Alchemical Journeys Fanart

Seanan McGuire’s Middlegame, the first volume in the “Alchemical Journeys” series, is one of my favorite novels of all time, and has been since before it was published. At Emerald City Comic Con in 2019, I brought her a tribute of Diet Dr. Pepper and was rewarded with an ARC of Middlegame, which I devoured nearly instantly, and it inspired me to start a new art piece for the first time in nearly a year. Not only that, I also felt more positively about my art in the process, as well as when I was done, than I had in years. This book is magical.

Anyway, thanks to the ARC I was able to get this illustration posted online the day the novel was officially released. (Release-day fanart is one of my favorite ways to celebrate an author’s work; I was also able to create some a few years later for a friend’s second novel.) It depicts a pivotal moment in the story, when the protagonists fully take hold of the Doctrine of Ethos for the first time, and shake the foundations of the world around them.

A few years later, the sequel, Seasonal Fears was published. The idea for this art popped into my head as I was reading it, but life got in the way and I only finished it up last month, a couple years after the book came out. Unlike the above illustration, this piece depicts a moment that never happened, as the protagonists’ plans to attend the Valentine’s Day dance were interrupted by the plot…

The third book, Tidal Creatures, came out earlier this year, and I’m already thinking about the next piece I’m going to do…