Before there was Adia, Scientist, I wrote a too-long book series called Home Is Not Home. Here are some scenes from it. Some are also in Adia, Scientist. All are drawn with a mouse in Windows Paint, and I didn't like them very much. Tell me what you think!

Adia Rayaline, Scientist Of Areon. She is 18 but I think her neck turned out older-looking. Her hair was not deep enough red like the cover picture, but is more realistic because I put more shades in it. This is still very cartoony, like most of my drawings.

Adia Wields The White Cube Of Light. I drew this over a render of Victoria 4, but ended up redrawing everything. I don't like how it turned out, especially Adia's face and hair, but the light would be bright enough to obliterate a lot of the detail. What do you think?

I forgot about this one. Adia, but done when I first got my Windows Surface with its pen. I wasn't very satisfied with it, but I'd like to know if you think it's any good. What do you like? What do you think would improve it?

An early picture of Oshfah, my Zheien city on Ye~. I took a Blender render of my nine-sided Zheien buildings and city and colored in the purple sands. It isn't supposed to be up on a hill like this, so later pictures of Ye~ are very different. My model also had the groups of little 9-sided houses but they are way too dark. I may have done this one in GIMP.

This is an oil painting of Adia and Ryee called 'Plans' when my plot was radically different and I had them meet at school on Areon. Definitely, even in Home Is Not Home, Areon never looked like this.

This one is from 1977, the year I started college. I think it turned out better than the one above. Any comments?

I did this one in GIMP in 2009. The larger 'moon' in the sky is Areon, while the smaller ones are Tri~e and Beautiful. Tri~e is a Zheien name. The tilde is pronounced like a strong 'h' sound and is added when a person [or world] experiences difficulty. In this case, a moon whose inhabitants don't want to trade and are isolationist. Not much is known about their colony because of that.

I'm not happy at all with the water in the ice-fed Crystal Pool. What do y'all think?

Front cover from Home Is Not Home before I discovered VUE. Ugh.

The back cover turned out better. These are from 2009.

Comments welcome.

The original cover art. Still ugh.

Two Other Pictures...Technical Problems

There were 2 other pictures that were there when I opened the directory. I went to copy them here, and they're gone. I can see them when I open the directory in File Explorer. Not when I go to copy.

I have backups. I copied them to the same directory, then to a different one when that one also lost them. Now they are gone. Poof! I hate Windows. They really need to fix File Explorer. I'll try again tomorrow [sigh]. The universe doesn't want me to show them to you. Maybe Eriganh is up to no good!

First one is Adia in the desert casually throwing a vial of ANW behind her. Boom! Adia is known for her funny videos detailing her research. This one is from Adia, Scientist, too. Here's where Ryee thinks of watching it:

In the Eicken Library, and one of my research holos played.

He laughed at the sight of me casually throwing a cylinder of ANW over my shoulder, which exploded in blue and green flames. Holos of all my coworkers scattered with panicked looks! Then they looked back at me, standing there neat in my lab coat, and laughed.

The explosion was real, but I put together holos and the faces did not quite match. Ossy and Citsa were quite offended, but Tanda, Derees and Vonn laughed. Why should reports be solemn and boring?

The second one is of Adia talking to Ryee in the lab. I tried to capture the essence of a nervous 18-year-old girl having feelings for a new fella and Ryee, who loses all his confidence and thrilling speech when around a maiden. Maybe it'll copy tomorrow.

Scene from Home Is Not Home. Adia and Ryee take a walk in the desert. This is after the revolution on Areon where Adia got hurt and had regen. She had healing, but she's exiled on Ye~ and her family can't have contact. During this walk in the desert, Adia gets upset and can't handle it. They are wearing desert suits made to reflect heat. I know, they should be white, but they are normally black to hold heat in the cold of desert night, so I kept the same design for daytime use just to cut description down some.

I really hate this picture. It didn't turn out like I wanted, but it is drawn with a mouse in Paint. From 1995 when Windows 3.1 was new. Yeah.

Home Is Far Away, Vol. 3 first cover. Done in Paint of the Diplomatic Reception Room from a reference picture. I got very frustrated with this one because I just couldn't get it to look right and I was too impatient to get it out quickly. This story takes place in 1993. After Adia battles Eriganh, the whole world knows there are aliens here, and Ryee meets first with the President, then with the UN. He's never been on a First Contact mission, has damaged telepathy from the battle and was already injured. Scientists had to solve the problem of Earth's environment which was killing him, but they finally got the Epcot Ring finished so Earth could have tech. This enabled Ry'nao, Emperor Of The Thirteen, to send other diplomats to take over. Then Ryee and Adia finally got to go home.

The original 3rd book cover for Home Is A Place Of Healing, before I reformatted it for standard book cover size. I mistakenly thought maybe eBooks could use a different size, but quickly learned that no, they are the same dimensions as their print sisters. It's drawn in Paint, and that shows. I had trouble getting everything in perspective at this angle.

I also thought my first name was unique enough to use as my author name. Ah, the mistakes we make as beginners! This was a horrid mistake and made my books very difficult to look up. Even my full name, Dannis Cole, brings up every Dennis Cole who writes. Apparently, there are a lot of them.

This shows Adia and Ryee meeting with Lyyyrah, King Of Esteerr, on his home planet, a lush, tropical world. They are outside Ryonne~'s green scout ship, which is a featureless green flattened sphere. Ryee's diplomat's sash is green to honor Lyyyrah. Normally it would be red-violet like his Diplomatic Service uniform. Adia wears a long dress in Ryee's family color.

Esteerrians are very short, about four feet tall, and have wider bodies than I show here. The ropy arms with toothy hand-mouths look sort of like I pictured. The legs don't fit my description of 'elephantine'. The frog-eyes are about the right size, but not as they should look. So, I'm not at all satisfied with how Lyyyrah appears. They speak a signed language which uses their whole bodies. To get places quickly, they spread their arms and legs out and roll. They are surprisingly fast. Also, their telepathy is 20 times as strong as a Zheien's. One can fry you with his telepathy without trying to hurt you, but they're not careful. If you survive the telepathy, their strength and battle skills are like their trading partners, the Zbbat. More than a match for an army of Zheien, but Ryee and Adia are there alone.

This mission ended badly because Lyyyrah's government fell during it and his brother J'hanntur took over.

Hope you enjoyed seeing these and reading the stories behind them! Please comment at the end of the picture's description so I know which one you're talking about. Thanks!