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We Can Dance

5/19/2025

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We Can Dance



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​We Can Dance
acrylic on wood panel
20 x 16 x .25 inches
This item is unframed 
(click on the image to purchase)

I say, we can dance, we can dance
Everything is out of control
We can dance, we can dance
We're doing it from pole to pole - MEN WITHOUT HATS

Everything is out of control...

Feels that way lately, doesn't it?

Avoiding the news makes me anxious.  Paying too much attention to it makes me sad.  Frustration emerges in my inability to have any great impact on any of it, though I continues to make efforts where I can.

But I will be doubly-dipped if I am going to let all that rob me of what joy each day can bring!  No, no, NO! 

We can dance - even if we aren't great dancers.  Even if it is out of character.   Maybe not as well as this Santa, who really has some moves!
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​About the art:  I'm continuing my exploration of incorporating the wood panel color and texture into paintings.  It feels very exciting to me ! For this one I began with a sketch and created a stencil to mask off the figure shape.  I taped the top and bottom and then put on a smooth coat of black gesso, preserving the wood for Santa's figure.  Then some painstaking pen and ink for all of the line work, and a tiny Posca Pen in white for the highlights.  Though a figure of this size and detail might seem tedious, it is actually quite meditative.  It requires full presence to be in control of every line - no mind wandering when using pen and ink on wood!  I'm delighted with this one - grinning every time I walk past it. :)

The May Reader Giveaway continues!  Please leave a comment on any blog post this month to be automatically entered.  The winner will be selected at random at the end of the month, and will receive a piece of original art in the mail - FREE!  Thanks to everyone who reads and comments...you provide valuable feedback, insights and confirmation that I am not a voice alone in the wilderness of the internet!  Hooray for all of you!  Thanks a million! xo
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Hitched to Everything

5/12/2025

12 Comments

 
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Hitched to Everything



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"Hitched to Everything"
oil on copper panel
12 x 12 x .25 inches
This item is unframed. (click on the image to purchase)


...when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe - JOHN MUIR
When we set down our (heavy, well-constructed) armor, drop our (towering, fortified, impenetrable) walls, leave our (perfected, fine-tuned)  hyper-vigilance on the curb, something happens.  We feel everything.

We feel the sensation of the wind on our skin, the sun on our faces, the sand in our shoes.  We feel the weight of a lifetime of learning the hard way, disappointment, disillusion and longing.  We feel the preciousness of the beings in our inner circles - the fleetingness of our time together, the moments we have remaining.  We feel the aging of our bodies, the softening of our minds, the finiteness of our energy.  

And the media we absorb - we feel how it impacts our moods, our thoughts, our sense of safety and wellbeing, our very dreams.
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And in that moment of emotional bombardment, in the wave of feeling and even potential overwhelm, we just may see clearly that we are hitched to everything.  We think of ourselves as separate, as individual, as apart.  But we are deeply interconnected with all of it.  All of it.

With this may come the realization, and the acceptance, that the present moment is truly all we can reasonably handle.  It is all we can feel, all we can see, all we can process.  It is a relief to set aside the future and the past for the small (tiny, infinitesimal) now.  Oh oh OH!  There it is.  All I can handle.  All I can be.

​About the art:  this is a paint-over of a piece I was quite dissatisfied with.  But as with so many things, that underpainting became the foundation and texture of something else.  Moving intuitively with a rubber wedge and palette knife, creating a meandering wander through a landscape of bare trees, laying on paint and carving back through it with the wedge to create texture and to expose the under layers.  Resisting the urge to overly define.  Allowing the eye to fill in the blanks.  Have I been here before? 

The May Reader Giveaway continues!  Leave a comment on any blog post this month to be automatically entered to win a piece of  original art - FREE!  I'm curious this month - how many of you listen to the blog?  How many read?  Is there something more (or less) you'd like to see?  Thanks in advance for your feedback - this community of readers is exquisitely wise and insightful, and your thoughts matter to me greatly. xo
12 Comments

Inward Exploration

5/5/2025

13 Comments

 
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Inward Exploration




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"Inward Exploration" - oil on copper panel, 9 x 12 inches.  This item is unframed. (click on the image to purchase)

“Exploration...no longer seemed aimed at some outward discovery; rather, it was directed inward...”
― David Grann, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
We just returned from nearly a week of exploring the Olympic Peninsula, where the cliffs were rugged, the sea-stacks massive and the tide-pools endlessly fascinating.  And you'd think all that exploration was outward, but it was not.

There is so much inward exploration when the body is moving outside of its element - whether scrambling down a steep cliff hanging on to a rope, jumping mollusk-covered rocks through the tides or climbing boulders to see what's around the next cove - the mind decides to explore as well.  Sometimes I think the only way to get outside of my daily thoughts is to put my body outside of its daily habitat.  I can think bigger, deeper, and more purposefully.
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And though our explorations are nothing like Colonel Percy Fawcett's many journeys to the Amazon jungle, I can see and understand why his inner self became more inward facing even as his body became more outward exploring.  Fawcett disappeared in the jungle, never to be heard from again.  Now, rest assured that is not our plan. No, no, no!  But it would be ok if some of my mental thought habits were left behind in the tides or suspended from a cliff.  I wouldn't miss those one bit.

About the art:  the wickedly glorious copper panel makes a return here, with a portrait embracing a limited color palette.  Beginning with a quick sketch with a brush laden with thinned oil paint, then working from the sunglasses outward.  Resisting the urge to overly separate shoulder and hair (right side) from background so the focus remains on those dazzling spectacles and the adornment on her neck.  The sunglasses suggest she is outside, while her hidden eyes point to her inward focus.  The hair was created by carving back through wet paint with a tiny rubber wedge, allowing the copper substrate to come through as hair highlights.

The May Reader Giveaway continues!  Leave a comment on any blog post this month to be automatically entered to win a piece of original art - FREE!  And thanks so much to everyone who reads, comments and shares this blog.  I so appreciate each and everyone of you! xo
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Locked Rooms

4/28/2025

8 Comments

 
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Locked Rooms


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"Locked Rooms" acrylic on wood panel,  16 x 20 x .25 inches.  This item is unframed. (click on the image to purchase)

​I want to ask you, dear sir, as best I can, to have patience about everything that is still unresolved in your heart; try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms, like books written in a truly foreign language. Don’t look for the answers now: they cannot be given to you yet because you cannot yet live them, and what matters is to live everything. For now, live the questions. If you do, then maybe, gradually, without your realizing it, some far-off day you will live your way into the answer. - RAINER MARIA RILKE 

I am often very patient with others.  Not always, of course, but often.

I am not easily patient with myself.

Learning to love the questions themselves has been a big part of my journey the past couple of years,  Staring at the doors of those locked rooms and resisting the urge to grab a toolbox and remove the doors.  Instead, allowing all the time needed for the doors to open, or (heaven forbid) to remain closed.  Mustering up a bit of faith that what needs to be revealed shall be.  And what isn't brought into the light isn't meant to yet.
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​My impatience makes me feel awkward, clumsy, like this character perhaps.

It isn't the first time I've painted a young werewolf with a balloon.  It symbolizes something to me...in this case, I think the balloons might be joy, and the werewolf doesn't want to look at them in case they may disappear.  Joy can be elusive, especially since our brains are primed to look for trouble instead.  

Perhaps joy is yet a book written in a foreign language on some days.  But I plan to sit and wait, as patiently as one can, for the words to make sense.

About the art:  Something new for me this week.  Of course I have painted on wood panel before, but not with the objective of making the wood itself part of the art.  Beginning with a high quality wood panel (this one from Jacksons), I covered it with a good coat of clear varnish.  Once dry, I sketched the character on the wood, taped off the center section and added a coat of black gesso for the background.  The rest was a very patient labor of love with the smaller Uni Posca Paint Pens used in the same way as Rotring Tikky pens for pen and ink drawings.  Just black and white, simplicity and a bit of innocence.  The wood tone comes through in parts of the garment and body, warming up what might otherwise be a bit too stark.  This one makes me smile. 

Congratulations to Julie (aka Mighty Athena on Bluesky)!  Wonder Mike drew your name at random as winner of the April Reader Giveaway!  Send your mailing address to [email protected] and your prize will be in the mail!

​Thank you to everyone who commented in April.  Your participation means the world to me!  A new contest begins today - leave a comment on any blog post in the month of May to be automatically entered.

8 Comments

The Way We Look To Us All

4/14/2025

11 Comments

 
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The Way We Look To Us All




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The Way We Look To Us All
oil on copper panel
11 x 14 inches
This item is unframed
​(click on the image to purchase)



And I believe 
These are the days of lasers in the jungle 
Lasers in the jungle somewhere 
Staccato signals of constant information 
A loose affiliation of millionaires 
And billionaires and baby 


These are the days of miracle and wonder 
This is the long distance call 
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo 
The way we look to us all 
The way we look to a distant constellation 
That's dying in a corner of the sky 
These are the days of miracle and wonder 
And don't cry baby, don't cry 
Don't cry.  - PAUL SIMON
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Staccato signals of constant information ​are overloading my brain.  Keeping up with the daily chaos and search for good news, places to take action, things to be aware of, ways to protect ourselves, our finances, our friends, our neighbors, our freedoms....it is a big bundle of download complicated by a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires.  Though Simon's song was intended to communicate other issues of the time, it applies now.  Timeless, in a way, as so many great songs, books and works of art can be.

The art of seeing one another through this miasma of information is key, I think.  We have our public, social media faces and our private thoughts, sufferings and celebrations.  Seeing one another, seeing past the movie versions, connecting in an authentic way whenever and wherever we safely can will help us through this.

My brain is more and more often like that of a simple goldfish trapped in a helmet bowl.  It is the overwhelm, the chaos, the mis- and dis-information.    I'd love to hear how you're handling the information of the world, dear reader!

About the art:  oh, copper panel, it's so lovely, so dreamy, such a warm undertone to every new painting.  This one began with a simple sketch with very thinned oil paint and a brush.  I painted away the surroundings from the figure knowing the red would require many layers to achieve the depth I wanted.  I then moved to the inside, spending the most time on that unknowable fish - the details, the layers, those subtle soft shadows of blue/violet.  By placing the details largely in the center of the fish bowl, the eye is drawn into the painting. Helmet and figure painted more abstractly, allowing the eye to complete those details all on its own.  This piece is actually a very limited color palette painting, using green, red and white to create the bulk of the colors.  A bit of Gamblin Radiant Blue and a bit of Indian Yellow were added to finish out the details.

The April Reader Giveaway continues!  Leave a comment on any blog post this month to be automatically entered to win a piece of original art - FREE!  

Blogger and blog will be off on a big adventure next week!  The blog will return April 28th.  The winner for this month will be announced on May 5th, right here in the blog.  Hooray!
11 Comments

From The Outside In

4/7/2025

6 Comments

 
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From The Outside In



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​From The Outside In
oil on packaging paper
13 x 12 inches
This item is unmounted and unframed
(click on the image to purchase)


​That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality. - Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation
There is a lot of madness in the world right now.  And there are days where it feels a bit like that madness is trying to colonize all the places where joy resides.  The chaos and confusion and struggle and suffering wants to become the only reality.  Finding a way to balance attention to the outside issues with peace and joy on the inside is a daily practice now.

It helps me to imagine that outer chaos as a monster of sorts - something large and many limbed lurking and wanting to find a way in.  Do I want that living inside of me?  Heck no!  Ignore the fact that a blue tentacled creature draped around me might indeed make me look fabulous.  Future fashion?
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About the art:  well what do you know!  I have a video!   

(if you have trouble with the embedded video, here is a link to the same video on my YouTube channel: 

youtube.com/shorts/e0Odlsbnfsk?si=AP2R4hFTGr5oGAtn
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The April Reader Giveaway begins today!  Leave a comment on any blog post in the month of April to be automatically entered to win an original piece of art - FREE!
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Strange Canyon Road

3/31/2025

4 Comments

 
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Strange Canyon Road




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Strange Canyon Road
oil on canvas
12 x 24 inches.  
This item is unframed.  (click on the image to purchase)


The sun goes down, another dreamless night
You're right by my side
You wake me up, you say it's time to ride
In the dead of night
Strange canyon road, strange look in 
your eyes
You shut them as we fly, as we fly - Orville Peck



 Marigold and Marvin were often seen wandering down the strange canyon road in the dark - always searching, hunting, sometimes racing, flying - and sometimes very, very still.

Those times, the times the two were still, were unsettling. Two sets of intense eyes in the dark. Breathing synchronized. Two beings perfectly still, as if they were one.

Many tales are told of Marigold and Marvin, but this one I can say is surely true. I came upon them on that strange canyon road during one of the still times. They saw me, I saw them. But I wasn’t who or what they hunted that dark night, and so I walked on. I still get the chills thinking about it.  And I no longer walk that road at night.
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About the art - this piece was inspired by a session with the AI bot where I explored beasts and their riders.  Mostly the AI bot does not want to seat people on top of beasts - more like adjacent in the air or merging their legs and bodies. Quite surreal!  But for some reason it approves of bears and riders.  Who knew?  Beginning with a primed canvas panel, I roughed in the sketch with a brush laden with thinned oil paint.  Working from the faces outward, I began to add the layers.  Canvas panel likes to absorb the paint, so there are many layers and a couple of months spent on this piece to get the final vibrant colors.  A final layer of  impasto paint with a palette knife to get some white on white texture in her fur trimmed cloak.  And voila!

Congratulations to Charlynn T.!  Wonder Mike chose your name at random as winner of the March Reader Giveaway!  Thank you to everyone who commented - your participation, feedback, community and encouragement are a bright light in a wild world!  Thanks hugely!  A new contest begins next month. 
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Like A Snow Leopard Falling

3/24/2025

7 Comments

 
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Like A Snow Leopard Falling

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"Like A Snow Leopard Falling" - oil on Yupo,  12 x 19 inches.  This item is unmounted and unframed. (click on the image to purchase)

I recently viewed a video of a snow leopard.  It was chasing its prey (some sort of deer perhaps) and they both ran off the edge of a cliff...the leopard grabbed its prey and held on, I mean held on even as the two tumbled on rocks, over more edges, bouncing and careening to the bottom, where the leopard got to its feet with its jaws still firmly holding on to the other creature.

It was an unsettling video, but also amazing.  What living things can and will do in pursuit of something.  What can be survived in the pursuit of that thing.  What can be endured.  I imagine the snow leopard didn't even do the thing I would have done, which is to look up, pause and think whoa!  I was just waaaaaaay up there, and now I am down here and  ALIVE.


And in a way, I think artists are a bit like that snow leopard, falling in pursuit.
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Really, Lola?  Yep.  Indeed.  Hear me out.

We get this vision in our heads of what is possible.  Maybe just an idea of our own, maybe seeing what others have created or are working on.  And we pursue that idea - relentlessly.  Falling, careening, bouncing, suffering, but hanging on.  Piles of attempted paintings (or pages of words written, or crushed clay or wood pieces, whatever your art may be) and yet we don't pay that any mind - we just keep pursuing.  

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​I​t may take years.  We may feel injured (unmotivated, discouraged, disillusioned) along the way but inevitably we are back at it, trying again and again and again.  We get a little closer.  A little closer still.  And maybe we never actually get our teeth around that vision we're pursuing - but we can smell it, taste it, imagine it so clearly.

Abstract painting is like that, for me.  It is like a snow leopard falling - trusting I will land on my feet at the bottom with the thing in my two hands.  I'm still falling, by the way.  But never mind that - it is so close I can taste it.

​I'd love to hear what you're relentlessly pursuing!  Leave a comment below.  

About the art: beginning with a gesso-primed gallery-wrapped canvas, I pressed leftover wet paint palettes against the canvas over a period of weeks, never mind color, consistency or pattern.  This creates a lovely uncontrived texture and pops of unexpected color coming through the final piece.  Once thoroughly dry, I drew a rough sketch with a wet brush covered in thinned dark paint.  At this point I am not wedded to the composition, just exploring.  Working top to bottom with a palette knife, I applied paint in thick layers, allowing the colors to blend in some places and making sure to preserve a thin line of the dark under sketch at the border of each shape.  Once the neutral base layers were in, some drying time and then the pops of pinks and reds were added.  I carved back through the nearly dry paint with a chopstick, creating trails meandering down the canvas.  Walking away before my neat and tidy side can overwork the textures.

It's the final week to enter the March Reader Giveaway!  Leave a comment on any (or many) blog post (s) this month to be automatically entered.  Someone will win a piece of original art - FREE!
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Weltschmerz (World Weariness)

3/17/2025

8 Comments

 
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Weltschmerz


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"Weltschmerz" - oil on yupo, 15.5 x 18.5 inches.  This item is unmounted and unframed.

Like most great words for elusive emotions, this one is German. It’s a portmanteau of welt (“world”) and schmerz (“pain”), and it describes the displeasure we feel when reality doesn’t live up to our ideals and expectations. It’s also distinct from our other downbeat emotions. Unlike angst, which focuses our dissatisfaction inward, or ennui, which makes us listless, weltschmerz can be as rousing as it is troubling. Not only can the world be better, it should be better. - KEVIN DICKINSON

World weariness.  Sigh.  The world should be better.  

That sentence says it all, right there.  It should be better.
And I don't personally hold the power to make it better.  Not in big ways, not in broad brushstrokes, not in grand gestures.  Nope, I am just one voice.

But I am one of many, MANY voices, which, if raised together, CAN make it better.  There is also the power to make things better on a micro scale - one kindness at a time.  One conversation at a time.  One tiny protest at a time.  

I believe making art during difficult times is itself an act of protest.  Creators who refuse to be stifled, muffled, robbed of joy and hutzpah can and often do instill a sense of daring in others.  They can reach across and say I see you​ with the work.  
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Sam Yamauchi  ( www.samyamauchiart.com ) said it perfectly in a recent social media post - we need to keep the door to what can be open.

And Maria Popova, quoting the book Miss Leoparda, wrote shaken with disbelief but knowing that the most valiant way to complain is to create... OH!

I'd love to know what you're doing to complain valiantly, to open the door to what can be.  Leave a comment!

​About the art:  beginning with a pristine piece of yupo, and setting down washes of thinned paint.  I added thicker layers, then carved back through with a small rubber wedge and let those layers dry thoroughly.  The layers allow some excellent textures and raised patterns, something yupo is very good at enabling.  An entirely intuitive piece, painted with rubber wedge, chopsticks, fingers and paper towels.  Responding to color against color, harsh lines against softness, darks against lights.  Allowing the upside-downiness of it (sky below, oppressive heaviness above) to remain.  This one moves me.

The March Reader Giveaway continues!  Leave a comment on any blog post this month to be automatically entered to win a piece of original art - FREE!
8 Comments

Seeing and Feeling

3/10/2025

4 Comments

 
Picture
Seeing and Feeling



LISTEN to the blog by clicking the DOWNLOAD link above

"Seeing and Feeling" - oil on copper panel, 12 x 12 x .25. This item is unframed.  (click on the image to purchase)

One eye sees, the other feels.
― Paul Klee

I think perhaps the life of a human is much about learning both how to see and how to feel.  

For sure, the creative life is about seeing - colors, shapes, texture, line, composition, shadow, value, hue.  Seeing what others see in your work, in your words, in your vulnerabilities or your barriers.
And we learn to see what other artists see (or saw) in the world and how they portrayed it.  Seeing is half of painting.  Half of writing.  Half of creating.

But feeling...well, we boldly go where others may not be willing to, when we create from the depths of our wells.  The muse sends me often to illuminate those places where I might prefer to pass on by.  But there is light in those dark depths, and so I go there and (luckily for me) many of you roll along with me (or run ahead with flashlights - thank you!) and thus we are not alone in the dark.

The best bits are often when we see what we're feeling, and feel what we're seeing.  Epiphany, illumination and understanding ensue. 
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About the art:  copper panel makes exploration deeply satisfying, and this piece was no exception.  Beginning with a rough sketch with an acrylic paint pen directly on the copper, and slowly adding thinned layers of oil paint.  Working from that single eye outward and keeping the color palette very limited, I followed the paint as it moved.  With my perfectionist's hand tied behind my back, I pursued scratchy, rough emotion with chopsticks, rubber wedge, fingers and dripping brush.  Keeping the paint wet allows the copper to be easily exposed by dripping paint and by scratching/carving techniques.  This one moves me.  


​Hey you! (yep, I'm talking to YOU!) Guess where I am now?
​ On Bluesky ([email protected]) and Flashes (@wanderinglola)


Follow me over there for all the latest art,
musings, adventuring and malarkey.
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The March Reader Giveaway continues!  Leave a comment on any blog post this month to be automatically entered to win a piece of original art absolutely free!  Winner will be announced on March 31st right here in the blog.  Ready?  Set? GO!
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Here's the blue wild, where
tiny dreamers ride beasts, speak
​ birdsong, hold the moon.

(by poet Mary W. Cox)
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​Art prints available on request
  • Home
  • ART
  • BLOG
  • Exhibits
    • The Downside of Lycanthropy
    • A Song for the Hunted
    • The Wild God
    • NUDGE - SHOVE
  • BOOKS