#< by mercedes lackey

[bookwyrm-art-stuff]

Someone: *refers to Viktor as the herald (normal, reasonable title which suits him well)*

Me: *violent flashbacks to a book I read and frantic drawing of parallels (the ease with which they're drawn is frightening)*

How am I supposed to concentrate on the plot when the women look like this

[prokopetz]

Look, I'm a big fan of genre emulation as a design goal in tabletop RPGs, and that's definitely an area where a lot of popular games could stand for some rigorous criticism, but we're not going to get anywhere if we keep pretending that the entire canon of Western fantasy fiction is functionally identical to The Lord of the Rings. If I see an analysis of Dungeons & Dragons through the lens of genre emulation that doesn't even mention fucking Conan the Barbarian – much less any more recent sword and sorcery media – I'm going to assume there's nothing of value here, and I've never been wrong yet.

[archerinventive]

"Adventure, yeah. I guess that’s what you call it when everybody comes back alive." – Mercedes Lackey

Celebrating this MerMay day with one of my all-time favorite mermaid inspired pieces to date.

A huge thank you to my friends for helping me with this shoot back in 2020. :) You know they truly love you when they’re willing to jump into a river with you first thing in the morning. ♥️

Wishing you all a warm and safe summer weekend.

With @lexi.the.first @steven.the.second @starkraves & Hanna V. (IG)

[thefugitivesaint]

Jody A Lee, 'The Gates of Sleep', ''Spectrum'' #10, 2003 front cover for Mercedes Lackey's book of the same name. It is book 2 (out of, I believe, 17) of her Elemental Masters series. It's not a great scan but you get what you get and you don't get upset.

[joysweeper]

A gorgeous commission I got from @spindlewit last year, showing Nyara with Need in the old tower, contemplating her options. I'm still so happy with this.

It's in the style of the art from the Mage Winds covers, though also Need is depicted there as the disturbing presence that Elspeth sees her as having. Nyara's sitting on one of Skif's tunics.

[marzipanandminutiae]

to the helpful bookstore employee who cheerfully called out, "she's in the horror section!" when I said "they don't even have any Shirley Jackson?!" to a friend over the phone (in General Fiction) (also in a rather disgusted tone):

just know that that will forever be one of the moments my brain replays to embarrass me as I'm trying to fall asleep and I am so sorry

[isnt-it-pretty]

Update on my Last Herald-Mage cross stitch pattern!

I made this post with my original version, but I decided the pattern was too small, so I remade it larger and more detailed!

Like before, I took the embroidery from Vanyel's Whites in Magic's Promise.

Then, after making the pattern (and I'm skipping that whole process because it was A Lot™), I had to choose colours, so I pulled out all the shades that might work and got to testing!

Then I picked two options I liked and tested them out. I chose the more true gold even if it doesn't match the art exactly, because I figure gold would have been a colour Whites would likely be embroidered with over a type of bronze.

And thus, a pattern was born! (Original image for reference)

I'm test stitching it now. Will report back 🫡

Thank you to those on The Last Herald-Mage discord server for your opinions as I struggled through this process!

[catraafterthewar]

👀

Based on that tumblr post.

[marlynnofmany]

One delightful thing about being a writer is when you get to make references to your own stuff.

The new space shanty sung by one character turns out to be based on something that happened to the other recently. And the same song will probably be years-ago history in the thing I'm going to write next week.

I always loved that sort of thing in the books I grew up reading. "OMG the ghost in this one scene is the main character from that other trilogy! And these other characters are reading a history about the stuff that happened in the first books! I am going to read this very carefully."

It's pretty awesome to be able to do bits of that same thing in my own writing. Even if I'm the only one who ever gets some of the more obscure references, I'm having a great time with them.

[nightmaskart]

Herald Mags

[mercedeslackeyblog]

Friend: How goes book writing? Me: Enjoyable but interrupted by research

[glorious-spoon]

when i was a kid i read more or less constantly - i went around with at least three books on my person at all times, well before ereaders were a thing. then i went to college, and then grad school, and had kids, and discovered fanfiction (not necessarily in that order) and the number of books i read declined sharply due to lack of time and mental energy to focus on long-form fiction. and also ao3.

the past few years, i've been making more of an effort to get back into reading original fiction, which is great - i've read forty-something books this year, i'm discovering new authors that i enjoy and revisiting old favorites, it's fantastic.

unfortunately the latter has made me realize just how goddamn picky i've gotten about prose as an adult. when i was a kid i'd read just about anything. now i read a single awkwardly structured sentence on the first page, and that's it. i'm out. and it turns out that so many of the beloved books of my adolescence are better in my memory than they are in reality.

[iamnotshazam]

me, opening to the first page of Magic's Pawn: "oh boy, Talia's story was like a cup of hot chocolate with occasional bittersweet chunks, to make you appreciate the comforting sweetness of Valdemar and the Heralds all the more. I can't wait to see how this Vanyel kid fares."

200 pages later: "i want to get off mercedes lackey's wild ride"

[sbbarnes]

well, I just got polls and thought I would experiment with what that's like and now I regret my choices because now I actually want to know the real answers

(also I would personally choose Patricia C. Wrede as a gateway despite having been read Lewis and Tolkien before I turned seven on the grounds that Wrede was what made me want to read more of my own accord)

[gwydpolls]

Lucian's Library 5

Feel free to suggest never written books you wish you could read.