Chapter 30 [“]There were flowers running around here on their roots last week. Flowers.” “They’re called scrufflings. The sprites made them, and they’re ever so cute, but they throw axes at them. They do!”
Scrufflings!!! Okay, so this isn’t technically fan art. This is “creator” art.
Now some of you might assume that means I drew it. You would be wrong. You see, I first started writing about my elves way back in high school. So I stuck my elves in my forest and turned to my younger sister and said, “Bethany, what kind of fairy creatures should I have in my forest with my elves?”
And my sister immediately replied “scrufflings” and described flowers that ran around and caused all sorts of trouble. We fleshed out a few more details. They were enchanted by the forest sprites and only active at night. They looked like normal flowers during the day, healing and regenerating themselves through a modified version of photosynthesis. They run on their roots and use a beak of two petals as a mouth. Though they don’t eat, they are fascinated by food and will steal it from other creatures. They mostly were made to amuse the sprites and they have the most in common with them. Now having talking, dancing flowers is probably a younger concept than the ultimate tone of the series ended up being, but I enjoyed that creation process so much, I had to keep them if only as an Easter egg for those in the know. And that’s basically what they are in every Stone Bearer book I have written so far . . . they are mentioned once or twice in the elf chapters of the first book as part of the argument between the elves and their guards. In the next book . . . well, you will have to search for them, but I promise they will be there. And they will be glorious. After all, I snuck them past my editor once, so they are story canon now and we are all stuck with them now! One last tid-bit. We have no idea where the name scrufflings comes from, so a running joke that might appear in the later series is that the elves and other more intelligent fairy creatures have no idea where the name comes from either. The scrufflings came up for the name themselves and if you’ve ever tried to have a conversation with a scruffling, you would know that most of their reasons behind the things they do and say are a little hard to follow. I have more creator art I can share until more fan art rolls in if there is interest—ones actually drawn by me. Believe me, it won’t be all that good (I’m not an artist) but it could be fun. Maybe we can do it as a promotion. Stone Bearers is at 70ish reviews on Amazon right now. If all you guys that read it are willing/able to give me an honest review and get that number to 80, I’ll “release” my own pic of Jin. And then we can shoot for Ashira at 90. And I’ll show you my map with all the bearers/guardians/stones at 100. And so on until I run out of stuff to share. And I will share fan art and fan pics at any time I get it (with their creator’s permission of course). Sound good? And here is my niece’s pic of Kit the dragonet if you are interested. And the “fan pics” I posted on the facebook page. I highly recommend the album from my reunion trip for some laughs: https://www.facebook.com/stonebearers/ It is so much fun pretending to be popular!!!