You’ve probably noticed that in the Raven of Iskandar series that I exclusively use metric units (centimeter, meter, kilometer). For someone who was raised with the English system of units (inch, foot, mile), it’s not difficult to do the translation, but difficult to remember to do the translation. Sometimes, while editing, I’ll find numerous references to feet and inches that I have to change.

In the fourth book of the series, Raven: Necris, which right now is well over 50,000 words and counting, Raven makes a reference to how much shorter Chaoschick is.

So here’s a rundown, in English units, of the height of the members of the team.

The tallest on the team is Gothgirl (you thought that it was Grabby?). She is roughly 6′ 2″ tall. I envision her as muscular, as someone who had worked doing mining, but not unfeminine. She’s the strongest member of the team.

Grabby is next in height, being about 1/2 to 1″ over 6 feet. Raven is 6 foot tall. She’s slight (compared to Gothgirl) but strong. You wouldn’t want her grabbing any part of your anatomy in anger.

Chaoschick is two inches shorter than Raven at 5′ 10″ tall.

Skylla is another story entirely. Since she is part squid, her dimensions are semi-fluid. In fact, when they were attempting to record her statistics, Skylla would change her size slightly between measurements, pretty much driving the technicians bonkers. We’ll call her about 5’8″ because she usually looks taller than Dahija. If you read the story ‘Foosball’ you’ll have read that Dahija was of ‘moderate height’. When compared to who we’ve mentioned already, 5′ 7″ is a moderate height.

Lara Croft is also 5′ 7″ and, no, I’m not going to give any further dimensions. Suffice it to say that she fits her namesake fairly well.

Soria, the team captain is 5′ 3″ to the top of her head, 5′ 4″ if you count the ears. You know why that is.

Zinaida is 5′ 1″ and her Xeres hairstyle does look ugly to most of the Alliance. She’s a little sensitive about her shortness which is why she’s a fan of huge heels.

Finally there’s Calamity Angel. In order to really fly, nature made Pertescians small and hollow-boned. The latter is the reason that the team tries to protect her when things get wild off the field. She’s 3′ 11″ (well, she may have given herself another inch or two) and does weigh only 54 lbs.

So that’s the rundown and should give you some visual on how the team members relate to each other.

Early this morning I had to scrap frost off my windshield, so I figured that it’s time for a picture of this rose which I took yesterday.

This cartoon is from the currently suspended (for several years) strip ‘User Friendly’. It was about the workers in a Canadian Internet provider. It ran from 1997 to 2010, the last year and a half of that run was intermittent. Due to the age, some of the jokes are quite dated. However! This strip gives ample evidence of what happens when you don’t form a full sentence.

Again, I don’t know Illiad (J.D.Frazier) or are associated with him or the strip. I just thought it funny. They are still recycling the old comics so you can view them here:

http://www.userfriendly.org/

So I can’t let this go without some comment on the work in progress, Raven: Necris.

Currently the book is over 43,000 words and I’ve set a daily word count for myself. to put this in perspective, this was the same situation I started counting words as with Raven: The Triballi Incident and that topped out at over 200,000 words. There isn’t that many stories to tell in this one, so far, but who knows?

I put a new profile picture up on Facebook. However, it is very pixely. If that’s the way an iPhone takes a picture, then I don’t want one. ;-). The photo was sent to me via messenger, so that might have goofed up the resolution. I’ll have to talk to the photographer.

I really didn’t like the background of the previous Raven portrait on Facebook Raven of Iskandar Page, so I changed it to an action shot. I did play with the portrait in Affinity Photo and here’s Raven with a blue background. I did fool with the aspect ratio a bit as Raven doesn’t have a flat head. (You tell her that!)

What do you think? I can’t make the background white or black, or a light shade of purple. Maybe a light gray?

Sometimes when you make the expedient choice, it turns out pretty good. For example, in Doctor Who, the psychic paper was created because they wanted to advance the action quicker. In the old series, the Doctor was particularly persuasive but this resulted in a long section of dialogue that was frequently boring.

My example: In Raven: Mirabelle, the team visits a local museum where Chaoschick gets incensed that the spaceship that delivered the original colonists is not on display. In the scene, the brunette-with-big-mouth starts yelling at the director in Galact and suddenly Bellan begins to come out of her mouth without her even noticing. This added a bit of strangeness to the scene and added to the mystery of Chaoschick’s origins.

However, it hadn’t been planned that way. When writing the dialogue, I ran out of ideas of what she could say in her rant. So I had her revert to her childhood language.

If you look back in older posts, you’ll find the whole chapter posted.

Teasers!

The writing for Raven: Necris is proceeding and here are a few hints as to what will happen.

1. You find out Grabby’s real name.
2. You find out the origin of Grabby’s handle.
3. Raven takes a surprise guest home with her to Necris.
4. The plot thread of Vysse at Bestmartin begins.
5. The series arc is revealed.