Finally made a picture of the only book I ever did a book shrine for (excuse the shitty quality, my phone is really old):
Evensongs Heir, Songbirds of Valnon from L.S. Baird.
I bought two custom bound books on Etsy (I like one a lot better than the other, but the colours on both are really pretty.... now I am just missing one Thrush coloured).
Btw its gay, I think there is like one straight character in this book and everyone is so wholesome (well except the villains).
The fairy lights with the roses was made by my mother just for me.
Also, my first one, as you can see it is annoted to hell and back, and this is colour coded, every Songbird has its own colour.
And yeah thats the reason why I am now writing three Interactive Fictions. All thanks to this book.
I read The Devil’s Luck by L.S. Baird and had such a tremendous good time that I actually felt the urge to express a fraction of my love beyond words. Here are the two protagonists Etienne and Frey! (Also I can’t believe I forgot the D’Grassa ...)
I hardly ever make fanart because I can never capture everything I want and end up with nothing in the end. So for once I decided to push through because “something that isn’t perfect” is better than “nothing at all”, right? :)
when god closes a door in your face somewhere he throws you out a window
Hi everybody, it's been a while! I know it's been a wild ride for all of us lately, through a rickety haunted house with bad effects and a highly dubious safety certificate, but I hope you and yours have at least managed to hold on to the bar. I'm not sure if I have, but I've got some news that might be of interest for any of you who still have this thing turned on.
In April when my day job closed offices (belatedly I might add), I picked up Evensong's Heir to work on the long-overdue second edition in my off time. You might remember it was put out in 2013 in something of a rush, and some small (and one or two not-so small) errors remain. I've always wanted to go back for another polish. (Something that gave me some real Han-shot-First-sized guilt before I realized that I wasn't going to change any large plot bits, I don't have any bad CGI planned, and that JRRT basically rewrote a chunk of The Hobbit to make it fit the plot of LotR better sooooooo yeah.)
However, I was still going in to my office a couple times a week for in-person tasks, as well as making masks and dealing with the fun paralyzing anxiety that came free with everyone’s bottles of 2020's New Year's champagne, so I didn't progress very far very fast. But then last month, I got a fun new surprise in this time chock-full of fun new surprises: I lost my job. (I was six weeks short of being there fifteen years, and it was via a two-minute phone call, but that's a whole nother rant that doesn't belong here.)
So starting June 1 I began a new chapter of life: as a full-time writer! One who put out one indie-pub novel seven years ago! Which still pulls in about seven dollars in royalties a month! Whahoo! But my options are few, my unfinished drafts are many, and this was what I always planned to do--albeit in a couple more years and with a few more debts paid. But sometimes the universe throws you in the deep end. From the balcony.
In an ideal world I would bang out the next Songbirds book within two months, but I think we can all agree that this world ain't ideal. (It's especially not ideal when you lose a month's worth of your severance to taxes right off the bat.) My biggest conflict has been what I need to focus on first, because my usual ADD-fueled shotgun method is not going to work when I need to have some releases out fast to pay the bills. (Pay part of the bills. Contribute slightly to the bills. Cover the price of the stamp on the bills. You know.) I've been going around in circles for weeks. Do I try to get out the next Songbird book? Do I pick up one of my other books unfinished from years ago and buff it into shape for a faster release? Do I fuck off on all the old shit hanging around with all its baggage, and its notes on crop rotations, and family trees, and NaNoWriMo out a one-off book about-- idek, catboy alchemists late for anime school, or something?
But really, Songbirds is the only thing that makes sense. Even if it means rereading things I haven't looked at for years on end. Even if it means brushing up on my own (extended) canon. Even if it means having moments where I genuinely can't remember if I killed off a character (or if they even made it into EH or I was saving them for later orrr....?) Even if it means turning up here like a runaway hoping their key still works.
So here's what I have planned, at least today: to finish up the second edition of Evensong's Heir as soon as possible, and then to release the book of short stories set in the world of Valnon that I've had planned for ages. It's not the sequel, not yet, but hopefully that will be a bridge to the sequel, and give me time to produce the second book that my birds (and their sellswords) deserve.
(And if not, well. I'm not ruling out alchemist catboys.)
Yeah, needed to write sth since i am in a songbird mood, go and buy that book it has magical choir boys, ghosts, a badass blind queen and is gay, what more do you need? It has also so good worldbuilding and lore, it has its own lyrics! (dont be confused about the cover btw there is zero smut)
@lsbaird i swear i am normal
„Why did you pick the colour if you don’t even like it? Finally grew tired of all the black?” Preybird Kite couldn’t hold himself back from mocking his Lark, all in good natured fun of course. They knew each other since they had been flockboys, since they had been chosen as Songbirds and since than sung down Heaven… not literally, Valnon really didn’t need another earthquake. Now others stood upon the dais, sang what they had sung and worn the tributes that once had been given to them.
And now they were Preybirds, responsible for keeping the temple running. And he had changed the colourful Thrushs robes for a deep ruby, he couldnt bear parting with all that made him the Trush of Valnon, it was soothing to him.
Preybird Heron mumbled something that not even the trained singers ears could pick up and he chuckled. Maybe that was a lifetime of having to stand up early, while he only had to sing Noontide. His finger went to touch his ring, copper and garnet the sign that he had once been the Trush of Valnon.
Black and silver on Herons finger, the blond Lark. A bad omen, whispered rumours. He didn’t waste breath responding with an actual argument, covering them in swearwords like they deserved.
Lark and Trush, without their Dove. It was good like that, the doves were special, yes, but also dangerous. Eothans earthquake only showed that, and whenever he looked at the slab of stone that closed the door of the room of their missing third he shuddered. Still, he couldn’t help but yearn to feel complete. They were two where they should be three. Once it had been Saint Alveron, Lairke and Thryse. Now there were only Lark and Trush, waiting for something that wouldn’t come.
A missing piece. Sometimes he could have sworn he saw the second doves’ ghost, feel the cold breeze…. Of course he followed it. Maybe it had been good that he was Thrush instead of Lark, as he remembered the days he rushed back after exploring the catacombs and returned dusty and dirty, losing the sense of time in the underbelly of the ancient city, watching mosaics that now only decorated corpes looked at, and he assumed that he showed a lot more awe at the history surrounding him, and wondering who turned the skeletons into artworks. One time he cleaned up a pile that had fallen over.
As his term came to an end he began to sing to the dead, bringing them noontide in the middle of the night, having to accept that had been harder than he would have thought and he didn’t mention it to his Lark. He was the Thrush, the light in the darkness, the warmth of the sun, the middle ground between everything. Sometimes when he was in the dark, and didn't feel very sunny at all, he could have sworn there was someone singing alongside him, a beautiful and otherworldly tone. But he still recognised the voice of a fellow temple bird under the strangeness.
Some decorations I put up that gave me a bit of Songbirds of Valnon vibe (I am def going to rewrite the verse it looks so bad lol)! Also going to switch out the photo on the right.
Finished Evensongs Heir yesterday, or more like today in the middle of the night (guess who has a new favourite book! The worldbuilding is fascinating, birds are nice and it also has many great funny lines and plottwists where I had to put the book down and it nearly made me cry), and off course I tried to make an OC for it...
Only to realize that I already have one: my Call of Cthulhu Opera Singer Alistair Fox, who I unknowingly gave clothes in the colours, black silver/gray and blue, who would make both a great and a challenging Lark!
He can sing, he knows much about medicine and he is pretty. And he refurses to wear his hair short and is vain, also would totally try and learn some skills with weapons, stating that he isn’t training with a blade after all, “Thats a wodden sword! Does it look like a blade to you?! Do you think the Lark of valnon would be so stupid?!”, so he isn’t breaking his vows.
Under the cut I tried to draw him in the temple clothes, which reminded me that I really need to practice more but at least I like his jewelry. He would totally wear more blue to bring out his eyes and probably not hesitate practicing medicine himself. His Preybird name would be Bluejay.
[Something Halloweeny from my unfinished novel files. - LSB]
Jerde fell into step with the Downbridge crowd and slipped along with them, ladies in not-quite this year's fashions, sweepers looking for copper bits from passersby, rough-faced laborers moving in a sluggish stream towards the shipyards. The locals knew him, some in the trade would tip a hat and offer a muttered "Morning," as the Enforcer went by. Jerde, preoccupied with thoughts of breakfast, did not linger over social pleasantries. They were familiar, as were the shops and the streets, and they moved by Jerde in an unnoticed blur of the daily commonplace. He was only a few blocks from his destination when a glaring inconsistency in the scene broke him out of his reverie, and left him staring at the freshly-painted plate glass sign of a newly-opened shopfront. The letters, in crisp green outlined in gold, declared:
Without the last bit, Jerde could have bidden C. P. Devlin and his new enterprise goodbye and good luck, and been happily tucked into his coffee and molasses before the bells of Chantry Hill struck nine. But no, the bold statement was there, indelible, and Jerde sighed. Perhaps this one would be as easily seen off as the last one, provided the owner was in. On the other side of the painted letters, Jerde could see beyond his own reflection that the shop was lit. Duty, such as it was, called.
A bell jangled as Jerde entered, and he was at once enveloped in pleasant warmth, green velvet curtains, and the pungent scents of vinegar, albumen, and sawdust. The shop had been a stationer's the year before, shuttered when the owner died, and was a narrow little closet of a space, nothing but a wide-ish alley bricked and roofed to be habitable. A jumble of furnishings sat to one side, chairs to be pulled in for the sitters, a heavy oak desk for those who wished to look studious, bolts of spare drapery. Packing crates sat open beside the counter, a large satchel of printed carpet was tossed unceremoniously into the top one. C.P. Devilin, for all his fancy signage, did not appear to be quite open for business.
"Hello?" Jerde shuffled aside old newspapers on the counter and discovered a tarnished bell underneath; he tapped the clapper and found that it didn't work. "Anyone here?"
"Just a second!" Something clunked beyond the shut door of the back room--once a closet, now likely the photographer's dark room. There was a crash, a bit of creative profanity, and the eponymous Mr. Devlin emerged onto the scene with a dab of shaving foam behind one ear, yanking his bracers up over his shoulders.
Jerde summed him up with a glance. Tall, broad-shouldered, but not bulky--a man that could make his living through physical labor but clearly did not. His hands were deft, scrupulously clean for someone in an occupation rife with messy chemicals, and he wore a silver ring on the smallest finger of his left hand. His hair was dark, his eyes also, and his brows angled and thick in a way that charcoal artists adored. Jerde put him at no more than thirty-five, northerner, and a confidence trickster by trade. He swung one leg over an open crate and hurried to take Jerde's hand.
"Sorry, sorry, haven't really hung out the bunting yet, but welcome, all the same. You'll pardon the mess, I only just caught the train in yesterday."
"New in Queensriver, are you?" Jerde asked, though he already knew the answer to that question, and to several others as well. "You've set up quickly."
"Well, yes." C.P. Devlin looked around the messy studio with a slight frown, as though not sure how it had all come to be in this state. "Already had everything shipped down, only had to ship myself after. Felt I needed a change of scenery, so I said to myself, 'Chancery, old boy, it's time to pull up the roots.'" After this announcement, he smiled a winning, genial smile at Jerde, and balled up his fists on his hips as though there was nothing more to be done about the matter.
"I see," Jerde said, eyeing the overstuffed armchairs. They had not been shipped from anywhere, he knew, as that old brown horsehair monster had been in the window of one of the local junk shops for months. "Been in photography for long?"
"Oh, you know!" he said, in a way that cleared up very little. "Every picture I take is for the first time, I say."
I don't doubt it, Jerde thought. Only one thing lent credence to the fact that Chancery P. Devlin had been in the photography business for a long time, and that was his camera. The boxy apparatus balanced atop its tripod was easily thirty years out of date, an old wet-plate model long since retired in favor of more convenient cameras, those with auto-shutters and compartments built to accommodate dry gelatin plates. The charlatan Jerde had just seen out of town had even had a tiny little creature capable of using the latest acetate film, more delicate than a dragonfly's wing.
"Ah, she's an old work-horse," Devlin said, noticing the direction of Jerde's gaze. "I'm afraid she's the only one that made the trip, my others got held up somewhere around Richmond. But I can still make good prints from that one, even have an adapter if you'd like a set of jewel prints for all your sisters' lockets." He pulled a lens out from the carpet-bag and held it up to one eye, splitting his single iris into a dozen like some deformed spider's. "So!" Devlin concluded, setting down the lens. "What can I do for you?"
"I was interested in your more... esoteric services," Jerde said, peeling off his gloves. "I take it you are experienced in the art of photographing the unphysical realm?"
Devlin raised his courtroom-sketch eyebrows knowingly. "Ahh, I see," he said. "Should have pegged you for that type the minute I saw you walk through that door."
You didn't see me walk through that door, Jerde thought, with more annoyance than was strictly called for.
"Something about your eyes," Devlin said, leaning over the counter for a better look. "You're a seer of the unseen, one with the gift, as my gran would say."
"Born with a caul, at midnight, on a leap year's day," Jerde said, deadpan. He might as well throw it out; it was a fact. It was always better to bait the snare with some truth. "And you can guarantee a manifestation in your photographs?"
"Absolutely," Devlin assured him, and stuck his thumbs in his bracers, unaware of the trap that had just snapped shut around him.
"In that case, I would like a portrait," Jerde said, and pulled out his badge. "And I'm afraid I must insist on observing the entire process, to ensure there's no trickery involved."
The photographer looked from the badge to Jerde's face, nonplussed. "What's that?" he asked, peering at the badge through his floppy bangs. "A cracker-jack prize?"
"It is the emblem of the Bureau of Spiritual Affairs," Jerde answered, acerbic, "And as such it gives me the right to investigate the claims and the premises of any business purporting to offer goods, services, or other industry of a supernatural type."
"You're joking." The photographer went over the badge again, with its engraved motto: non cognitio sine fide, and the seven-pointed star with the flame at its center, and took a step back for a better look at Jerde's face. "You're not joking."
"I assure you, the reputation of this city is no joke to me," Jerde said, slipping his badge back into his vest pocket, where it rested snugly next to his father's pocketwatch. "No doubt that's what drew you here, as it has thousands like you. Queensriver was the epicenter of the war; every garret and gate-post has an accompanying ghost story. The very founding families were reported to consist of witches and seers far before that, even. But while the evidence of the supernatural world adjacent to ours is indisputable, it cannot police itself." Jerde narrowed his pale eyes at the photographer. "And sir, if you have come to swindle the people of this city, and to sully the emerging strain of para-natural science with tomfoolery and mawkish sales-prattle, then you had best pack up now."
It was a speech that Jerde saved for special occasions; usually the badge was enough to make his point. A rare few troublemakers set up shop in Queensriver without being aware of the city ordinances surrounding spiritual commerce, but once it was made clear to them just how deeply their pockets would be fined for breaking the law, and how far they would be kicked out of town afterwards, they usually packed up and left meekly, on their own, after only the first warning. There were other towns, less reputed for spiritualism, where the gullible could still be fleeced without running afoul of the authorities right off.
C. P. Devlin, however, was a new and interesting type of beast. "Let me get this straight," he said, and the snake-oily veneer on his voice was gone, leaving behind a less nasal, more blunt turn of vowel that Jerde found infinitely preferable. "You've got a whole organization here just to throw books at any poor bastard who sets up shop with a smoked lantern and a crystal ball?"
"Essentially, yes." Jerde felt a little smile creeping onto his lips. "Only charlatans guarantee results, Mr. Devlin."
The photographer leaned back on his heels, considering this. "A charlatan, or someone who really knows his business."
"I've yet to see anyone, no matter how gifted, turn up evidence on every try," Jerde answered. "Even the best seer cannot part the mists on occasion, even the most acute medium will encounter recalcitrant spirits. And as for photography, which is my particular line of investigation, it is far easier to induce a spirit to show on the plate by means of a little pre-exposure or superimposing than it is to coax one to stay still before the shutter."
Devin gave Jerde a long look, sucking in his cheeks as though sizing up a thug in a pub. "You think I'm a fraud, then?"
"On the contrary, Mr. Devlin. I know you're a fraud. And either you will produce a spirit in my picture by means of some trickery, which will earn you investigation by the Bureau and the levying of a substantial fine--or you will not, in which case I will have to write you up for false advertisement and report you to the chamber of commerce. And believe me when I tell you, of those two options, we're the easy ones to deal with."
Devlin crossed his arms, and it occurred to Jerde what the man was thinking. Jerde was not a big man, slightly built and with the physique of a man whose boyhood was spent in books and frequent illnesses. In a flat-out fight, all bets would be on the photographer, unless those placing the wagers were aware of Jerde's brief but stellar career in the Queensriver Seminary's boxing club. Jerde almost hoped the man would try to punch him. There was a distinct satisfaction in taking down someone overconfident, and Jerde was still feeling slighted about missing out on his biscuits. He was braced for Devlin to swing; he was not prepared for the man to laugh.
"Fine, then!" Devlin said, slapping his open palm on the counter. "I'll take your picture, and we'll see what comes out."
"I will have to be present during the preparation of the plate, and its development," Jerde warned him, taking off his hat. "And I assure you, I am familiar with all forms of photographic trickery."
"That makes two of us," Devlin answered, smiling his even, white smile. "But I'll do the photograph straight, and maybe one of your ghosts will oblige me with an appearance."
"I find that highly unlikely," Jerde said, and stepped over to the studio area of the shop. He found he liked Devlin, now that the man had put off his ingratiating manner. No doubt he would turn up a perfectly ordinary photograph, and be gone without a trace by the time Jerde had reported him to the city. Which, all things considered, was not the worst possible outcome. Jerde might even get a decent portrait out of the deal.
Devlin, for all his dishonest demeanor, knew his way around the camera and his darkroom. Jerde quietly supervised the cleaning of the glass plate, the mixing and pouring of the chemical emulsion, the loading of the camera. He inspected the space behind the drapes at the back of the sitter's chair, he found no wires or strings or fragments of reflective mirror. The printing paper Devlin pulled out for Jerde's portrait bore no prior markings.
Jerde settled into the brown horsehair chair, one hand on the arm and his pocketwatch open in one palm. Devlin did the usual amount of squinting and tilting and ducking under the camera's cloth, but as far as Jerde could tell, it was all honest toil. Devlin uncapped the lens, Jerde held his breath as his image burned into the silver emulsion on the glass plate, and it was done. All in all, a simple, straightforward photograph. Old-fashioned, perhaps, but effective.
"You know your trade," Jerde commented, as Devlin sloshed the glass plate in water before dropping it in the fixer. In the darkroom, lit by a single lamp flame under a red glass chimney, the negative image of Jerde on the plate was only an indistinct collection of smudges. "You could do well as a regular photographer."
"I've no taste to be a regular anything," Devlin answered, wiping his hands on his shirttail. "There's no money in it whatsoever." He raked his hair out of his eyes, peering at the glass plate on the bottom of the tray of fixer. "And you might not say that after this is done. Seems to me I've gone and got a great big blot right on the middle of the plate." He lifted his head and cast around the dim confines of the little closet. It was not only his darkroom but also his bedroom; a cot was wedged under a shelf-full of chemical bottles, and an old mirror and washbowl sat at the end of his processing table. "Get me that bit of backing board there, would you?"
Jerde, watching out of simple curiosity more than suspicion at this point, did as he was asked. He still ran an eye over the bit of cardboard, making sure no faint phantoms were inscribed on it in silverpoint. It was nothing more than a bit of paper coated to be reflective, to turn a negative plate into a positive image for the photographer to inspect before making prints.
"There," Devlin said, pulling the plate from its last bath, and holding it up to the board in Jerde's hand. "Hold it there. If it's just a smudge I might be able to scrape... it... " Devlin's voice dwindled to a little fragment of itself, and crumbled. Even in the dull light, Jerde could see the change come over the man's face. Whatever he beheld on that glass plate, it was nothing so idle as a fingerprint, and it sucked all the life from his face, leaving a ghastly pallor behind. Not even the red glow of the lamp could mask the horror in his eyes. "I didn't do this," he breathed, to Jerde. "I swear by every saint whose name I ever forgot, I did not do this."
"Didn't do what?" Jerde asked, but Devlin's hands were shaking now, and Jerde reached out to catch the plate before the man could drop it. Tilting it to the lamp, he saw what it was C. P. Devlin had not done.
It was a good likeness of Jerde, to be sure. In the negative plate his pale blue eyes were uncanny, his sandy hair oddly dark. The image was clear, and Jerde's hand holding the watch had not shifted during the photographing, so that every link of the watch-chain was as crisp as a new aspen leaf. It would have been a portrait fit to hang in his mother's foyer-- if not for the fact that there was a murdered girl standing behind Jerde's chair.
