2005-04-07 [djxmonster]: empty.... :)

2005-04-07 [Ihsahn]: i know.poo

2005-04-07 [Paul Doyle]: getting there . . .

2005-04-07 [Ihsahn]: yay wohoo ^_^

2005-04-07 [Paul Doyle]: Thanks :)

2005-04-07 [Paul Doyle]: All mailed now . . . getting antsy. Post- 9/11 regulations require screening of all packages, on top of the 4-5 month wait >:0P

2005-04-07 [Ihsahn]: good

2005-04-07 [Paul Doyle]: It'll be better when it's published for real ;-)

2005-04-07 [FaeValentine]: Yay!!!

2005-04-07 [Paul Doyle]: Thanks :) I made an exportable version called paulybookstuff

2005-04-08 [Nere]: Cool! and I don't see why they wouldn't included your illustrations... it's been done before

2005-04-08 [Paul Doyle]: Well, this is my reasoning: I've only been drawing actively since June 2003, and frankly I need some serious figure-reference classes (among other things) A profit-minded publisher will likely balk at an unknown author who not only has a first novel of 346,607 words, but also has twenty illustrations that vary considerably in quality. In any event, I'll be a gamble. My only "published" work is on my Wyvern's library page, and much of that is satirical or experimental in nature (although many of the poems have a more "serious", lyrical tone to them.) Of course, elfwood is down, and I have a very bad feeling it's not going to come back any time soon.

2005-04-08 [Paul Doyle]: Fortunately there is Sheezy and Deviant (and VCL, but I won't advertise THAT link :P) so I may yet upload all the Wyvern's stuff there. In ny event, if I make it as a writer---and get those art classes I really need---I'll certainly include all the much-improved illustrations :)

2005-04-09 [liiga]: Yay congrats, again! And, btw, Elfwood is already back up. ;)

2005-04-09 [Paul Doyle]: Elfwood's back up. *puts foot in mouth* Ooopsie. Me bad :P

2005-04-10 [Sunrose]: Paul: why didn't you just export this page? @.@

2005-04-10 [Paul Doyle]: [Sunrose] I got a weird string that messed up the link and broke it up. I got a lot of "%" characters between the spaces, because of the apostophe (') marks.

2005-04-10 [Sunrose]: Ah, makes sense then :)

2005-04-10 [the anonymus]: hey... nice frames you have on the colored pics...

2005-04-10 [Paul Doyle]: Thanks :) They're actually cheap document frames from Wal-Mart *is not a starving artist, but is bargain-basement* US $2 per frame, everyday low prices at Wal-Mart :3

2005-04-12 [Paul Doyle]: R. Williams is the man!

2005-04-12 [Savien]: Good luck Pauly. If you want illustrators, maybe you should host a contest, and see who can render characters closest to your vision of them. If the images are quality enough, a publisher might go for an unknown.  Just a suggestion if you didn't wish to do it yourself. (I happen to like your dragons, and anthros) What do you color with by the way?

2005-04-12 [Savien]: *suddenly remembers to watch this page*

2005-04-12 [Paul Doyle]: Prismacolors only, at the moment. I would like to branch out into markers and paints, yet I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. Jak'edrac is 99% what I imagine him to be. (Non-goofy, genetically flawed anthro-dragons come in much later in the novel series, during a very dark time of desperation). The Yourubi (the alien hermaphroditic creatures, whose name I am thinking of trademarking) are slightly dragonlike looking and are mostly accurate. I have a very good idea of what the humans look like, but it's just getting the facial details correct that's the tricky part (and currently hands and faces are my major stumbling point).

2005-04-12 [Paul Doyle]: Regarding the contests: I ran one contest on Elftown, and it was a total fiasco. *shudders* I believe I have the basic innate talent to become a decent illustrator, if only I'd take classes and brand the human form on my subconscious. I am doing illustrations because (1) It satisfies the unrepentant inner narcissist; (2) If the novel was a success and they needed storyboard art for a movie, I would have references at the ready. It would KILL ME to have Jak'edrac look totally different than he really looks. After what the CGI people did to the "Dungeons and Dragons" movie, making the red and gold dragons look exactly the same (and making them bestial instead of sentient)

2005-04-12 [Paul Doyle]: I sure as hell don't want to have CGI people ruining the dragons from my novel sequence. (Jul'eweisa, the dragoness, is supposed to be plainer looking than her mate. Yet she is actually much more powerful than Jak'edrac, despite smaller size and build). (3.) I like to draw, started drawing actively as a way of coping with my mother's passing in June 2003, and I've continued ever since.

2005-04-12 [Paul Doyle]: Sorry about that pseudo-rant @__@

2005-04-12 [Savien]: No problem. I have prismacolors, and just can't seem to get the bright colors everyone else does with them. Maybe I'm not pressing hard enough. :P  As a general piece of advise, choose art instructors carefully. As someone who has had a few art classes, and learned absolutely nothing useful in 90% of them, I believe a carefully chosen book could teach someone more about drawing anatomy than most classes could. Most teachers only choose to teach their favorite method, instead of encouraging a student to explore options and find something they can use. (plus I found the D&D movie to be a huge let down. The beholders looked cool though)

2005-04-12 [Paul Doyle]: [liiga] has given me a link to http://www.saveloomis.org/ , but for some reason I can't download the books even though I have a very seldom used BitTorrent, and the Adobe 7.0 PDF reader. I get a script error when I try to download the stuff via BitTorrent via Adobe PDF 7.0, to my hard drive. Maybe it's just the firewall, the antivirus program and the two anti-spyware programs sparring against each other in disharmonious cacophony, but one way or another, the texts aren't saving to the hard drive o__O  I have saved a number of ET figure references ;-) But I have yet to use them. Essentially I just need to get off my butt and start free-sketching to my heart's content.

2005-04-12 [Savien]: Hands are hard to learn. I did it by endlessly sketching my own, in various poses. For faces, I use a simple graph I learned from the one talented art teacher I ever met. Oh, and about 29 years of practice.....you'd think I'd be better. :P

2005-04-12 [liiga]: *chimes in* Use the forc- er, jpg.'s! Use the jpg.'s!!

2005-04-13 [Paul Doyle]: The Force, The Furrrce, the .jpegs and .gifs and the rest . . . I shall use them all. I will not get into a .TIFF over finding my away across the bitmap :-B

2005-04-13 [Paul Doyle]: (am I not a dork?)

2005-04-13 [liiga]: *shows up all TIFFy* Paul, I am your... *bursts into laughter*

2005-04-16 [Paul Doyle]: You are my Digital Art Muse-Goddess? More than likely ;-)

2005-04-16 [Paul Doyle]: *currently releasing lots of tax-related stress by taking a hot bath and brainstorming ideas for Novel Two. Will make a wiki for that, and post a link on the next wiki-change :)

2005-04-16 [Paul Doyle]: This is the link: PaulyNovelTwoInDevelopment

2005-04-25 [Paul Doyle]: I will start posting illustrations here (in a linked sub-wiki) ASAP, along with developmental sketches for Book Two, many of them from 1990-91 when I wrote the first 120 pages of Book Two without being prepared.

2005-05-12 [Spirit Queen]: cool i hope u sell alot of books

2005-05-12 [Paul Doyle]: Thanks . . . now I need to get off my tushie and start getting assertive about trying to sell the novel, and hopefully the five-novel series as well :)

2005-07-20 [Paul Doyle]: Finally got the registration certificate this morning, which means I have absolutely no reservations about getting published, now that I have legal protection. Yay for expedient government delivery? :P

2005-07-20 [liiga]: woohoo! *standing ovation*

2005-07-21 [Paul Doyle]: Thanks, [liiga]. ^_^ Now that I've started Novel Two, I have to get published :)

2005-10-18 [Paul Doyle]: Pauly's Novel Pictures

2006-07-06 [Paul Doyle]: Quick information: novel sequence title, "Telkar Chronicles" is a working title, which means the title isn't finalized until negotiations have been made with the publisher (whichever that may be.) Also, "Telkar" is a docked form of "Telkarsky", which was the family name until Phil's grandfather shortened it after an unnerving incident involving the great-greatgrandfather who had powers of his own. Overall, the family name thing is a very small theme. Ultimately, it means Phil Telkar is from a very dysfunctional family :P

2006-07-06 [nokaredes]: ...aren't we all? :P

2006-07-06 [Paul Doyle]: Show me one that isn't. :PPPPPP

2006-09-25 [Paul Doyle]: Just added a new subwiki: Pauly Book Character Meme Questionaire which just might reveal a little more about the first novel, without revealing too much. (Pauly the Anthro-Dragon is not in the novel, by the way!)

2007-01-11 [Paul Doyle]: I am currently finishing a rough draft of a query letter which I will be sending to publishers. If you are on my friends list, please give feedback and tell me where I could improve the letter? Much appreciated. I'll have it posted in a friends-only diary post.

2007-01-11 [Paul Doyle]: (And yes, at long last I am now trying to get the thing published! :P)

2007-01-11 Paul Doyle: test (this is Pauly)

2007-01-11 [Paul Doyle]: For those who can read this diary entry, here ya go. Please give me feedback through private messages. <diary:897439> Also, this page may now be commented upon by not logged in users who have the option to put their name next to their comments.

2007-03-21 [Fizban]: <_<...ummm

2007-03-21 [Paul Doyle]: Offensive outside-Elftown comment deleted. Seems to be one of those automatically generated spam comments that tend to clog up people's website guestbooks. Yes, I think sexy Asian women are alluring. No, I don't need a porn-site link provided to me. Therefore, bye-bye to the spam. Running a spyware scan, not that I think it'll make a difference.

2007-03-24 [Paul Doyle]: Apparently these exported wikis are easily spammed. I'll preserve this comment, report on the "Bugs" forum, and ask if anything can be done about it.

2007-03-25 [nokaredes]: ...lol! A good argument for not exporting wikis...

2007-03-25 [Fizban]: I never export mine lol..and now I have a good excuse...

2007-03-25 [Paul Doyle]: Well, exporting the wiki is part of my platform to (hopefully) sell this book and its forthcoming series (there will be five novels, in a grand epic). Also, I think this ability to be not logged in and comment is part of [Hedda]'s central strategy to bring in more people to Elftown, which is a very good thing. Of course, with enhanced features there's bound to be problems along the way. so I reported this on the ET Bugs forum, leaving those stupid porn-site links up so maybe something could be done to keep those spammers away from any part of ET.

2007-03-25 [nokaredes]: ...they're not up anymore...

2007-03-26 [Paul Doyle]: [Hedda] helped out. I didn't remove those last two spamming comments :)

2007-12-14 [Hendercrazy]: Congrats on your achievements thus far Paul! Keep it up! :) - Derek

2007-12-14 [Paul Doyle]: Thank you :) I honestly need to get my butt in gear once the holidays are over (and maybe even sooner). It's true that real-life things have priority, and I think I did the right thing by shelving all of this stuff temporarily when my family needed me the most---but I can't let this go for too much longer.

I very much support the idea of having one's feet on the ground and one's head in the clouds at the same time. I constantly, consistently try to be this way. But sometimes this twinned ambition can take its toll, and I guess I needed a chiropractor there for a while. Stretching to the clouds while keeping your feet on the ground can cause lower back pain and other discomfort, after all. :p

2007-12-14 [Hendercrazy]: Yes. :P The art of balance is definitely a tough thing my friend. :)

2008-07-10 [Paul Doyle]: Currently re-reading a second copy of this novel (printed out about ten days ago) and re-learning the finer details so I'm that much more knowledgeable when I am talking to agents/publishers. So much has happened in my life over the past few years, and I am sorry I've neglected and short-changed this project for so long :/

2009-02-15 [Paul Doyle]: All right, the unsolicited-query approach did NOT work. Not quite an "epic fail", mind you, but it's certainly time to start looking for literary agents. I'm just trying to be real. An agent gets a cut of your royalties, obviously, but without a literary agent it's damn hard to get noticed in the world of commercial publishing. Yes, part of me does see dollar signs. A lot of them. Captitalism runs deep in my bloodstream, though I'll be damned if I get so greedy and foolish I become a sellout. So sue me.

2009-02-17 [Hendercrazy]: Have you ever thought about self-publishing?

2009-02-17 [Paul Doyle]: I have, but in too many instances self-publishing is a scam because often you have to pay exorbitant fees . . . and since you have no professional representation (the literary agent) nobody really notices , and you wind up with a good part of your garage filled with unsold copies of your novel, even after your friends and family have already bought some (out of sympathy?) and you've made endless attempts to get the local bookstores to sell them.

Between subsidy publishing (which is only good if you are a college professor and you have a buit in audience---your students---to buy your expensive textbooks) and places like www.lulu.com, I'm frankly skeptical of self-publishing.

If worse comes to worse and I absolutely cannot get this stuff sold the old-fashioned way, then I'll consider the alternatives (including online publishing, which I absolutely do not want to do). I don't give up to easily, unless logic and reality says otherwise.

2009-02-18 [Hendercrazy]: You just have to get really extremely creative, advertise and slowly build a fan following. There are places that offer POD (print on demand) and you can sell your book in their online store; so there's no overhead/inventory to sit on. Granted, you likely won't make much money unless you happen to sell a mother load. The fact is, nowadays, you have to build up a body of work to get noticed and if you never get to that point... then you'll always just have your very first book stored away on file at home never to be read by anyone. Besides, having two or three finished books printed and physically in your hands make for a great presentation about you being a serious writer. Just think on that for a bit. ;)

2009-02-18 [Paul Doyle]: That is good advice! Thank you. :-D

2009-03-18 [organicparadox]: meticulous nature pays off when it comes to documentation. that's a big accomplishment man, grats

2009-03-21 [Paul Doyle]: Thank you . . . now if only I could have less real-life worries to contend with (not the usual worries, but stuff like bill collectors, Kathy's unemployment killing us in the wallet, my not succeeding at landing a secondary job at work, shutoff notices and threats of eviction/repossession, etc etc etc), so I can truly get my sorry ass in gear. I'm not trying to be overly whiny, but that's precisely why I've moved slower than great-granny in Wal-Mart at 7 AM :P

2010-03-06 [Paul Doyle]: The bottom pictures were uploaded through this page, merely as a convenience, but are still relavant since they are sketch ideas for possible future illustrations.

2010-03-06 [Paul Doyle]: . . . and, in regards to the 21 March 2009 entry: fuck this bullshit (much of which is still happening), full speed ahead!

2010-05-01 [Hendercrazy]: Keep at it Paul! :)

2010-05-02 [Paul Doyle]: Getting onto Chapter 3, Page 67 overall, here in a few minutes. I really ought to revamp this entire wiki, as well as make an equivalent on Facebook, until I do in fact open my own website. Earlier I took a few related photos, so as much as I question the usefulness of Elftown (given the decline in artistic members and so forth) I really ought to update here, as well.

2011-07-17 [Mortified Penguin]: When can I expect to receive my signed copy of Book One?

2011-07-17 [Paul Doyle]: Patience, Padawaan . .. (Page 346 of Book Two now, though I've been on a minor hiatus of late due to it being summer, and also because of real-life concerns)