The Peacock King

The Peacock King is the first book in an epic fantasy series set in a world where reality can be rewritten and weapons can tell the innocent from the guilty.

[irkart]

Lyric draws Elric with his fingers in the dirt, reaching out.

One of the completed illustrations for Peacock King, available in print and ebook form next year!

[irkdesu]

What’s up with me and Peacock King

I’m a trans man! My pronouns are he/his. I go by Irk or Eric. If you know me IRL or closely online or you watch twitter then you already know this.

I came out as a trans man at work on Halloween-ish and that’s what I was waiting for when it came to making public posts about this! I have been slow to update social media because I was tryna get my creative ducks in a row and show you all cool Peacock King stuff, but this transition stuff has kinda changed the order of my whole life since about 2013, and majorly a few months after the Kickstarter, when with horror I realized I should have done fundraising after I came out as trans. I came out to backers earlier this year.

Where is the book???? I am still working on it, I’m the sole author and illustrator now which increased my workload on producing publishing assets right as I was also having to focus a lot of energy and focus on medical and insurance and paperwork stuff. I am still working on all that! I even have a therapist to help me sort it all out. I am hoping to publish Peacock King in early Spring 2017. I really want this book done but so much was tied up in it. So much of me is in this book and the story itself really made me face that I have to transition. So it’s been so difficult to get everything together to publish, especially because the cover I designed had to have the correct name on it and that meant starting transition and coming out at work before publishing! Everything is so goshdarn complicated.

Tuesday’s election shenanigans sort of set me back when it came to all my anti-anxiety work but now I feel energized to bring this work to the world and keep going with it. It’s a very pro-trans work and it has a fantasy world where gender-neutral pronouns are the norm and there’s just so much in this book and the rest of its series that I feel is really important to the world right now. So I’m not going to let fear silence me and I’m going to finish this work.

Bear with me, energy is something I have in short supply a lot of times these days. I’ve had to really pace myself to get things done. But I can do it and I will do it. I’m also four months into testosterone and growing irregular facial hair and my voice is getting deeper and I got a haircut and a lot has changed for the better and it will keep changing. Everything is in flux but I feel better than I have for so much of my life. So be there with me and let’s finish off 2016 and show 2017 what we’re made of!

[spellinwaiting]

tumblr giveaway!

reblog this post for your chance to be KIDNAPPED by the BIRD KING!

rules:

only reblogs count

no giveaway blogs

you dont have to be following me

the BIRD KING has not given me the full details on what he plans to do with the person he kidnaps

from what i know, i believe he plans to make you his BIRD QUEEN

or possibly BIRD KING-CONSORT or if you prefer gender-neutral terms then just BIRD CONSORT. it does not matter. the BIRD KING is PANSEXUAL

the giveaway will end WHEN THE BIRD KING DEMANDS IT

leave your inbox open, ill contact the winner on where and when they will be KIDNAPPED by the BIRD KING

good luck!

[peacock-king]

It’s Peacock King fanfiction that didn’t KNOW it was Peacock King fanfiction.

[gwydionmisha]

“Get politics out of fantasy” Well gee you wanna start with King Arthur or you wanna skip to why the Simarillion was written.

@red_mercer: (via gwydionmisha)

[peacock-king]

New website coming!

The Peacock King is finally going to get its own official non-tumblr website again. It’s been a long time coming and now we’re moving on it. No exact time estimate yet; I prefer the ominious “SOON.”

In the meantime, peacock-king.com may fail to redirect for a bit because it’s been changed over to our new webhost.

I realize it’s been all crickets here but basically we have been figuring out how to do all those things you have to do to publish a book, which has been way more complex and labor-intensive than I realized. It’s paying off, though! The draft’s almost done on its final copy edits and we’ll have illustrations soon as well.

If you’re a Kickstarter backer you’ve gotten more frequent updates than on tumblr so you may feel more “in the know”. I’ll post publicly about some of those updates soon, but right now I’m organizing a lot of things. Also I am Irk, I pretty much run all the online stuff for PK so you can usually assume that if someone is talking, it’s me.

Oh and there’s the possibility we can open up preorders for the novel soon, but that’s going to be after we have all of the Kickstarter orders completely nailed down.

[irkdesu]

Peacock King beta reader surveys have gone out!

If you backed the Kickstarter (or paypal-backed) at $10 or above, you’ve been emailed an update that contains a link to a survey to fill out if you want to beta read Peacock King! Let me know if I need to send it to you directly. Please fill it out as soon as you can so I can send out beta copies and then get this novel through its last edits after getting feedback.

[peacock-king]

It's about dang time, Oregon. (Soon we'll have our press!)

[shelbycragg]

It was a very pink stream tonight! Thanks for stopping by, and thank you to all of my amazing patrons for supporting my work. <3

[peacock-king]

I requested a shenanigan in shelbycragg's patreon patron livestream! Look how cute it is! The girl in the pink dress came out great; I had to leave to grocery shop by then so I'm only seeing it now. I love her tattoos!

Longtime PK fans remember shenanigans and how much adorable trouble they can be. The rebooted version of PK will have shenanigans in it too, though I don't know which book they'll debut in yet.

New PK peeps - shenanigans are magically-created creatures that appear to be kittens with squirrel tails and wings. They are very clever and can psychically bond with people, though they certainly don't always do what they're told.

If you like Shelby's art you should check out the webcomic she draws: Apothecia. Sponsor her Patreon so you can watch a request stream too! It's really neat to watch the colors and texture happen. I spent a lot of time going "oh, that's how she does it!"

[deliciouspaintchips-deactivated]

Opening sketch. Inking both next.

[deliciouspaintchips-deactivated]

So I was thinking about the interior illustrations and what parts of the story to illustrate and the opening plate and doodled as I was thinking and this happened.

Congrats, guys, I guess I accidentally an endplate there. Book now has seven illos (although this one is admittedly small and simple and will take pretty much no time to ink). 

[peacock-king]

Surprise! A sketch for the endplate!

[peacock-king]

Bird of the Month: The Peacock

The newest installment of "Bird of the Month" takes on the majestic peacock.

Thought Peacock King fans would appreciate this piece, so I'm gonna share it here.

[deliciouspaintchips-deactivated]

hee hee hee pretty sure I’m insane but I’m having a good time ♥

[peacock-king]

WIP of the book cover! I AM SO EXCITED. It already looks amazing. o_o

[peacock-king]

What's happening?

1. I'm editing the novel before we give it to beta readers.

2. We're waiting for Oregon to send us some boring paperwork so we can have a publishing business and do boring tax stuff.

3. We're finishing up artwork, pixel by slow pixel.

Slow and steady has been the theme, it seems.

[peacock-king]

Humans are the strangest animals of all. They convince themselves to be tame.

Faun in The Peacock King Book 1

[deliciouspaintchips-deactivated]

Worked a bit on the PK cover tonight. :D This is just a sketch, but I’m starting to get a feel for actually drawing what Irk and I were wanting for the cover. There’s a rhythm to it, and a sort of density in detail that both lets me go totally apeshit putting in fine little nitpicky details and has this overall… mass to it that forces you to perceive the area as a whole, rather than a bunch of parts.

SOOOOOOO much fun! 

[peacock-king]

2 hours to go! New Paypal options · The Peacock King on Kickstarter

The Kickstarter campaign has two hours to go! Reminder: if you want to change your pledge amount, click Manage Your Pledge on the project's page. But take a look at the page first, because right now the funding amount is a nice, HUGE round number!

[peacock-king]

Paypal Options for the Peacock King Kickstarter

Some of you peeps want to pay with Paypal. I say you can pay with anything you want, but Kickstarter doesn't take Paypal. So you can Paypal us directly to back the campaign. Any Paypal contributions will get counted toward stretch goals! It just won't show up on Kickstarter's official page.

For backers receiving electronic goods, or who are in the US and US territories and receiving shipped goods, we have a button you can use. Yay! Check the project's Kickstarter Page and see what reward tier you want.

Then go here to use the automatic button!

The Paypal button doesn't have the Button Add-on option for tiers under $25. If you are super-adamant that you get a button and an ebook, email me at cuisinirk at gmail dot com. International backers who want shipped goods, please email me and we'll work it out directly instead of using the automated button.

We'll accept Paypal pledges for two weeks, ending on April 24th. This is about the amount of time that it'll take for Kickstarter to clear the backer funds, so when we send out backer surveys and stuff, we can take care of Paypal backer fulfillment at the same time. Also it seems pretty fair that way all around.

For the rewards with limited numbers that aren't Royal Art Thief (which we still have plenty of so I'm not worried), you need to contact me directly. That way I can check if we still have any left.

That's it! Thanks everybody!