No Post For Me Today

I HAVE BEEN INTENDING to post twice a week for the most part. But I was still enjoying the afterglow of my post from Wednesday when I realized that I have nothing else planned for the week.

So, anyone see that io9 post the other day about those short films being turned into Hollywood flicks?

Check it out by clicking this.

ALSO, ANDREW LEON is running a short story contest with a real prize... read all about it ---> HERE.

I WON a gift card at PT Dilloway's weekly trivia challenge... wait, maybe it's a monthly challenge. Regardless, I won! I'm pretty excited about spending my money. It's burning a hole in my (virtual) pocket.

GEEZ, what else? Oh, I did start writing again, it was my first time back writing in a few months. Honestly, it was awkward and not very compelling prose, and it took me a long time to write a few hundred words, but I think of it like going to the gym after a long layoff - it takes a few sessions to get back into the swing of things.

How a dialog between two people discussing a criminal can turn into a conversation about how much rotting fish stink so quickly is beyond me. That I wrote that scene is even more bizarre... that one is going into the trash bin.

AND FINALLY, for the love of all that is good in the world, if you haven't been hearing about the plight of Notre Dame linebacker, all-american, and Heisman runner-up and his totally made up dead girlfriend that was used to inspire his team all the way to the national championship game, then please take a moment and read all about it. Because, damn.

AND THERE IT IS, a post that's just like an episode of Seinfeld, except not funny, it's about nothing.

A Hero's Journey, A Blogfest, and an Interview

A TON OF STUFF is going on today. It figures. I don't post more than a few times a month and then, bam! Everything happens at once.

I was interviewed over at the A to Z Challenge blog. It was a ton of fun and it should be up today. Please go check it out, it was really cool. .

Today is more of uber awesome Did I Notice Your Book blogfest. Check out my entry at the end of today's post.

And  I've got a guest poster today. My first ever. PT Dilloway is celebrating the release of his new novel, A Hero's Journey, by doing a blog tour. He's here today to talk about the cover. I'm thrilled he asked me to do this. I've been looking forward to this book for a long time.

UNDER THE COVER

First of all, thanks Rusty for having me on your blog today!

We’re all acquainted with the expression not to judge a book by its cover.  Most of us are also probably acquainted with the fact that this advice is hogwash.  Everyone judges a book by its cover!  Think of it this way:  if book covers weren’t important than every book would just have a plain white cover with the title and author name.  So obviously having a good cover is very important.

That’s why I was so glad when I asked Rusty that he agreed to do my cover for me.  For my three self-published books I’d done the covers myself, but that consisted of taking a stock photo (or in the case of my novel Virgin Territory it’s a photo I took myself) and throwing some text on it.  That works fine for literary novels where you don’t really need anything too specialized.  For literary fiction you can generally get away with a picture of some shoes or a sunset or something like that.  If you don’t believe me, go look up literary fiction on Amazon and see for yourself.

The problem with a book like A Hero’s Journey though is that you can’t do that.  You could have a photo of some shoes or a sunset, but it wouldn’t really make sense.  It wouldn’t really convey to the reader that, “Hey this is a superhero book!”  That’s what you really want the cover to do, give the potential reader some idea what the book is before they open it, or in the case of buying online, click on the link.

And as far as stock photos go, there isn’t that much out there that’s helpful.  I mean when you’re creating a specific character like the Scarlet Knight, you can’t really expect a stock photo to look the way you want. The best you can hope for is to find a piece that might fit:  a helmet, a sword, a cape, or maybe boots.  Still, it’s not quite the same as having an original cover.

Unfortunately when it comes to drawing I am completely worthless.  The closest I can come to drawing anything is to make characters on the Sims 2.  Which is why I was happy when Rusty agreed to do the drawing for me.

PT's sketch

The obvious hitch was to decide what exactly to draw.  I finally got an idea, though unfortunately for me it came at about four in the morning.  I got up and spent a couple hours before I had to go to work sketching something very, very crude to give Rusty an idea what I was thinking.

He took that and ran with it big-time.  You can see the finished product.  There was some wrangling with the publisher over the size of the text, which took a few weeks to get to the point where they finally accepted it.

Finished painting

Obviously I’m really happy with how the cover turned out.  It’s a heck of a lot better than some stock photo.  It really gives the prospective reader a good idea of what the story involves.  If you didn’t have a title or description or anything you’d still have a good idea it’s about a woman who’s a superhero in a big city. Maybe you could even figure out her superhero name just from the picture.  I mean she’s got red armor on, right?

I hope you enjoy the cover as much as I do and the rest of the book too.  You can buy the book from theSolstice Publishing website here as well as Amazon, B&N, and other retailers.  To find out more about A Hero’s Journey including character bios, deleted scenes, and a visitor’s guide to Rampart City visit my blog at http://www.ptdilloway.com

Thanks to Rusty for hosting me today and for drawing the book’s awesome cover!

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I appreciate PT taking the time to discuss the cover, they can be hard work to do. He is also going to be GIVING AWAY ONE FREE PDF COPY of his new novel to one lucky commenter, so let him know you want it down below.

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FINALLY, DID I NOTICE YOUR BOOK? That's right, in a brilliant game of internet scavenger hunt, Alex J Cavanaugh and Ciara Knight have challenged bloggers to find a book, mention it, and see if the author can find it.

Fun game. So Ben S Dobson, author of Scriber, please come find me. You've got until the end of the day today to win.

The blurb:

 

Disgraced scholar Dennon Lark only wants to be left alone in his self-imposed exile—an exile that ends when a rebel army wielding impossible powers launches a series of brutal attacks on villages across the Kingsland. Forced from his home, Dennon is drawn back into a world he wants nothing to do with. His research into the kingdom's lost past—the very research that sent him into hiding—may hold the answers to a great many questions about the rebels. Questions about their shadowy motives; about their mysterious abilities; and about their ever-increasing numbers, constantly bolstered by those thought killed in their attacks. And only the King's infamous warrior niece Bryndine Errynson and her company of female soldiers trust him enough to help him find the truth before the rebels burn the Kingsland to the ground. Following a trail of historical clues across the kingdom and pursued by forces they don't fully understand, Dennon and Bryndine may be the realm's only hope. But in order to preserve the Kingsland's future, they must first uncover its past.

I've Been Tagged!

From time to time, the internet winds blow my way and I end up getting tagged. I generally don't do anything about it, but this time I figured I would, as it gives me a chance to talk about myself. Yay!

This one came from PT Dilloway, whose novel, A Hero's Journey was released this week, much to his surprise.

Anyway, I'll get right to it.

Ten Questions for the Next Big Thing

1. What is the title of your Work in Progress?

Total Depravity

The cover I'll probably end up using

2. Where did the idea for the book come from? 

Where they all come from, the ether.

3. What genre does your book fall under? 

Science Fiction, well, is historical Science Fiction a real genre? If it is, then that's what this is.

4. Which actors would you chose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

Phht, I have no idea. If they make the movie I'll worry about it then. Although, I must say that one character is disturbingly large. 

5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book? 

A colonial era Bostonite is tasked with hunting down an escaped slave that is rumored to be a demon.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

The intent from the very beginning was for this story to be self-published.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft? 

About a month.

8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre? 

Well, I have no idea. I don't think I'm especially original, but nothing really comes to mind.

9. Who, or what, inspired you to write this novel? 

I love the idea of secret histories, and on a more philosophical level, of how much difficulty humans have interpreting events that fall outside of their cultural or intellectual framework. Like when the Spaniards first began arriving in their giant ships to to explore the Americas, there are stories that natives didn't recognize the ships offshore as... well... as anything. They made up their own stories about what they were or dismissed them altogether. Interpreting the visitors as gods or prophets. I think it says a lot about how the human mind works.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? 

Well, the bottom line about any book is whether or not it's good. My hope is that this is better than anything I've done before. I know I'm excited about it.

That should about cover it all. I'm supposed to pass this along, but I'm not going to. If you want to consider yourself tagged then please, by all means, you were.

S is for Scarlet Knight

It's day S in the A-Z Blogging Challenge.

And today I'm cheating a bit, well, not really cheating, but call it a vacation day from drawing, it was making my wrist sore. So I decided to throw up... eew, gross... throw out something I didn't sketch just for this challenge. It was the digital painting I did for PT Dilloway's upcoming novel with a mystery release date. His A-Z Challenge is all about the backstory to his novel... check it out ... HERE.

So, without further ado: The Scarlet Knight

Hard to believe that is a suit of armor she's wearing... but it is.

If I'd planned better I think I could have made it a much more dynamic image. As it is it's very static, but, you get what you pay for I suppose. In this image I was experimenting with rendering a CG person as my model. She looks okay I suppose.