Stephen Embleton's Blog, page 10
December 8, 2020
SOUL SEARCHING REVIEW
The first review is in! And it's a goodie:
From Joanna Woods Africa in Words:
Drawing on our inner and imagining our afterlives, revealing a "larger narrative about systems of belief on our planet”.
Embleton’s narrative pushes against the Western ideological status-quo in science fiction. The novel is marked by astronomical traditions; sangomas are written into its pages; and, the interesting persona Ma’at, a goddess ostensibly based on the Egyptian goddess of truth and harmony, figures centrally.
Overall, the close attention paid to characters and their relationships with one another underscores how belief systems form, influence, and are entangled in lives, and this starts from the moment of childhood.
Soul Searching is a work that packs in and tries to do a lot, but throughout its 368 pages the author maintains suspense and with moments of poetic prose interwoven, the sense of intrigue and craft is also conserved.
Mixing strategies of analepsis often ascribed to tales of the magically real and proleptic strategies of harder science fiction, as well as interweaving crime, Embleton’s style is similar to other prominent South African speculative fiction novelists, novelists such as Masande Ntshanga and Lauren Beukes.
November 9, 2020
Freedom of Flight
The second piece in the digital "Freedom" series: "Freedom of Flight". See "Light Flight Freedom".
Creating digital art with new brushes in Photoshop. I can alter colours (particularly the background colour) and see how different that feels. This digital version (a 100% piece of art and not a rough) allows the work to stand alone but also inform the choices for the physical illustration.
These are high res, so poster size with a good level of detail.
I also hope that anyone wanting this or a similar piece, whether book cover art or wall art, will request usage.
This is the one instance where my horrendous handwriting is (barely) acceptable – with a fat ink brush.
November 7, 2020
Light Flight Freedom
Trying my hand at some digital art with new brushes in Photoshop. What this means for me is I can alter colours (particularly the background colour) and see how different that feels. I will then work on the physical piece on 300gsm watercolour paper and see the results in comparison. This digital version (a 100% piece of art and not a rough) allows the work to stand alone but also inform the choices for the physical illustration.
This are high res, so poster size with a good level of detail.
I also hope that anyone wanting this or a similar piece, whether book cover art or wall art, will request usage.
Another digital piece is in the works and I will upload when it is done.
This is the one instance where my horrendous handwriting is (barely) acceptable – with a fat ink brush.
September 20, 2020
Ink Portrait
Experimenting with a combination of ink roller and ink brushwork for these two versions of a portrait.
September 16, 2020
Soul Searching Paperback Release
Soul Searching – Paperback Out and Available on Amazon (All), Barnes & Noble etc. One killer. An ocean of souls.
Science has learned to understand the soul, and can track souls through this life and beyond.
A specialist unit of the South African police is using a Soul Tracker device in a harrowing search for a serial killer. As Tracker Ruth Hicks and her partner Franklin Banks race to find the killer before the next victim dies, the case becomes frighteningly personal. They begin to question the morality of their methods.
When one’s soul can incriminate them before birth, can there ever be justice?
Who can be trusted with the power to look inside the soul?
“Tense and exciting with lots of good twists. I really enjoyed it!” --V Anne Smith, author of A Code for Carolyn: A Genomic Thriller
***
Science has learned to understand the soul, and can track souls through this life and beyond.
A specialist unit of the South African police is using a Soul Tracker device in a harrowing search for a serial killer. But when one's soul can incriminate them before birth, can there ever be justice?
This science fiction novel by South African author Stephen Embleton has been likened to a mix of "Minority Report" and "Silence of the Lambs", with unique ideas all its own. The thrilling story features a serial killer, new and disturbing technology, and an ancient secret society. And flying cars.
Find out more at Guardbridge Books, the Guardbridge Store and GoodReads.
Paperback Outlets:
Loot (South Africa)
eBooks Available here:
August 28, 2020
Soul Searching Virtual Book Launch and Reading – 27 Aug 2020
On Thursday evening I read a passage from my science fiction thriller, Soul Searching, followed by some insights and background into the segment chosen. Available in ebook on all major online book stores – paperback coming September.
WATCH HERE:
Below is the excerpt (from Chapter 4) – featuring the two main themes of Beliefs and Parents:
I was twelve, just about to break the spell of my youth and dive head on into teenager life. So that would have been 1985. My friend and I have just walked the five kilometres to his house after school, joking around, pushing each other into bushes. Kids. As we’re coming closer to his place we notice smoke in the air above his property. We give each other a look and pick up our pace. He’s got high walls surrounding his property but because of the incline of the road we can just make out his brother and mother busying themselves around the source of the smoke. He starts shouting to them as he’s opening the tall iron gate on the driveway. His mother turns to him and says something, but I’m standing stock still at the gate. I know something isn’t right, but not in the emergency sense. He’s getting pushed aside by his brother (older and bigger than him). His mother waves me away saying something about ‘New Age’ occultist. I got the hell outta there. It’s all a bit of a blur for me, but he told me the details later on when he knocked on my front door a few hours after. I opened the door to a pale hunched person, my best friend.
Some people say that everyone is given an experience that robs them of their innocence. His was ripped from his gut, through his heart and out of his throat. His experience was my awakening. I wouldn’t say that I lost my innocence that day. But the world became bigger than it had ever been. When I assumed I had it all covered, all figured out, it became this massive ball of energy and unexplained mysteries that what we were taught in school didn’t even come close to preparing you for. For him, in his words, he’d “seen what those he trusted were capable of doing.” But to me, I saw the nature of fear. How people react when they are scared. When they think they are protecting their family. That was the vastness I saw. Nothing was simple anymore. Everything, everyone you met, had many things that created who they were in a given moment.
We both sat on the edge of my bed as he told me what had happened that day. His mother had been at a church prayer meeting that afternoon. You know, tea, gossip, and fear- induced enthusiasm. The topic of music and magic being the path of the devil was tabled. In those days we had LPs, and one of the favourite techniques was to backtrack a song to find hidden messages aimed at the innocent minds of the youth.
“Damn warped to even think of that in the first place.”
Of all the damn albums they had to choose that day they chose Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms. His Gran had bought it for him a few weeks before, and it was fresh in his mother’s mind. A song about getting your money for nothing and women for free was totally unacceptable. Then they laid into Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA album. Back tracked one or two of the songs. I don’t care if you take Beethoven’s 9th or Freezer Burn’s Heartache Headache, anything backtracked sounds perverted. Now I happened to have that Springsteen album at home and damned if I could hear any messages from the Lord of Darkness. To top it all off, his mother had allowed him to buy a ‘Learn to Be a Top Magician’ kit around his birthday a few months before. He’d been showing me his sleight of hand card tricks, tricks even I thought were magic. His mother had been waving the Dire Straits cover at me shouting, “Your parents should be ashamed, bringing up an occultist New Age Satanist”, and threw it into the fire. His brother had, moments before, scattered his magician box contents into the flames. The black smoke from the red plastic ball and plastic wand, had choked him as he’d tried to reach in to save his trick deck of cards.
A few weeks later we found some of the charred cards that had floated up in the heat and smoke a few kilometres from his house in the open grass where we had often gone riding on our BMXes. Anything that drives a kid to start smoking at thirteen should be deemed a ‘bad influence’. And if anyone was looking for the devil in the shadows that day, he was well and truly out in the open and dancing around the fire of a child’s hopes and dreams and innocence. And if ever the devil has a face, it’s a parent turning on their child, killing them to ‘save’ them. Destroyer of trust. Sleight of hand takes something without you noticing. This was blatant.
It wasn’t a father or mother that day. It wasn’t a brother. It wasn’t the devil in the flames. It wasn’t a family tragedy or the death of someone close. It was my friend sitting on the edge of my bed crying into his blackened hands, his belief in rock stars and magic. The worst thing a parent ever did was telling their child that the devil existed.
AVAILABLE HERE:
August 22, 2020
The Cock & The Crow (Poem: iJusi #6, 1997)
The Cock & The Crow (Poem):an ode to the downtrodden
Cock-a-doodle-doo
said the cock to the crow
while sitting in the sun on his stoep.
Hey diddle-diddle
said the crow to the cock
and picked another scrap from the step.
“What a great morning
beheld before us,”
said the cock through his smooth golden beak.
“It depends how high up
the stairs you are standing
to check of what you gleefully speak.
“From here I see only
scraps before me,
all your loose-ends and dry looking wors.
“For it's you, my broer,
who loves to mock
those stukkend, and broken or worse.
“How upright you stand
with your plume in the air,
all colours all radiant and bright.
“Yet, here I slum,
begging and screaming
so loud and very contrite.
“Only to be
cursed or ignored,
whichever you feel I deserve.
“You look at my coat,
black and downtrodden,
and inside you know it's perverse
“Perverse because
I feed off your scraps
to keep you all safe and tight.
“Yes, you know it,
it makes you feel kief
when you're all warm in bed late at night.”
“You ungrateful bastard!!
I’ll peck out your eyes
and you'll see who's tougher than who.”
“Such violent words,
but you won't even touch me.
You’ll shiver when I say “Boo!”
“You can't leave that spot, cuz,
it's your security.
You won't enter my domain.
“You’re scared you'll lose
what you think you have got,
that being riches and fame.
“But I have got
what you don't got…”
“A big beak and a sly looking eye?!”
“No, my broer,
it’s bigger than that.
It’s bigger than a vark se sty.
“Here’s a thought,
my ignorant cock.
A feather your plumage makes?”
“Yep.”
“Now when it does plummet
from that fine coat,
oh how it my breath away takes.
“By mere twist of air
and jiggle of blubber
it has now left your kingdom,
to drift around
aimlessly seeking
that wonderful thing I call freedom.
Featured in iJusi Issue #6 "V8 Power" 1997
Cover: iJusi Issue #6
Stephen's double page spread design and text.
August 9, 2020
Soul Searching Out Now
One killer. An ocean of souls.
Science has learned to understand the soul, and can track souls through this life and beyond.
A specialist unit of the South African police is using a Soul Tracker device in a harrowing search for a serial killer. But when one's soul can incriminate them before birth, can there ever be justice?
This science fiction novel by South African author Stephen Embleton has been likened to a mix of "Minority Report" and "Silence of the Lambs", with unique ideas all its own. The thrilling story features a serial killer, new and disturbing technology, and an ancient secret society. And flying cars.
Available here:
Find out more at Guardbridge Books.
Paperback Outlets:
Loot (South Africa)
April 13, 2020
Seating Spaces
Seating SpacesTo purchased prints and other variations of the artwork, check out my Society6 store or my Zazzle store pages.I took a photo of the bay windows and the wooden chair (Friday 10th April 2020) as the template (centred layout) and angle.
From there I took reference images of the variety of furniture and set about composing each pairing – chair and background. I then selected the paper – 300gsm waterolour paper – and using a 0.3 and 0.5 fineliner pens.
I complete the first two on Saturday 11th April and the final three on Monday 13th April 2020.
Bay Windows
Studio
Dining
Bedroom
LoungeBelow are some detail photos and work in progress:
Bay Windows detail
Bay Windows detail
Studio detail
Studio detail
Studio detail
Dining detail
Dining detail
Bedroom detail
Lounge detail
Lounge detail
Final touches on StudioDOWNLOAD THE DESKTOP WALLPAPERS:
(3840x2160px)
(3840x2160px)April 9, 2020
White Moonlight Black Night
Technique and materials:
Gouache and Watercolour paint on gesso board (gesso primer as a textured background). This is then carried through using the rubaway technique – highlights are rubbed away and mid and dark tones added.
Completed 9 April 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown.
For print-on-demand prints of these two panels visit my Zazzle store and Society6 store.
The final work measures 162cm x 51cm (each panel at 81cm x 51cm).
White Moonlight panel (white rhino)
Black Night panel (black rhino)
White rhino detail
White rhino detail
Baby black rhino detail
Black Rhino detail
Black Rhino detail
HappyCheck out the work in progress videos and photos:Phase1:https://www.facebook.com/stephen.embleton.3/posts/10158154406480774
Phase2:https://www.facebook.com/stephen.embleton.3/posts/10158437353220774
Phase 3:https://www.facebook.com/stephen.embleton.3/posts/10158441273215774
Phase 4:https://www.facebook.com/stephen.embleton.3/posts/10158449680335774
