   Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
I'm excited to announce that Shadowcasting, book three in the Mia Graves Saga, is now out!
I could run through a brief description of the book and I give the back-of-book synopsis again (like I did when pre-orders went up), but you can go back and read that post if you want to. The short version is "how do you talk a twenty-something out of using a magical nuke, especially when you just work retail."
In all honesty, this is my favorite book in the series so far. In some ways it's very different than the two earlier books in a couple of ways, but still feels like the same series. There's not much else I can say without major spoilers, so you'll just have to trust me on that one.
Like my earlier releases, for the first three months the eBook will be available only on Kindle (and Kindle Unlimited), but you can also get the paperback a couple of ways. First off, there's always Amazon, but you can always direct order a copy if you want to avoid Bezos. Finally, you can get it through any bookseller with the ISBN 9781088207031.
So yeah, the book is here, and I'm excited that folks will get to read it finally.
![Nerd & Tie[dot]Social Forums](https://www.nerdandtie.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/natsocial-nicepreview-square-300x300.png)
Can you say Awkward?
My dad brought me to my first convention, and wants to come with me to conventions again. In all honesty my dad really is the “Cool Dad” for fellow geeks, so I guess I may never understand.
MY DAD’S -DEAD-!! *sob* *sob* …okay, he seriously is, but it was years ago.
I think Anime would have confused him, but he liked Star Trek.
Mom took my brother and I to a couple of Conventions back when we couldn’t drive ourselves. She found them weird, but accepted she had weird kids. Enough stuff around she didn’t get bored.
I had my dad *staff* my convention.
Wow I don’t really want to talk about my dad cause I have a variety things to say about him. He’s accepted my geekiness now but growing he was a prick about it. He had his own interests mainly airplanes(having a private pilot’s license and all) and deer hunting. Plus he’s done lot in the last 10 years to break my family apart.
Wow, Trae, looking at this comic and Sarah’s model sheet, I’m very impressed at your ability to get so much expression out of a stick figure.
It’s the way I’ve designed her eyes. The smaller eyes and the eyebrows give her a lot more flexibility in expressions. Sarah is an expressive, extroverted character — so I needed her to have a range. Contrast that with Ruth — Ruth is always in a state of calm, even when stressed out. She’s much more introverted, so she emotes quietly. Because of that, her eyes never really change. In fact, she almost never smiles.
I do think about these things when I design the characters. 🙂
I’m probably going to be unconsciously examining the other characters’ eyebrows from now on… 😀
Early characters who I wanted to do more with their eyes are like Lynn, Veronica and Megan — where the brow is integrated. Awesome Roy was the first to get separate eyebrows (to go with his dot eyes).
Scrappy and Barnes both have eyebrows, but you can’t always see Barnes’s because of his hair. Random other characters, like Marcus, do too — I just can’t remember off the top of my head.
Between my wife and I, we have 5 kids. We’ve been taking 4 of them to conventions for the past 5 years. We’re also on staff for our local con and have roped a couple of them onto staff, as well.