I've been pretty bummed lately what with the shoulder pain preventing me from drawing, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to find this on my doorstep this morning - the new edition of Ratha's Challenge!

You can get a copy at an online bookseller, or direct from the publisher: [link]

I think this is my favorite cover so far (partly because of the color scheme, purple + orange). I was also pleased to get a treeling in there again, and Quiet Hunter and Thistle - if you look closely, you can see they're doing that cute interlaced-tails pose.

As usual, I used my fat, lazt housecats as models. Thistle always ends up being Bartleby, probably because those big eyes give him a wary look. The face-tail skull is based on photos I took at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. You can see one here, with my fiance in the way (he gave me the stuffed cheetah in the pic): http://viergacht.deviantart.com/gal.....craps#/d4e1enm

As usual, got to give props to  SheilaRuth for giving me this job, and  rathacat for creating the Ratha and her world and being just a generally all-round awesome and amazing lady.