I'm on Fire

A quick update to that that I'm kind of on chapter 16 at this stage, "kind of" because I've realised I don't write in chronological order. With my first book I had written two chapters out in pencil in a notebook years before I actually wrote the book. They were the first chapter and the climax chapter, roughly chapter 20.

I thought I'd start at the beginning and work till the end his time, but once again I seem to work better if I get the main sections sorted first and then fill in the rest. It's a bit like flower arranging,I think. I put in all the large important features and then fill in with the minor stuff.

As you might guess by that vague description... I rarely arrange flowers! I far prefer to tweak and arrange words.

At the moment I'm managing to write between 1,800 and 2,800 words a day, which is good.  I stick on some music and I'm away. I write a lot better (and faster) if I have the right music to inspire me, it sets my fingers on fire. I have entire YouTube folders for themes like; sad, tense, dramatic and romantic.
 
The only problem is that when I write that much in a day any energy for writing anything else - emails, blogs, etc, is used up and dried up. My "must reply" email list is alarming and growing. Household chores are suffering as well. I have not dusted in... a long time, but I simply can't do it all and at this stage the book has taken over my brain to such an extent that I'm not much use for anything anyway. Yesterday I left rice in water on the stove for 20 minutes and never turned it on.... ah well, at least I didn't put rice on a hot plate without water - that would have been worse!

glitter-graphics.com

At least my brain's on fire... not the house.

I'll leave you with the music I'll be writing to today. It's Citadels, by Galt Aureus. I'm also using another lovely song by them, for ...well, you'll have to wait for me to finish the book to find out about that one.  ;-)

It's All in the Timing...

I am FINALLY writing that second book, the sequel to FIRST LIGHT. I say "FINALLY" because the first four attempts were all scuttled by unexpected things - my dad went into hospital, then my mum-in-law died, then my computer went a bit crazy and lost half its brain and then I lost the use of my hands for almost a year. 

I was beginning to feel a bit jinxed with that book! Then a friends said, "Maybe you can't get to write it yet because the timing is wrong." and I relaxed and stopped fretting.

I'm happy to say that the timing seems to be right - I'm up to chapter six so far and it feels good. :)

But it does mean that I have a new reason for missing out on writing, and reading, blogs.I'll try to rectify that, when I can, but at the moment - the book comes first! 

The Book Trailer is Up

My book trailer is finally up on YouTube... after a month of computer crashes, software seizures and long hard work.

It might seem strange that 3 minutes of video could take weeks and weeks of hard work, but every detail of clothing, hair, eyes, clouds, buildings... everything was created or altered in some form or another. It was a lot of work, but I'm really pleased with the results. I hope you enjoy watching it. :-)

That Cover...

A friend asked me about my cover last week and I replied:

I loved doing it, but I only use my own photos or pictures from photographers who are willing to share. Finding things that were suitable took ages and then putting them together took just as long.

To give you an idea... The girl on the cover is actually made of three photos - hair, face, face again as first photo wasn't a full face and neck. The sky? four photos - moon, clouds, sky, more clouds over mountains. The city? Only two photos, but heavily reworked by me as the original photos were of Edinburgh castle! Water in front? another two photos. Then add in text, shadowing on text... you get the idea?

Having to compromise with photos that are not quite what I imagine/want is HARD work, but hard work can still be very satisfying. Although I studied Art years back I'm self-taught in computer art... and still learning!

I thought I'd give everyone a more visual idea of what that means, as that also gives me a chance to properly thank some of the photographers who so kindly shared their photos.

First a big thanks to Scott Liddell, who can be found on his photography and *writing blog HERE. (*check out Scott's book, The Beetle Man, on Kindle) Scott's photos included two of Edinburgh and at least one of the sky. Here's one of them - can you see which bits I used for the city in the foreground?

I took Edinburgh to bits, quite literally, altered the colours to fit what I needed, then faded in the sea in front.

For the background. I added the girl's face in between four layers of slightly translucent clouds and sky. She's on top of two layers then one layer over her and a final cloud/sky layer over the two moons. The moons aren't from a photo, I created them with textures and shading. Irony is that after all my work to create two unique new moons they ended up looking a lot like our own moon. lol

Now for that girl in the sky...

She was created from photographs taken by a man named Paul. (thanks again, Paul!) He tells me she is now married and in the Peace Corp with her husband. He thinks they are in Africa. I love the fact that the woman with those wonderful eyes (who fits my book character so perfectly) is now working on the continent of my birth, where I originally wrote this book. What an amazing full circle.

Back on Track

I know I've been very quite lately, in big part due to my hands (health issues), but also because I've been busy getting First Light, ready to put onto Kindle.

The longest struggle has been creating a new book cover. Last time I had to go with the Printer/Publisher choice of this...

Dull "blaaah" cover. :( Back when this first came out I did my own artwork to create bookmarks and a YouTube video as advertising. At least here I had a chance to create something I liked.

This time I wanted something that really expressed what the book is about - the world and its people. So I worked on creating a city that fitted the capital city and that took AGES, but I'm really thrilled with the results. I even got in the dock front (far right), where two of the main characters are destined to meet up. :-)

Then I added in the mountains, which are important, and the two moons, because they're fun and point out that this world isn't Earth, and then I added Daen's face, because she just brings it all together. The fonts gave me grief too. I forgot the fact that Amazon link pictures are thumbnails - on a thumbnail my first font vanished and my second became a blob. :-(

So... FINALLY, after months of slow and painful work, (painful thanks to my hands and my fussy arty perfectionism!) here it is, my new cover:

The actual book (writing) transference was... interesting. They tell you it's a case of take your word doc, save it as html webpage, send it to them, but in between lies a whole range of formatting and coding errors that can boil your brain! Hubby and I took two full days to get the manuscript completely error free. Then I had to wait as Amazon checks all the legalities, such as "do you really own this book?", "Do you have publishing rights?", etc.

Well... it is finally up, on ALL the Amazon Kindle stores from the America to France. :-)

I even have an author page!

I'm so thrilled, and so relieved all my months of hard work has finally reached an end. Now the equally hard, but more fun side begins - advertising! Amazon already has me connected to Shelfari, which was very nice of them. I want to update my YouTube video for the book with a new, better version, but I promise not to leave my blog so ghostly empty this time.