Rhys Oberon Archives | Tellest

Protected: Newsletter Exclusive Short Story – Beauty and Darkness

Michael DeAngelo — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 11:30:05 +0000

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Blog Post – Final Tales of Tellest: Volume 2 Shorts Are Nearing Completion

Michael DeAngelo — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 15:15:12 +0000

Howdy!

I’ve got a the number one trick to write a lot, and I’m going to share it with you now. All you have to do is (potentially) slip a disc in your back, and then you’ll get steroids that keep you up at night. No, I don’t recommend it, but it hasn’t come without some ridiculous benefits.

At midnight on Sunday morning, I woke up and knew that it wasn’t going to be a good time to try and head back to sleep. Once I was sure there was a decent amount of snoring happening around me (I won’t say whether Rhianna or Luna is louder), I decided to retreat to my writing nook and write until I felt tired enough to nod off again. By the time two o’clock hit, I was already at my word count for the day. I looked back at my word counts over all the projects that we’ve had over the last year or so, and realized that I could have my best writing day on record if I just did a little over double my word count. Because hey, if I can write that much in two hours of a midnight session, what’s to stop me over the course of a whole day? Other than video games, The Witcher, cleaning up the house when I felt like I could stand, and trying to take the dogs on a walk.

Well, the good news is… mission accomplished!

After securing my highest word count of the 2020s thus far (as far as I know), we’re incredibly close to finishing this latest short story. It’s almost a two-parter in a way: a philosophical, thoughtful opening, and a wacky, unexpected close that I think work well together. With luck, I’ll be done with this story by the end of the month, if not the end of the week. Then, I just have to turn my attention to one more Rhys story before I help Rhianna with Shadow Serenade.

While we’re waiting for all that, I figured it would be a good time to return to the first of these Rhys stories. It’s been four months since I finished the first in the trilogy, Shards of Time, and with this one coming out soon, it’s nice to revisit. Newsletter subscribers were able to see the story early, so if you were waiting for a reason to subscribe, besides free books, that short story might do the trick for you.

My hope is that by this time next week, I’ll be ready to preview the second story for newsletter subscribers while I’m working on the final Rhys story for Tales Volume 2. After that, it’s just one more story to go before the second anthology is ready to send out into the world. Then it’s a quick pivot to Quantum Quest again before resuming Wild Magic.

It’s looking like it’s going to be a busy first half of the year, and we have a few other little projects going on, like a children’s book (which newsletter subscribers saw early as well), and most likely the launch of the Quantum Quest expansion, after so many years of it being ready and just waiting for the right time to debut it (which sadly hasn’t come yet due to COVID). There’s a chance that’s a back half of the year project, however.

There’s also some other things you might notice changing.

Mike Takes Marketing Advice

So, I feel like I’ve got the writing side of storytelling down pat, slow pace notwithstanding. But one of the things that I’ve always maintained I’ve had a problem with is the marketing. Well, I’ve recently received some advice on how to tackle that, so you’ll likely see a few things changing in the newsletter and here on the site. It won’t be so much as to be distracting, but will help to integrate the other things that are going on a little bit. One of the things that I’m supposed to be doing is clapping myself on the back a little bit whenever good news comes my way from other people, which I have a hard time doing for some reason. I almost have to hype myself up to be my own hype man, which is strange considering how often I’m promoting the work of others.

So, in an effort to try and change for the better in that regard, I’d like to share two articles related to D’Aprile’s Fools.

The first is an interview that I was lucky enough to have with my good friend, Kev Gallagher. He and I have been best friends for a while, and he is beginning to promote books and other projects the way I promote fantasy. I wanted to help him get the word out about his gigs, so it was a little bit of a “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” sort of situation. The good news is, there’s perhaps no one out there who would be able to conduct this interview that didn’t know as much about the behind-the-scenes as Kev, so it went off without a hitch.

I also submitted my book to Outstanding Creator Awards, and ended up receiving a glowing review for D’Aprile’s Fools. I cannot get over the kind words, and am going to throw some of that onto the Amazon product page for the book before the end of the week.

One of the other things that my marketing expert recommended was trying to integrate everything a bit better. That means you’ll see a bit of overlap from the newsletter on the website, because I’m going to start using the newsletter to blog a bit. You’ll still get all the exclusive bits, but the blog will encourage readers to sign up.

I’m also going to work on integrating some media buttons in the newsletter from here on out. That’s because Tellest is everywhere, and I don’t show it off in all its forms as much as I should. Part of that means keeping up with those social media accounts a little better, which may mean looking to collaborate with someone to help me out, but we’ll see where that all ends up.

The good news is that there will be more places to follow me if you prefer to look at art on Instagram, or pin new fantasy items on Pinterest.

And as we move forward with other little bits of marketing improvements, you’ll likely see some other projects begin to pitch ahead.

Riddle and Reward!

Did you know that Tellest newsletter subscribers are able to participate in pretty frequent giveaways? It’s true. Every week or so, I run a riddle in the newsletter, and subscribers can answer it for an entry into a giveaway for a $5 Amazon gift card, or a 4-pack of Tellest posters. Just one more reason to consider subscribing if you haven’t already!

We’ve got more than a few things on the way, so keep on your toes for next week. There’s likely to be a big blog post coming your way!

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Entity Sigil – Voidwalker

Michael DeAngelo — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 11:45:52 +0000

Hey there! Well, we’ve come to the end of the road, but as you may know by now, there’s never really an end—only a new path to find. Still, as it stands, we’re waiting to start that path anew. Before then, however, it’s time to look at the last sigil that Francois put together for us! We’ve taken a lot of different ideas together for this set, as you know doubt know. We’ve had regional sigils, and ancient ones, and today is no different. Well, it’s a bit different. If you’ve been following us for a while, you may be aware of Rhys Oberon, who nicked a orb from the void and ended up getting sent scattered through time.

Rhys is technically no longer alone. Besides Nyrshia and Vedas, he’s met countless other people in his journey, including in the massive and foreboding place known as the Living Dungeon. Together, they make up the voidwalkers. They are people who can move through time, as well as their allies.

As the void has to deal with time, we gave this sigil an hourglass symbol within a purple orb, which represents the orbs that you’ll find in the void that house various timelines. It’s on top of a grey field for the sake of simplicity.

The tapestry for the voidwalkers might seem a little silly. As it stands, there is no standing army, and no one to really wield a tapestry. Nyrshia is not necessarily one for grand gestures or even decorations.

The tapestry trio is in much the same boat. You wouldn’t see anyone wield this as a battle standard unless multiple people leveraged the power of the void to bring together those folks who Rhys met on his journeys. Hmm…

A more traditional canvas flag could fly above a mighty vessel, but how exactly would that work? Rhys doesn’t exactly move through time with anything bigger than his friend Virgil.

Now this is more likely. I could see Rhys beginning to paint this symbol in the timelines he had visited to verify that he’s crossed back over into a familiar one. That way he can determine if anything he’s done has had an effect. Of course, that requires him to go forward in time rather than backward, but that both is and is not neither here nor there.

It’s very confusing.

Finally, you can’t expect me not to give you a little parting gift in the shape of one last phone background!

This wraps up our second set, but once more, we truly don’t believe this is the end of the line. We’ve worked with Francois plenty, and if there’s anything you can bet on, its that we’ll utilize his awesome talents again in the future. Stay tuned!

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Cover Art – Tales of Tellest, Volume Two

Michael DeAngelo — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 10:45:20 +0000

Howdy folks. It has been over two years since we’ve done a cover reveal, and that means it’s time to make amends! One of the only book covers that we weren’t really prepared for by the time the 2016 Kickstarter ended was the Tales of Tellest, Volume Two short story collection. By the time we had enough stories ready to get the cover done, it was hectic as anything getting the time coordinated with Leo to make the cover happen. So now, we’re giving you a behind the scenes of how we brought the cover to life.

We started with a sketch on our side of things. Rhianna drew up a version of the piece that ultimately inspired Leo’s finished version.

What we wanted to do was show some duplicity in the cover. Because what Rhys has done is effectively screw up time, we wanted to show the same tree in two different time periods… or perhaps its the same time, but just one version of time has been ruined.

Leo brought it to life in a very interesting way, and as we neared the end, he changed up a lot of old art that we’d received from other artists over the years for the sake of consistency. The faces in the shards all represent a short story from the anthology. Rhys, of course, is front and center on the front cover.

So here’s the final piece. We changed a few things, like one of the characters on the front, Rhys’s eyebrows, and the technique used to make the background work. I think I’ve talked about it before, but we absolutely love Leo’s illustrative work, and every now and then we get a smidge more photobashing than ends up working for the sake of consistency. Now we have a cover that has that Tellest feeling you love!

Hopefully it won’t be too long until our next big book cover project, but we’ll see!

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Character Art – Rhys

Michael DeAngelo — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 11:45:31 +0000

Greetings fantasy fans! We’ve got a cool little treat for you today. It’s not often that we look at the characters from the shorter stories, but we’re changing that up over the next month or so. We’re starting with one of our more important characters, as far as narratives go.

As is usually the case, we start off with some poses.

From there, we were given our first sketch. Here is where you can see that Rhys has control over gravity, since the orb isn’t actually resting in his hands.

After that, Hozure touched it up a bunch, and you can also see a small sneak peek at an upcoming character piece within the orb. We changed it up for the final piece though…

Here is Hozure’s work in all its glory. I’d like to thank him for his always amazing work. Rhys looks fantastic!

We’ll be back in a couple weeks with the next short story character. Keep your eyes peeled!

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