Some of you may remember that in Japan and in general around Far East there is a “literary” genre that is quite succesful, the illustrated novel. There area great deal (Fujimi Shobo is one of the most famous publishers of these books), and some notable titles are Slayers, Majutsushi Orphen, and Kino no Tabi (some of these have been also translated to English).

Well, what has that to do with a project of mine (no cheating: don’t turn to the Projects page)? A number of years ago (10 to be precise) I and my twin brother decided to write a horror novel which was inspired by classical horror novelists and also anime. While I was writing it we got the idea of making an illustrated novel. After many attempts my brother found an amazing artist who graciously agreed to work for us. You can see an example below (showing the main character, Yumiko Hasegawa):

If you are interested and want to take a look, the project has its own web page, http://www.stealsaga.net: it provides additional information on the art and the novel itself. If you end up there, please don’t forget to leave a comment.

It only needed a couple of adjustments in the drawings’ captions, so I made it available for everyone last night. All I need to do now is to wait and see the reactions…

Yes, plenty of S.T.E.A.L. related work going on. It’s understandable though, as the release time getting near…

And on a related note, the S.T.E.A.L. web page is finally live! But since I wasn’t satisfied with this, I also released a new snapshot… Comments are welcome!

Notable changes include:

• New dialogue between Jim and Satsuki at the start of chapter 4. This should show better that Jim is and will be an important character during the story development;
• Text revisions throughout chapter 4;
• A whole new part of the chatper 4 story, that can be considered now roughly halfway.

On a related topic, I’m still working on the stealsaga domain, and I think it should be ready at least in alpha form in a week or two.

Too’s skill is evident.

Work continues on the text, and if I can I will try to publish a new snapshot by tomorrow, or next week. I’m finally getting to the parts I want to write, btu I found that connecting those to the flow of narration requires more work than I thought. Also, I’ve registered the domain stealsaga.net in order to give a proper place to the novel. I’m still unsure how to design and implement it, though.

• Interpolated drawings. This should reduce the pixelation effect, but it will make them more blurry. I can’t fix this until Too sends me the actual art;
• Revisions throughout the text, to remove some parts where Yumiko acted out of character;
• A new part in New York, preparing the background for the more action-oriented parts that will follow;

Still TODO:

• Add more dialogue between Satsuki and Jim Clark, as the latter is an important character and now it looks underdeveloped;
• Revise some older parts that I haven’t looked at since they were written;
• Fix the question marks. This is actually a Kile bug with quotations;
• Of course, go on with the story!

I’m also trying to make a S.T.E.A.L. page, but I need to think about a design that’s not graphic-intensive. Suggestions are appreciated.

On a different matter, the summer has been quite productive for S.T.E.A.L., as I’ve been writing quite a lot, and I set an internal deadline for completion (31st October), while text revision will take me more time before putting up the finished work. I’ll be uploading a new snapshot soon.
I also have some photos from my week-long cultural trip in Toscana and Umbria, I’ll put them online as soon as I scan them (I had to use a single-use camera).

As “parting gift” I uploaded a new snapshot of S.T.E.A.L., which includes Too’s fantastic art. Take a look, I hope you appreciate it. As usual, comments are welcome!