I found Nolan's Odyssey highly annoying because its dialogue is flat and because it strips back the fantasy elements: Athena becomes a hallucination, Calypso’s enchantment becomes a drug habit, and the Sirens' song is reduced to Odysseus's regrets. Instead of leading us into Elfland, the film builds a highway to Poughkeepsie.

It's hard to make a hare look intimidating, and my first draft of this illustration proved it. Here's what I changed, plus an update on beta readers and my developmental editor.

Two new illustrations for June and the Star are in progress: hounds scaling a cave wall and a swarm of glowing figures. Here's the reference work, the rejected drafts, and the reasoning behind each choice so far.

AI can hand the 'ideas guy' a finished product, but people call the result slop. Here's why I believe the idea isn't the soul of a creative work, the process is.

After 2.5 years, five notebooks, and 59,000 words, I've finished the first draft of June and the Star, and I'm surprisingly sad that the story is over. Here's what watching June find her voice meant to me, what comes next, and how you can help as a beta reader.