How to use this Page

An old painting from years ago for Bath & Body Works.
Kristi Valiant
http://kristivaliant.blogspot.com
www.kristivaliant.com

Kristi Valiant
www.kristivaliant.com
http://kristivaliant.blogspot.com

Pluviophobia is the fear of rain. Poor lil' duckling - rain is an everyday thing.

Kristi Valiant
http://kristivaliant.blogspot.com
www.kristivaliant.com

Kristi Valiant
www.kristivaliant.com
http://kristivaliant.blogspot.com

This is the front and back of a 5"x7" postcard that I sent to publishers a few days ago. I attached a label with the publisher's address in the middle of the blue tablecloth. I usually have Vistaprint print my postcards, but they don't do the 5"x7" size, so I had this one printed at www.printplace.com.
Kristi Valiant
http://kristivaliant.blogspot.com
www.kristivaliant.com

My first post on Picture-Bookies Showcase - thanks for inviting me to be a part of your wonderful group of illustrators!
This illustration won an Honorable Mention in the SCBWI Illustration Contest entitled, "Wacky Wedding."
kristivaliant.blogspot.com
www.kristivaliant.com

The Ajan Warrior of the Night

“Well now we know why Miss Shannon had that big silly grin on her face a couple days ago. She’s got herself a brand new warrior page!”

“Ooh, it’s got everything! Let’s see, there’s Kishi and her ring, and her cape and arrows and it’s even got three different kinds of earrings!”

“It is a pretty nice page, huh?”

“Okay ladies, me and hunter girl over here have got our warrior stuff together. Let’s get with it! Where’s your new pages?! We’ve got four to go!”

“Oh my goodness”

“Heheee.. Ooh, if you wanna read one of the stories from Shannon-sama’s book when she’s the Huntress and fights monsters with her magical cat named Kishi, you should go see the Call of the Huntress page, ’cause we gots lots of neat stories! Have fun minna!”

“Ne, ne, Shannon-sama”

“Hmm?”

“heheheheheeeeeee…”

*sigh*

“That’s one of those monsters from my dream at the Lithic Pavilion.”

“I think something weird is going on again.”

“Is it the Halloween monsters?”

“Nope, don’t think so, but we better be ready anyway.”

LadyStar is the story of a group of girls who each have a powerful weapon they wear disguised as a priceless jeweled treasure. With their magical weapons, Jessica Hoshi and her friends can transform into the Ajan Warriors, champion defenders of the enchanted realm of Aventar!

“Hi! I’m Jessica Hoshi! If you like stories about action and adventure and discovering magical treasures and fighting evil monsters, you’ll like our books a lot! Me and my friends have lots of fun adventures together! You can read LadyStar: The Dreamspeaker for free! The whole book! Right in your browser! So tell all your friends and come visit us as much as you want! There’s always something fun happening on our site!”

“Hey LadyStar readers! We’ve got us a double-update on the growing Legends of Aventar Gallery. Z-bot found four great upcoming pages from the Varcarel Jade Web Comic, and we’re going to add all of them as we update our profiles on the various web comic directories. Keep looking for clues and see if you can help Cici find our friends. Acey out.”

“The Prologue for the Varcarel Jade story was published, and so now we got two pages on the web comic site!”

“Okay, so like how do you get from one page to the next?”

“There are ‘Previous Page’ and ‘Next Page’ links at the bottom of each page.”

“Sweet! Bonus update action, folks! Have fun!”

“Ja!”

“Big barbed warhammer and plate armor can only mean one thing.”

“What.”

“Rock and roll!”

“heheeee….”

“Looky! It’s meeeeee! And there’s Teko and my new sword!”

“Looks like we’re putting the team together for our new gallery project.”

“Ooh, it’s got the new logo too. I love new stuff.”

“We’re gonna start our new gallery today, ’cause Talitha said there’s gonna be this button and it will have all our pictures in it and it changes all by itself. She gots all the best drawings too, and lots of them are warriors and treasures.”

“This is a new category too, so if you want to see our gallery updates, they’ll all be linked to the Legends of Aventar Gallery category.”

“Sweet, let’s get going!”

“You know how some sites have like one free chapter so you can see how the book is before you buy it?”

“Yeah. That’s pretty cool. It’s just like going to the bookstore and reading some of the book before you buy it in the store.”

“But we have all our chapters on our site. We give all the chapters away for free.”

“Because we’re the crazy LadyStar peoples! Come on, Miss Shannon. We’ve got a guard cat that’s been asleep for six years! We’ve got a blond girl somewhere around here that’s as smart as Mozart about music but wears yellow tennis shoes as a fashion statement! We have a bird that makes magic flowers appear!”

“heh. We still publish articles about Pluto.”

“Yeah but it’s a planet.”

“Yeah, are you savvy?”

“Alright everyone out.”

“But mom!”

*giggle*

And it shall come to pass
that a gentle voice shall be heard
in the Golden Wood

Telling tales of wonder
and guarded by the Living Forest

“Let’s hear it for the PROFESSOR!”

“Woohoo!”

“It’s Talitha-chan! And she’s got some of the bestest powers of all. Her treasure is the Goldenwood Shield, which is the only treasure that we got that’s actually alive just like a real tree!”

“In Palace in the Sky, Hayashi fought that demon in the Venom Deeps that was casting fire spells at us.”

“But the Warrior of the Forest can call on plants and trees to fight for her and she zapped those baddies for us. Tough fight.”

“I think she’s going to get some new powers in Call of the Huntress too, and one of them is called ‘Autumn Canopy.’”

“Ooh, that’s a pretty name. I wonder what it does?”

“So go check out Forest Girl’s page and get all attuned with flowers and gardens and all that good stuff. Say a few words, Professor.”

“She’s real shy and stuff, but Talitha-chan is our best friend and we’re glad she’s a warrior just like us! Ja ne minna-san!”

“I think there’s lots of people who come to our site and want to learn all about LadyStar but they get confused ’cause we have so much stuff going on!”

“I know I get confused and I’ve been here for a while now.”

zzzzzzz….

“Do you realize Hikousen’s been asleep for six years?”

“Heheee.. he’s our guard kitty.”

“Okay, do the update. You guys always run off on these crazy tangents and we never get the update done.”

“Okay Alanna-sama. We’re gonna tell you all about a page that new people might not know about ’cause it’s a click that Talitha-chan put in the site instead of in our menu which we don’t have any more.”

“And if you understood that, you are WAY more mentally focused than me, because my brain just turned into mashed potatoes.”

“See, looky! This is one of our buttons, and it’s on all of our articles no matter where they are on our whole site. It’s the red heart button with our logo and it’s called the Crimson Thunder Heart logo. This is what it looks like:”

“Clicking that button will always take you to our What is LadyStar? page, which will give you a good introduction to our site and our story.”

“If you look on the left column under the poll question we got right now…”

“don’t forget to VOTE!”

“Yeah! Anyway, there’s four book covers in the left side column. Those are all of our books, and when you click on them you get to read them for free right here on our site. We did that ’cause we want everyone to read our stories and join in all our neat adventures!”

“So if you’re new to our site, welcome to LadyStar and be sure to read the What is LadyStar? page. Then you can jump right in to our stories. We just got through updating the Call of the Huntress Preview Page (which is my book *happy dance*), with all six of our current previews of the third book in our series. The first two books are complete and published and you can read them all for free.”

“See you all in the story, folks. Ten Update Friday continues! Don’t miss out!”

“Okay, Hayashi and me fixed the Call of the Huntress page, and we got all of the links linked and the pages where they’re supposed to be.”

“Goody, ’cause I wanna read more about Shannon-sama and her big magical kitty cat named Kishi. There’s six previews now, huh?”

“Yes, and they’re all linked from the Call of the Huntress Preview Page. The four-part Plot Against the Vicereine Story is linked together as well, so you can read all four parts in sequence.”

“Sweet.”

LadyStar™ Call of the Huntress is Copyright © 2007 Heavy Cat Multimedia Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Shannon looked around. Some of the plants had grown rather close to the water on the opposite side of the narrow brook. One of the plants looked odd and Shannon couldn’t quite figure out why. She continued looking at it, trying to sort the leaves from the branches. It was a very dense plant, and the leaves were larger than most of the other plants, so it was hard to tell which leaf was which.

What she noticed, however, was the long light brown strings that seemed to run around and around the branches. It looked almost as if they were hanging there. Then Shannon realized they were. She stood up and stepped over the shallow water to get a closer look. Strung through the outer edge of the shrub’s branches were two long light brown cords that looked very much like they were made of the same kind of leather as her scabbard. Shannon picked them up. The two pieces were about the width of a shoelace, but at least twice as thick.

I wonder where these could have come from? Shannon thought. She looked back and forth, wondering if someone had perhaps dropped them or they snagged the plant as they passed. Then Shannon started scouting along the ground around the banks of the nearby brook, thinking perhaps whomever had lost these cords had perhaps dropped other items. After a few moments, however, Shannon had found nothing, so she carried them back to where she had been sitting.

As she sat examining the two laces, she glanced at the scabbard she had set down by the edge of the water. She picked it up and took a closer look at it. Sure enough, the scabbard and laces seemed to be made of almost exactly the same material. I knew it, Shannon thought. Maybe the scabbard and laces went together somehow?

Shannon examined the scabbard closely. There were twin sets of two notches cut into one side of the flat leather, but they were far too small to thread the laces through. Shannon exhaled impatiently and dropped her hands to her lap, still holding the laces and scabbard. What are these for? Why don’t they go together?

“You are going to be in such trouble when the farmer finds out you raided his apples,” a voice said from behind Shannon. She quickly turned to look. A boy about her age was leaning against one of the ash trees near the brook, staring off in another direction. He was dressed in ragged canvas pants and a dingy-looking light-colored long-sleeve shirt. He was tossing a small dark-colored coin of some kind with one hand. He turned his head to look at her and raised an eyebrow.

“Shouldn’t you be about your chores, princess?” he said with a smirk.

Shannon sat agape. At least a dozen different emotions collided in her mind, shouting for attention. The majority were various degrees of annoyance, anger, frustration, embarassment and apprehension. About all Shannon could manage was one sputtering response.

“I’m not a princess!”

“Whatever you say,” the boy replied, turning back to staring into the forest. His shock of brown hair was combed only in the most liberal sense of the word. Not that it seemed to concern him in the slightest.

“I could put in a good word for you with the farmer, but I’ll have to ask for a favor, you know,” he said.

“Why you..” Shannon got to her feet and clenched her fists. The boy turned and put his hands out to try and calm Shannon down.

“Hey, hey, don’t mean no harm, princess. I’m just on the lookout for a few coins so I can buy my breakfast all honest-like. Don’t want the merchants to think I’m a shady type.”

“Do I look like I have any coins? Why would I be picking apples if I had coins to buy them with you stupid, raggedy-looking doofus! And if I did have any coins the last person I’d give them to would be you. And stop calling me princess. I’m a high school student and I’m a squad leader in band!” Shannon almost shouted.

“And you’ve got a bit of a temper, haven’t you?” the boy winked. Shannon frowned, mouth open. She was rapidly becoming too angry for speech. She clenched her eyes shut.

“Ooooh!” she exclaimed in a frustrated tone, then whirled around and plopped back down on her spot by the brook.

The boy observed Shannon sitting with her back turned for a few moments, then put his hands in his pockets and sauntered over near where she was sitting.

“Where’d ya get that knife?” he asked.

“I found it,” Shannon snapped, then folded her arms with emphasis.

“Bet it’d sell for a tidy sum,” he persisted.

“It’s not for sale,” Shannon replied. “It’s mine.”

“Well, you said you found it. Could belong to someone else,” the boy said, rocking back and forth on his heels and looking out over the water.

“They don’t want to sell it either,” Shannon said. The boy chuckled.

“How do you know they don’t want to sell it?” he asked with an amused tone.

“Because I just do,” Shannon frowned stubbornly.

“Do you always get what you want?” the boy asked.

“Yes,” Shannon said with a note of finality.

“And you say you’re not a princess,” the boy teased. Shannon looked up with an astonished expression. The boy’s blue eyes made him look curious about her more than anything else.

“Ran away from home myself last harvest.” He smiled and nodded his head in an upstream direction. “There’s an abandoned barn on the opposite side of that stand of maple if the night breeze gets too cold for you. Watch out for the farmer though. He’s a mean one.”

The boy picked his way down the bank towards a large rock in the stream, then expertly hopped across to the opposite bank. Moments later he disappeared into the trees again.

Shannon sat with an expression of total incredulity on her face. Just who did he think he was?

“You know, one thing a lot of new people might not know about our site is we are publishing our whole story for free so anyone can read it.”

“Yeah, we got two whole novels published already. One is called The Dreamspeaker, which is the story of when we found the first five Ajan Treasures. We also got The Palace in the Sky which is a story about when we went to a place called the Venom Deeps and battled lots of scary monsters.”

“Both of those books are already complete, and we have parts of two more books published. One is called Call of the Huntress which is going to be published next, and the fourth book is called Winterdancer. Both of those books will be published free just like the first two really soon.”

“So come back and visit us and be sure to read our books, ’cause we have lots of neat adventures. Ja ne minna!”

“Hey everyone. We’ve had quite a few updates for the third book in our series, Call of the Huntress, so I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of what we’ve previewed so far.”

“That’s a great idea Shannon-sama!”

“Thanks, Hoshi! Okay, our first preview was By the Light of the Stars which is the story of the Warrior of the Night battling reptile-like monsters called Carcs.”

“Yucky. I don’t like monsters.”

“The second update was a four-part series called the Plot Against the Vicereine, about a noble in Aventar who gets attacked by evil assassins. Here’s Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.”

“The Vicereine seems like she’s real strong. I hope we don’t have to fight her.”

“Yeah, but she gave that little boy a silver coin even though the price of the flower was a lot less. I think that was really nice.”

“Yeah! That was nice, huh? I wonder what a cruss ring is though.”

“So how come you decided to do a preview roundup today?”

“Guess.”

“Ooh! You’re gonna have another preview?! Realeeeee?”

“Check back later today everyone! A brand new exclusive preview from Book Three of our series Call of the Huntress, right here. See ya then!”

“Don’t miss the new preview! Ja minna!”