I thought I’ll tell you more about the short story and how it came into being. This story is placed in Reality Series universe and happens, chronologically after Credo Quia Absurdum – book #3 in the series. It features characters that you’d have known from first three books and introduces some new ones. It also introduces a new plotline that I’ll use in next books.
I came upon an idea for this story when on a walk one day. I was passing by a charity shop and noticed a picture of a cat on a display. I thought it would be fun to draw a cat picture myself and wondered about inspiration for it. Then I remembered a photo of my cat, Neko, I’ve taken a while ago. In this picture she looks a bit like an owl. Here, judge by yourselves:
I know my brain works in mysterious ways. There was this moment when it did this weird flip: She’s an owl, she’s a cat, an owlcat!
And thus an owlcat was born. It didn’t take long (I had about three minutes left to get back home) for my mind to provide a whole background story as to why an owlcat even existed. From there the story spun mostly out of control. While writing it I’ve been surprised by my characters times and again. Tyler was afraid of Halloween? Who knew! There were more surprises but I don’t want to give you spoilers, so I’ll keep them to myself. I will tell you though, that Ross is going to be a permanent feature in Jason, Tyler and Toby’s lives.
I’ll post the next part of the story later today, for now I’ll show you the second picture that inspired Ross’s owlcat nature. This one I drew-painted myself from a reference picture.
It’s a Great Horned owl and its expressions remind me of those of a cat. Here’s another image from Google.
It’s a Great Horned owl and its expressions remind me of those of a cat. Here’s another image from Google.
But seriously Ross’s appearance and behaviour is mostly based on my cats. I’ve had quite a few cats in my life and working with Ross was really fun
