great job with character proportions relative to each other in this piece. There’s a lot in the novel taken from classic abduction/ET contact reports, but I chose to turn those tropes on their heads to create something different.
The background in this piece is also quite significant, and I love the way she painted it! Thank you, Gabi, for a beautiful rendition of the characters I’ve spent so much time with.
Click here for the full version.
My husband, D. Koyanagi, designed the patch worn by Vipercanis International soldiers in my novel, Unidentified.
