The Fault In Our Daleks

This instalment of the Dalek Game is for John Green’s new novel The Fault in our Stars which is… I don’t know how best to describe it: a funny novel about cancer? a touching novel about teenagers? a heartbreaking novel about finishing novels? It was lent to me by Faultty last weekend (when I dropped by for tea and sponge cake), so I have not yet had time to fully think out my thoughts on it, but they involve life, video games, Holland, embroidered throw pillows and people having their own stories.

This is my second John Green novel – the first was Paper Towns – and although they are not quite my usual genre I like his style, the familiar worlds, the sudden odd angles the plots take. And I love the wider Green-fandom, which is like a strange mirror of my own circles of enthusiasts: like his novels, a curiously familiar yet dragon-free world.

In other news: Why yes, that is a dragon in the header.
March header

In a move which could have turned out badly, Kelly and Gavin pressed Naomi Novik’s Temeraire: His Majesty’s Dragon (Napoleonic war with added dragons) into my hands on Tuesday. I vanished into the book for several days and now emerge, flailing slightly and drawing dragons. This is pen and ink with colour and texture added digitally – you can see a larger version of it on its Flickr page or here.

My disappearance from the world of deadlines and emails is unjustifiable, but the drawing is not as:

  1. I needed to get dragons out of my system (and read either the next book or some C S Forester) long enough to work on some new projects; and
  2. The first of 18 identified steps for the next project was to buy and test out some new illustration card, and with this I have. I am pretty happy with it – it isn’t as velvety as my usual drawing paper but it is smoother and brighter and seems to scan well, although new nibs can accidentally rough it up a bit.