I’ve stepped back into a novelette I wrote a few years ago, and it’s become clear that the story has grown while I wasn’t looking. Or maybe I’ve grown into it. Either way, returning to this project has reshaped it into something sharper, stranger, and far more intentional. This is not a light revision—it’s a full evolution.
Unlike The Silent Dance of Stars, which moved through quiet cosmic melancholy, this new work dives straight into psychological horror. It’s the quieter kind—the dread you feel before anything happens, the anticipation that something is watching, waiting. With that change in tone, the visual identity of the book had to shift with it.
Developing a New Art Direction: Delft Porcelain + Geometric Brutalism
To match the atmosphere, I’m shaping an illustration style built around cool delft-porcelain blues, soft grey gradients, and sharp, geometric shapes that cut through the page. It’s controlled but unsettling—delicate in palette, brutal in structure. That tension has become the visual core of the book.
As part of that development, I’m sharing three in-progress illustrations that are helping shape the final tone.
Illustration 1: Louise Preparing Herself
The first illustration shows Louise, the protagonist, gripping a kitchen knife. The light is muted and cold; even in the greyscale and blue duotone overlay treatment. Nothing in the frame tells her what she’s defending herself from, her eyes feel dead in the knowledge that she knows it’s coming. This image sets the emotional temperature for much of the book.
Illustration 2: The Grey House on the Hill
The second illustration focuses on the grey house—a mid-distance to close-up that shows the wear and stain of cracked boards, peeling paint, and the sense that the building itself has a memory. The house sits alone on a mound, watching the world below it. It’s both a landmark and a warning.
Illustration 3: The Christina’s World–Inspired Spread
The third illustration is a full spread. In the lower left corner, Louise has collapsed under the weight of four metal water buckets, her body turned, one arm reaching across the spread toward the grey house perched on a mound in the upper right corner.
The landscape slopes between them in long, tense lines—the kind that make the distance feel impossibly large. The blue-grey palette softens nothing; it only highlights the isolation. This piece ties together the emotional language of the book: helplessness, determination, and the quiet terror of being too far from safety.
A Horror Project Coming Into Focus
With the illustrations developing and the narrative arc finally aligned, the project feels ready to move toward release. If the momentum holds—writing, layout, artwork—a mid to late next-year release window is looking increasingly realistic.
Creative Influence
NB: Yes, this spread intentionally echoes Christina’s World. It felt like the right emotional anchor for the story’s tone and Louise’s journey.
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