Hari's art blog

It is a dark and stormy night. (x)

it's the 2 year anniversary of Into the Tower coming out, here are my favourite drawings I did for it (x)

adding some favourite testimonials and also funniest random comments from playtesters and tags when it came out

tiny peeks of a secret thing I’ve been working on

here is the thing: ✦ INTO THE TOWER ✦

What is that, I definitely hear you ask: A modern, full-length choose-your-own-path adventure for adults (or teens), with tons of guest illustrations from some of the best artists in indie comics & games.

You choose what to do? Yup. Steal from the rich, lose yourself in the source of all magic, follow your heart, end your days in disgrace, hunt for vengeance, uncover terrible secrets, curse the world, die down in the dark. Or, survive and get one of two illustrated, full endings unique to your character.

Wow sounds like a great treat for myself / gift for my DM/ nerdy sibling/ partner yes. Suitable for beginners, playtested on my mum, no tabletop experience or dice required - you just need a pencil or notes app. But if you’re a tabletop veteran / game completionist, there are also achievements, suggested hacks & make your own character journalling options.

  How do I obtain this item It’s out now, wherever you get books.

(More info & links here)

"all your fantasy characters are haunted by the sea, in a complex relationship with books, thieves who want to each the rich or useless queer courtiers in terrible trouble” SO WHAT IF THEY ARE!!!!!!!

head in my hands. lying on the floor. gazing hopelessly out the window. this was about the 2023 magic tower heist book, made vague to fit some future fantasy ideas. but now I'm thinking about it. these also completely fit the main 4 characters in the [redacted] trans historical thing i'm working on. caricature of myself

Haunted objects based on museum antiques (for @toadlett's objectober)

Haunted objects I thought, this’ll be fun, I’ll look up old museum things and draw cute little ghosts, not considering that (a) my uhhhhh current world mood was more in the vein of wishing I could send curses and so on, and (b) i have thoughts and feelings about the history of certain museum objects.

For example. These ones I picked are all drawn from elaborate, decorative pre-20thC European objects in British museums - the exact kind of expensive shit that gets preserved, much of it made at the peak of European colonial expansion. I often find myself thinking, who could afford these? Where did their materials and money come from? Which brings an interesting and possibly very sinister cast to some of their unknown pasts. What have they seen that they can’t tell you?

Also someone said ‘mimics’ and ok yes it could be that too

I Shall Never Fall in Love

happy birthday to my queer regency rom-com!!!! overwhelmed by how many people have read and enjoyed it in the last year tbh (especially after being told the genre was probably too niche when first pitching). Thank you to everyone who's read it and/or said nice things, it means the world. (x)

sliding this out of my own tags to put on the main post

Realised I've talked about this on patreon and in a couple of interviews etc (and one time I got to do a Q&A workshop thing for uni students studying Austen adaptation which was so cool...) but 99% of you will not have seen that and I don't really share it here, so

reimagining Jane Austen: how. why. etc

craziest part of pitching to publishers is pretending to care about current trends. "Oh I heard vampires / Bridgerton were in right now :)" as if I've not been in a cave for 10 years wallpapered with WIP red string boards labelled CARMILLA (1872), THE QUEER EROTICISM OF THE MONSTROUS, or 'WHAT IF MASTER AND COMMANDER BUT TRANS AND FUCK THE BRITISH EMPIRE'