Quite a few of those watching my devart have expressed an interest in knowing the back story behind all the Silent Nebula, so I thought I'd take a little bit and ramble on about it. *wink*

Silent Nebula was a story I started writing (or actually drawing) back in my freshman year in highschool. Around that time, I started reading Steve Gallacci's Albedo, and I had just seen the movie "Aliens" for the first time, and was vastly inspired by both. Now, the Silent Nebula story itself has undergone a load of changes during the course of writing it, such as the title.

At first I was going to call it "Calling Home" to tie in with a theme I had first originally written at the beginning of the story that went something like "All you need is a picture to remind you... What you left behind... *Who* you left behind..." And characters in the story frequent write letters and use the communications systems on the ship to make calls to their families back home. The title changed due to a couple things, the main issue was a possible copyright infringement on a song written and sung by artist Peter Schilling called "Major Tom," which I really love listening to. Now, the issue there is a chorus line in the song that goes "4-3-2-1, Earth below us, drifting falling, floating weightless, come in, /CALLING HOME/", and also one of the characters in the story who's name is Tom, although his rank in the story is Lieutenant, and later get promoted to Unit Commander. But still, just to avoid any problems, I decided it would be best to avoid making any possible tie-ins to any other artistic works (though if this one day makes a movie or a Saturday morning cartoon, I'd love "Major Tom" to be the theme song. If I find the time, and/or skills to do so, I would love to animate an intro for the cartoon myself. Thus, Silent Nebula came to me out of the blue, and provided me with a tie in to a line I wanted one of the character's to say at one point near the end of the story, where the crew of the Interstellar Vessel 542 (aka The ISV-542) is searching of communication satellites in the starsystem close to the antagonists' homeworld, and finds none, and Tikisha Reddings, the ship's communications expert, mentions "There are no satellites here... No communications... Its a Silent Nebula..."

Now, I do not have a name for the antagonists (I did at one point, but I was informed that the name I had given them was actually a place on Earth, and also, was planning on changing it simply due to another possible copyright issue, as it sounded MUCH too close to the homeworld of the antagonists in Albedo). Basically, the beings are a race of VERY hostile, anthropomorphic reptiles bent on taking over the universe. I'm open to name of race suggestions if anyone has any ideas, assuming I don't invent something beforehand.

Also, Tikisha herself has undergone several species changes over the years. Originally, she was going to be a mouse, but I later decided that it wouldn't work that well with her that way, and changed her to a gray fox, and then to what she is now, a red tabby/calico mix. Though the thing that has remained the same is her personality; she's always been a flirt.

Now, enough of my babble, onto the actual story summary:

The year is 2801, and war is being waged between the mammalian race and those of the alien reptiles. The story focuses on the (mis)adventures of three mammals (Tom Wallus, Cody Veles, & Tikisha Reddings), and their fight to save the universe. The story opens on their homeworld of Diswannah, where all three of them receive notice in the mail at their separate residences that they've been drafted into the military force known as The Fleet. This event leads the group to traverse the stars in a quest to save the universe from the Lizards, ending with a climactic clash between the three friends and the evil leader of the Lizards, Lothran. Will they win?