Productive Procrastination

Like most authors, I’m prone to bouts of procrastination, especially after publishing a novel.  Never fear, Siobhan Dunmoore’s fifth adventure is still proceeding, if at a slower pace right now – I’m almost half-way done.  However, I decided to give myself a few days off from writing, since Imperial Sunset seems to be doing so well, but this time, I used my spare hours more productively than surfing the internet or binging on Netflix.  In fact, I build myself a little piece of inspiration, which is now sitting in my office.

It started life as a kit for another star ship altogether, but with a bit of bashing, a bit of rummaging in my spare parts bins and a lot of imagination, I turned it into the Q-Ship Iolanthe pretty much as I’d imagined her from the start.  As you can see, her gun turrets are deployed and she’s in full “Furious Faerie” mode, ready to take on any Shrehari, pirate, reiver or marauder.

Looking at the model, I can now see everything as I write: the bridge and combat information center, along with crew quarters, messes, etc, in the forward section; the shuttle hangar and cargo holds in the middle section (you can see the space doors); the missile launcher bay, which is on the middle section’s underside (the black stripe); the Marine barracks and brig which are immediately aft of the middle section; and of course, engineering with the reactors, environmental scrubbers, antimatter fuel containment units, etc, etc, etc, in the aftmost section.  As you can see, the model is resting on her hyperdrive nacelles while up top there are two sublight drives, one on each side, and two decoy sublight drives which hold the massive aft plasma guns.

I need to take a better picture, with a suitable background and all, but I wanted to share my newest project – finished earlier today – with all the Siobhan Dunmoore fans who are awaiting her latest adventure.