It's been a minute since I posted anything and I can feel the itch to share again. Most of January, for me, has been dominated by freelance content and design work. But I am still making lots of progress on next month's shop update. And while I'm not ready to set a date yet, I wanted to share some of the inspiration behind Myths & Legends. I've always been utterly fascinated by the stories in myths, legends, fairy tales, fables, and anything other-worldly that was once regarded as having a foot in the real world. When I travel, I'm looking for ruins, monuments, relics, and pieces of ancient civilizations. Not because I want to uncover and piece together what used to be, but because I want to use that energy to spark my creativity. I find it positively electric to set foot on ground that has seen many thousands of years worth of human stories. For example, I took this photo of a carving at Rosslyn Chapel in 2003. I'd traveled to Scotland to visit my father's family and it was an amazing trip on many levels. I went back to the UK in 2009 and during that trip visited Chester, specifically the ruins of Roman infrastructure and of St. John's Church. I promised myself I'd use the latter to inspire a setting for my next book. And I kept that promise when I wrote The Variant Conspiracy trilogy. This month, on my metalsmithing side, I'm diving back into mythology, more broadly this time and it's been a huge amount of fun. Because I can't get enough of stories that help us explore who we used to be, what we used to believe, how we collectively saw the world and understood the nature of life, the universe, and everything. I have a lot of work left before I can set the date for Myths & Legends. But it has been addictive immersing myself in the imagery of those worlds, so it won't be much longer, I promise.🤞 #rosslynchapel #stonecarving #romanruins #stjohnschurch #ukruins (at UK) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnpuIesyOxc/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=