I don’t want to brag, but my story, A Nightmare Named Ricky, can no longer be had for free on this blog. Yes, it's true. You now have to purchase it as part of Andrew Leon’s Shadow Spinner: Collection #3.
The new version is of my story is subtly revised from the one that appeared on this site for the past year. Hopefully, this version is nominally better.
Knowing what stories have been included in the previous two installments of Andrew's tale has me… well, nervous. The strength of Andrew’s story, along with the phenomenal short stories included in the first two installments mean I’m batting above my average here, or maybe I’m punching outside my weight class… wait. Maybe I’ve outkicked my coverage. Dammit sports. I can’t properly apply my writing skills to your metaphors. Anyway, I’m just saying, one is doing themselves a disservice by not reading these things. They’re quite good (my own story not withstanding).
What isn’t lacking in quality is Andrew’s writing. That he’s asked me to put one of my stories up is a huge honor (granted, it was written to fit inside his House on the Corner universe, so it makes sense that he’d want to have it there. But still, he could very well have said ‘never mind,’ or, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to put up an afterward about growing up in Louisiana, or something about Legos’). I’m quite proud to have something of mine in the company of some excellent storytelling.
So I’m glad he didn’t decide he’d rather talk about his favorite childhood breakfast cereal, or his love of mini figurines. No, he wanted me to put my story there instead. Yes, he wanted my story. Mine! So there it is. Ready for the world to read, please go buy it.
Make him know that it's the power of your pity for me that drove you to it.
Wait, that didn’t come out right. Don't do that.
I’m posting again tomorrow… for my NaNoWriMo wrap-up/IWSG super mash-up spectacular!
The very last of the A-Z Challenge posts for 2013. What a journey.
This month took me from concept to completion of a cover for Andrew Leon's upcoming, soon to be mega-hit, Shadow Spinner. A novel he's been releasing in serial format for many months, but will soon see itself all in one novel length edition... hopefully with a cover much like what you'll see below.
In case you don't recall, here is what we saw on day one:
I spent two weeks trying all sorts of different things before I finally came back around to that concept and eventually produced this:
And for those of you that might be interested in what the front cover alone might look like:
Thank you one and all for stopping by throughout the month. Everyone's input has been a huge help!
Okay, my penultimate post. This one, good people, is my final image (at least for the blogfest), for Andrew Leon's upcoming novel release, Shadow Spinner.
That damned shadow coming from the tunnel kept me up late almost every night for a week. I have never had something so seemingly minor totally derail me like this thing has. I'm still not happy with it.
But, I do like the streetlights I painted in.
The Z post will have the typeface, which is a shame, because it is possibly just as important as the image itself, and I'm only doing one post on that. It usually takes me just as much work to get that part right as anything. But, I'm not doing 26 more posts in May for the typeface.
I'm winding down the A to Z challenge. In the end, I may not have a completed cover for Andrew Leon's upcoming novel, Shadow Spinner, but I will have sure as heck tried.
In case you didn't understand, my concept this month was to go from concept to completion of a cover for said novel. It's been a tough month.
This post is for Jo, who hated the white stuff on the tunnel entrance. It's now gone. Replaced with hopefully hard to make out graffiti and whatnot.
And just for an FYI, tomorrow will end with a twofer for me. No, I'm not going to combine letters, I'm going to post twice. Ooh... the anticipation.
Andrew, since I'm getting those done in advance, any changes to the cover that ends the month will have to be done, well, after Z is already posted.
We're nearing the end of the A to Z Challenge and I'm a day behind.
In case you're popping in at the very end and have no idea what I'm doing this month - I've been attempting to go from concept to completion of a book cover for Andrew Leon's, Shadow Spinner.
Had very limited time to work on this since the last post. But I still managed to waste most of the time I had in a desperate attempt to save the pallets. I know it's weird that I grew so attached, but I did. So I painted this big rock behind them for them to lean on. I have to admit, it was a damned good looking rock.
What a great rock!
As proud as I was about it, and I even painted graffiti all over it, it just looked pretty bad within the overall picture. So it was taken out (I'm sure a comparison to writing can be made there too).
Without the pallets, which I knew were a problem from the beginning, I think it makes the tunnel look more ominous in a way I wasn't expecting.
On a side note, very observant viewers may notice a subtle change to Tib, nothing major, just taking out a touch of that green, and of course the shadow is now gone. I actually spent about an hour and a half trying to get the shadow to come out of the tunnel and reaching out towards Tib and I couldn't quite make it work.
We're entering the home stretch regarding this year's A to Z Challenge. It's been a bit of a trial for me. Not enough preparation going in and then falling desperately behind.
But for first time viewers, I'm spending my month trying to create a cover for Andrew Leon's Shadow Spinner, which will soon be out in novel form. I'm still, even this late in the game, trying to get the basic composition of the image down.
I mentioned somewhere that getting Tib into the image was going to make or break it. To this point, all the covers I've done before have been paintings, this one, at least so far, has been about 80% photos and 20% painting. To leave it at that ratio meant Tib might have to be a photo too... or it could be the most detailed painting I've ever done. But either way, that cartoony look probably wouldn't work so well with the image so far.
So I took my son outside last night and forced him to stand in the rain while I took photos of him. For his trouble I promised him 25% of my commission of this piece. Heh, sucker.
Anyway, I ended up liking his photo so much that I thought I like it better than anything I would have painted.
I did some heavy manipulating to my kid's photo. I made his arms and shoulders much smaller, and made his head way bigger - he's nearly 17 now and does not look like a kid, but I think I've managed to de-age him pretty well here. I also did a lot of painting over the image to make it match the existing environment better. I ran a filter over him and did some color changes, added highlights and dropped some stuff off into deep shadow.
In addition, I did several smaller tweaks to the overall picture, but nothing too noteworthy of mentioning.
And fair warning, no matter what Andrew says in the comments, I might not get a post up at all tomorrow regardless. I'll try though.
After my four post day yesterday, it grieves me to think that I'm still a full day behind in this year's A to Z Challenge. But I am, I'll just have to make up the difference before month's end.
But, in case my theme is a mystery to you, dear reader, my hope is to go from concept to completion of a cover for Andrew Leon's upcoming novel, Shadow Spinner. I spent most of the month scratching my head as I struggled with the concept. But here is where we stand now:
Only a very minor change from yesterday's last post... anyone see it right away? I added a shadow to the tunnel.
Post number four in my one day quest to get back on track in this A to Z challenge.
For anyone just stopping by for the first time... this month is all about me going from concept to completion for the cover of Shadow Spinner, Andrew Leon's upcoming novel.
I left everyone with a bit of a cliffhanger last time. But I'm now ready to put the photos together into a single image. Like below:
I did paint back some tree type things, I copied the one pole from the original pic and duplicated it, I'm thinking of using them as streetlights for the interstate that is above the tunnel.
There is still tons of things to do, lots of little things, but at least one HUGE one, namely, where to put Tib into the image... .
Whaaaa??? Is this the third post of the day for me? Why yes, yes it is. That still leaves me a few days behind in the A to Z Challenge, but I'm close enough to see hope on the horizon.
Still plugging away at Andrew Leon's cover for his upcoming novel, Shadow Spinner.
Recall from an earlier post that I'm comping together more than one photo. To help blend the two I need to work on this one some more:
So, I've gone into blending mode, and have made this:
Which, quite honestly, looks so awesome by itself that I'd be totally cool if Andrew wanted to use that. Regardless, I'm going to combine it with the background I made previously. You can see I continued to tweak things as well... I've gotten rid of most of the graffiti - on the tunnel walls and the pallets. I've highlighed some of the edges of the walls for clarity, and did some other minor things.
Look! It's post number 2 for the day! Awesome. Of course, I'm still behind on the A to Z Challenge, but I'm one less letter behind now.
To recap... I'm working on a novel cover this month. It's not been going well.
As I mentioned in my last post. I took a photo of a tunnel close to my house. I took another photo of the same tunnel to help give some background for the larger cover of the book... maybe not to be the actual cover, but to give me an idea for some background.
Here, I placed one on top of the other:
You can see, different locations, different times of day, same tunnel though. Andrew asked about Grass. Well, there is grass everywhere, but I'll deal with that later. I decided right off that the biggest issue I would have would be everything above the tunnel. It's all very distracting, since I'll want everyone to focus elsewhere and not at all the trees everywhere, I decided I needed to do something about that.
Then I remembered the sky I painted early in the month for the other version of a tunnel (that one straight out of my head - not the real world), so I took that sky and dropped it in in the background here.
Yeah, I think that sky might be more ominous and less distracting from the overall image. I'll continue tweaking and see what comes of it.
I'm way behind in the A-Z challenge. But I hope to catch up this week. Maybe even put up another post or two today. No pressure on anyone dreading the idea of me expecting multiple visits from them per day. I'm just posting my progress.
And what is that progress? If you recall, I'm trying to go from concept to completion for a book cover for Andrew Leon's upcoming novel, Shadow Spinner. I originally planned on spending the first week getting the concept down, and the final three weeks of the month executing the concept. That wasn't to be though, I'm still mired in the concept phase. But I think I've all but decided to go with the tunnel as central theme for the cover, so I went around yesterday evening looking for tunnels.
I found this one:
I came home and spent 45 seconds in photoshop to change the most obvious issues.
There, made the tunnel darker (and I suppose, longer) and disappeared the rear view mirror.
It's A to Z day... I have no idea how far into this we are, but it's past haflway.
Still thinking about how to compose, properly, the image I want to put forward to best make a cover from yesterday's concept for Andrew Leon's, Shadow Spinner. I had my step-son go outside and stand in the road to help me figure out what I'm going to do. I took a pic (with my handy split-pic app, so he can be in more than one place at a time). I don't think it's quite right, but I like the photo anyway, so I thought I'd share.
Were I to really be into this, I would have painted over portions of the photo to bring out some highlights on the characters, create more epic clothing, whatever, but it's still cool.
I tallied the votes from my previous post... then I discarded them all Andrew's note that number 1 comes the closest to feeling like an appropriate cover for his novel, Shadow Spinner.
So, I'm going to play with that as a concept and see how that goes.
It's about halfway through the A-Z challenge and I'm a couple of days behind. I'm sure by now everyone knows about what this whole A to Z thing is all about, but just in case - Click to learn more.
For anyone who doesn't already know, I'm trying to go from concept to completion on a cover for Andrew Leon's upcoming novel, Shadow Spinner. Since I'm already so close to the halfway point I should have already settled on a design, but I've not felt super-inspired about anything I've thrown up so far. But then again, it can be hard to use your imagination when the concepts are so rough to start with. But, I hope there is something I've done that Andrew would like me to continue using.
So, I'm posting thumbnails of previous concepts and am asking Andrew (And others too, I suppose) if there is anything here we can take as a something worthy of continuing. I made the last one bigger because I like it more. I've also numbered them for ease of reference.
A to Z day... um, nine, I think. Read about the woes and why's of other participants in this challenge... HERE.
For those just stopping by, I'm attempting to go from concept to completion of a book cover for Andrew Leon's soon to be released novel, Shadow Spinner. He's giving me hints and 'you're getting warmer' type of clues in the comments each day. I'm still in the concept phase, trying to hammer down something we're both happy with.
So today I riffed on Andrew's comment from the previous day where he mentioned something from early in the book.
It's still a wee bit rough, but concepts are supposed to be. But I imagine the concept is plain enough.
It's Day... um, eight, for the A to Z challenge. I have challenged myself to go from concept to completion for a cover of Andrew Leon's upcoming novel, Shadow Spinner. Read about what other folks are doing this month by clicking... HERE.
I'm behind where I thought I'd be, but I'm not worried about things yet, it's very early in the month, and coming up with the right concept is the hard part, the rest is pretty much painting by numbers.
After yesterday's post, I think I struck out with concepts, maybe I fouled one or two off, but certainly nothing worth bragging about. To Andrew I'd just mention (in response to a comment he left) that these are extremely rough, and things like a tree, or a pose, or whatever it may be, is not my concern. I'm looking for a rough idea of how to compose the cover, but the details are very malleable at this point. I can promise that whatever we decide to go with, it'll look pretty good once I'm done.
For this first one, I was thinking of the man with no eyes standing in silhouette within the mouth of the tunnel... although in this case, it's more like the mouth of a Mexican restaurant... but hopefully, the idea is there. I like this idea a lot, because the darkness of the tunnel can be used as a framing device.
I like the second one here as well, again, the man with no eyes is only seen as a scary shadow, a shadow that doesn't look anything like Freddy Krueger. If I worked on this some more I'd probably try to isolate Tib a bit more and make him look more alone.
Ok, I may have halfway explained my theme yesterday, but I was in a rush and probably did it really poorly. Here is another attempt: During the month of April I will try to do a full cover for Andrew Leon's Shadow Spinner novel from concept to completion in what is, more or less, real time. Meaning that I'm planning on making adjustments on the fly as Andrew (or others) advise.
God, what a horrible idea.
Anyway, I had a blank page yesterday. Today I have this:
Kid. Tunnel. What could possibly go wrong?
I have thoughts. One, this is the front AND back cover, so slinking towards the tunnel will look odd if you only see the front. The composition is all wonky. If I added the man with no eyes and perhaps Michael battling in the middle ground it might work better, but it proved to be tricky during quick sketches to get that to work so I'm stuck with something I kinda like, but don't love. I need to nail something down soon though, I'll try another concept tomorrow and see where it takes me.
I think I mentioned Looper as one of my favorite movies of 2012 on more than one occasion. It was a smart, dramatic, and managed to not back away from having likable, understandable leads do horrible things, and still make us understand them. No easy task in a time-travel movie.
Well, in his recent post, Andrew Leon dared to give my beloved movie a mixed review! Actually, that wasn't my problem with his post. He had a take on some of the events of the movie that I disagreed with. Very subjective stuff. I thought it might be fun to continue to discuss here, where I can do also let my comment to his blog also serve as a post on it's own.
Be warned, spoilers follow... and this may get a bit long, and bogged down with minutia, I won't be mad if you just go about your business and ignore. This really is just me trying to come to grips with Andrew's interpretation of the movie more than anything.
Okay, for those of us who haven't seen the movie, and don't care about spoilers, here is the gist of the controversy:
Loopers are hit men who have one job - kill people that are sent from 30 years in the future, bound and with their heads covered, at a predetermined spot and moment in time.
Now, at some point, part of the deal when you are hired is that, if you are still alive in the future, you will be sent the old version of yourself to kill. Once that deed is done, you get a huge payoff and you are 'retired,' until 30 years later when you are kidnapped, bound and have your head covered, and sent back in time to be killed by your younger self.
During his review, Andrew said this:
"The whole story ofLooper hinges on the belief by the audience that young Joe dies when he falls from the ladder."
In the comments, I (and others) disputed this interpretation of that scene of the film. I responded:
"I don't think the intent was for the audience to believe Joe died when he fell from the ladder. Or if it was, I didn't get it."
To which, Andrew said:
"I'm pretty certain we were supposed to believe he died, because that's the only thing that makes the movie work. He falls and "dies" and everything starts over. Then we get back to the point the second time and the reaction is "oh, he didn't die," and we're meant to incorporate that knowledge into our new movie of the movie and forget the whole dying part so that we can follow the "new" narrative."
I think my gut reaction to that was, "If what he's saying is true, I enjoyed this movie more than I should have because I made up a scenario in my head that is better than what the director actually intended for me to think." My response? Well, you're in luck - I've pasted that below as well:
"If the director killed Young Joe at the ladder it would be beyond stupid (logically), and would lessen the movie immensely... there is no way that is what happened. If you interpreted the fall from the ladder that way I can see why it frustrated you. And with that, I'll drop it. I think I've said my piece. Unless you respond with something that opens up a can or worms."
Now, at this point, Andrew responded and I really misunderstood what he was actually saying - I'll blame the internet for ruining my attention span - and went a long ways towards preparing today's post before I realized I'd gone way off on a tangent. But regardless of where I was at mentally, Andrew responded with:
But that's not what happened. There is no flashback. The FIRST time he's on the ladder and he falls, the screen goes black, and, then, we're back at the field and he's looking at his watch. old Joe shows up, and he kills him. The clear implication is that Young Joe dies in the fall. You only find out he didn't when we get back to the point from Old Joe's perspective. And, see, what you said makes my point. If Young Joe dies, the movie is over, and it was. Because, when he falls, we go back to field and he kills Old Joe. It was a lie that allows us to buy into the rest of the movie, because, then, we want to know what happened. Why he had the hood on the second time, which we never actually find out.
At this point, the conversation ended, so really, up until this point, I'm only covering ground that was covered yesterday. It's from here forward that new information is being given.
Now, I'm going to break down Andrew's comment into it's component parts, and discuss each one on it's own. That way I can, hopefully not forget anything important.
"But that's not what happened. There is no flashback. The FIRST time he's on the ladder and he falls, the screen goes black, and, then, we're back at the field and he's looking at his watch. old Joe shows up, and he kills him. The clear implication is that Young Joe dies in the fall."
Ok, this happens a lot in disagreements, two people see exactly the same thing and both come away seeing something different.
That said, I think the actual indicator that Andrew mentioned that points to Young Joe dying is the the screen going black. I'm not convinced that is significant, especially if the lead actor falls from his third story window thirty minutes into the movie. My expectation, as a viewer, is that he will get up, be hurt, and continue on his way. It's from years of conditioning by Die Hard movies, Lethal Weapon movies, Rambo, whatever action movie comes out in any given week. Heck, even that Schwarzenegger movie I saw in January had him fall through the roof of a building while fist-fighting a gun toting madman. The joke was Arnold is old now, so it took him a moment before he could get up and go beat up the rest of the gang. That's a full generation of conditioning I have. So, seeing a man fall from a third story fire escape onto the hood of a car in a movie like this is the equivalent of me missing a step when stepping off my front porch. Yeah, I may twinge my knee a bit, but I'm probably going to be fine.
I'm being snarky there, but my point is that I didn't believe he died. Andrew didn't believe he died, my two teenage kids didn't think he'd died. No one else I spoke with about the movie in any detail believed he died.
So, I contend that the director did NOT intend to have the audience believe Young Joe was dead at that point. Having a scene where a lead actor has an accident and the scene goes black really makes me think he's been knocked out. That is very subjective ground though. I don't like playing there. I did find this youtube video with the director/writer where he discussed many things about the movie, but the significant portion -which I should have noted the time stamp so I could have linked directly to that part - is when he mentions that the movie is not being shown linearly.
Based firstly, on my thoughts, and secondly, on what the director mentions in the video above (and I'm serious about that, as I actually think the more the director talks about the events of the movie, the more opportunity he has to undermine what I think is a pretty well conceived time-travel story), I think the events of the movie go like this:
POV is Young Joe. He's a looper. The events unfold until he falls from ladder.
POV shifts to Old Joe. We see what are, essentially, his memories of when he was a young man and he killed his own loop (who was hooded), we follow his path up until he arrives to meet Young Joe (without his hood, because he decided to change things, which is why he was so late when he arrived).
Now, part of Andrew's original post (which I recommend you read, because I think I've demonstrated I can quite easily spend some time misinterpreting what he says) mentions that the entire movie is invalidated by the death of Old Joe during the scene immediately following the fall from the ladder. Here is that passage:
"The other thing that really bothers me is that the movie didn't happen, and I hate stories that didn't happen. I hate getting to the end and finding out that it was all a dream or a vision or a whatever. I mean, this was as bad asNext with Nicolas Cage. You get to the end and find out that, really, the movie ended right there when Young Joe kills Old Joe at the beginning of the movie. That's it. End of story. Everything else is just "closing the loop" and doesn't actually exist. I really felt cheated."
So, I know I was supposed to get to the second part of the paragraph I quoted earlier, but I've already spent waaayyy too long on this, and I do have a job to go to in the morning, so I can't stay up all night writing this post.
Based on my interpretation of the movie, the loop was broken. Old Joe that was killed in the field after the scene where Young Joe fell from his apartment wasn't Old Joe, it was a third version of Joe, REALLY Old Joe. His only appearance in the movie was when he was shot and killed. Because Old Joe wasn't the character that died there, he was the man pulling the trigger, the person that looks just like Young Joe, but isn't, because he's from the previous loop, it's actually Old Joe.
I know what I just wrote was convoluted - but I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. I believe that was the writer/director's intent, and that's the way I believe it happened when I saw it. If I understand Andrew correctly here - never a given - and his interpretation is correct, then this is not a very good movie. It falls apart for all the reasons he says it does.
But why would anyone make that movie? I don't believe it.
Last night, only minutes before midnight, local time. I submitted my entry to Andrew Leon's short story contest. I feel like Rocky Balboa after the end of Rocky, or Rocky II, also Rocky IV, V & VI... wait, I'm starting to sense a pattern there. Maybe not Rocky III though, he really kicked Clubber's ass in that one.
Anyway, if anyone is interested in reading, fair warning, its just a tad over 5000 words. If you read at a normal-ish pace (approx 250 words per minute) then you're looking at solid 20 minutes to get through the whole thing. That is a commitment. If you read much faster than that, well, then you're probably just skipping words. In my case, I'm cool with that.
So, if you can handle it, you can either click on the tab above that says, "The Nightmare Named Ricky" or you can just click ---> HERE
Alex J Cavanaugh's brilliant dream of giving the writing world a guilt-free opportunity to vent about their fears and frustrations is back again. And this time, it's personal.
Actually, I've been busily writing my short story for Andrew Leon's Imagination Room contest (which has a deadline of today) and I'd hope to post along with this, but as it turns out, the short story isn't ready. So I'll have it ready before midnight's deadline I hope and post it then... please, wish me luck.
Because I've had something like a month to work on it and it's still not ready. It's a combination of procrastination, which is a real thing, not something I just made up, and this paralyzing need to keep changing things.
For example, I wrote a two person story. I had a flash last night that I need a third major character. I immediately thought of how to weave his person in, what their role would be, how it would help things... and I would do it if I had more time.
Of course, my other stories don't have such deadlines, so I do the same with them, I just keep on tinkering with them, never really finishing them. To this point, I've found two ways of dealing with the problem I have:
1) Arbitrarily calling them finished whether they need more work or not, or...
2) Embracing my problem, and just never finishing a story.
That's about it. I have found it easier to call it done with shorter stories, but once something hits 2500 words or so it starts getting really tough for me to leave it alone.
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