Micah Chaim Thomas (Writer. Artist. Difficult to explain.) honoured me with some dragon art loosely inspired by my fantasy novel in progress.
** Yes, I added the “love” part, but giving a person a dragon is a form of love, so I don’t apologise.
The talented and enigmatic Micah Chaim Thomas (@micah_chaim on Twitter) recently deemed me worthy of receiving dragons from him. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to deserve this honour (since I don’t have a dog).
The first challenge was to explain the dragons in my book without having to share my first draft prose. (Yes, I know I’m on the tenth draft, but I rewrote so much that most of the scenes aren’t.)
Big, scaly, wings, claws. They’re not evil, but they’re not fond of humans. And they have oppressive minds. You meet a dragon and you want to worship it.
Somewhere in the middle of explaining I got an effusive “yes!”.
I don’t know what it was a response to, but I fondly imagine it meant my dragons are the definitive dragons, the dragons to rule all other dragons as well as cats and chickens. (If you try to tell me otherwise I will be sad.)
Some days we need all the encouragement we can get.
Then I had to describe my main character.
That shouldn’t have been hard, because the second paragraph of my draft introduces her. With a cringe (first draft prose and all), I copied it and DMd it to Micah.
At least, I thought I did.
Then it dawned on me that instead of embarrassingly sharing it with a friend I’d mortifyingly tweeted it for the whole world to see. (Okay, probably only one or two of my followers were watching, but that’s bad enough.)
Delete!
In the 20 seconds it took me to delete the four tweets, no one liked or responded to them, so I thought I was safe.
Not so. Some hours later I got a response to an unrelated tweet that showed without a doubt I’d been too slow.
And not only had the person who saw the character description not run screaming, but they also wanted to read more about this person. Shock! Horror! Delight?
I won’t lie. It scared me but it was a huge thrill.
At my request, Micah applied artistic license to the vague descriptions I’d given him of my book, and I had barely looked away when the incredible images you see in this post started pouring in.
I love them so much.
I asked how long they took him. Twenty-five years plus a few hours, he said.
Micah Thomas was born in North Carolina, and moved frequently throughout his childhood and teenage years, staying with relatives and friends in a series of apartments, houses, shacks and sometimes on the streets in West Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Mississippi, California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Washington and Arizona.
He’s made a living as a farmhand, bookseller, welder, ditch digger, door-to-door screen door seller, fence painter, landscaper, busboy, waiter, dishwasher, barista, HotTopic retail weirdo, busker, homeless beggar, thug and enforcer, janitor, screenplay writer, call center rep, video game tester, lawyer, project manager, program manager, poet, management consultant, artist, and genealogist.
From homeless high school dropout to several law degrees and a nonlaw day job, Micah has maintained devotion to creative writing. The Little Demons Inside was his first novel, preceded by a collection of short stories called Evidence of Changes.
You can find his books on Amazon and his art on Redbubble.
Do you have any stories about sharing an early draft, accidentally or otherwise?
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Such a lovely gift!
I know! I’m thrilled.
Wonderful, I love the vibrant colours 🙂
Aren’t they great! I said, “I like purple and orange” and look what he came up with. 🙂
It’s amazing what artists can do with our descriptions 😀 I hope I can find one as talented as Micah to interpret my crazy book cover ideas!
Yep, artists are amazing. I have so much respect for what they do. I look forward to seeing what an artist does with your crazy book cover ideas (and to reading your book, of course)!
Like you, I would be both honored and overawed to receive such a gift — but Micah is undoubtedly wise in choosing you as his muse and recipient for those dragon images. Because he knows they will keep you going through the revision process without allowing you to linger in that realm too long: dragons will only stay in their caves or castles for so long before they take wing. Personally, I can’t wait until your dragons are unleashed on the world, and most specifically, me.
Unleash the dragons! Honestly, I feel like I’m getting close. For the first time in ages, the story almost entirely makes sense from start to end. Some of the scenes still need work, but a lot of them are feeling good. And when I’m happy you’ll be one of the first people I share it with (assuming you want to be :)).
What glorious images. I love the colors and expressions. What an honor. I received one fan art response to a book and it was an honest to God thrill. Congrats on your mistake – you acquired a few fans.
That does sound thrilling! You know someone loves your work when they use it to create beautiful things.