Making of the, "Land of Giants," Cover Art.

The latest book, "Land of Giants,"  is finally up and available on Amazon.  I know it has been a long time between drinks when it comes to my novels, but it is worth it, I assure you!

This novel is $2.99US as a Kindle book.  There are 438 pages in the print edition, a very good length of novel, so it is well worth the money.  It is amazing how often I have bought a Kindle book, started reading, and realised that it was more like a short-story length.  Not this one!

As usual for my novels, this book is a story of friendship, love, courage, growth, humour, magic, and of course adventure!   Add in a lot more music, plenty more amazing beasts, and a trip to a new country in that other dimension where Vikings still rule. My first readers tell me it is a very hard book to put down, especially towards the end.    

To do the cover, I really wanted a bit of an action shot, but I didn't want to give away too much of the story either.   I had a couple of ideas at first but soon settled on a scene from early in the book, with Andy and Lem sailing to rescue Lily, Perry and Bu.  

Having decided on the scene I wanted to portray, it was time to do some thumbnails to see if my ideas would work.  My first idea of having Archelon, the giant prehistoric turtle, come up the front side of the boat didn't work because he obscured things too much.

 

 
 So I put him behind the boat and started scribbling to see if it could work that way.

Heh, he looks a bit too happy in that one, but I could see that the idea was possible, so I kept drawing.

  
Until I had a design I could work from for the final piece.

        
So then it was at a stage where I could pull out the watercolour paper and draw it for (hopefully) the last time.

And ink it with indelible ink.

And draw and ink the plush-crested Jay on the back cover.  The Jay makes an appearance in the story a couple of times, and I thought he would be a great addition on the cover.  Don't worry, Bu the cheeky dog is still in the story, but she wasn't on the boat so I couldn't draw her there.    

I'm so sorry, I totally forgot to take stage pics while painting.  Again!  I do get so very involved, I forget. A any rate, here it is, all done.

 
Then it was time to scan the final art and decide how to crop the page for best effect with the text. After that I added in the titles and the blurb on the back, which went really smoothly this time around.  Yay!

What do you think?  Does it make you want to read the book?  I hope so!  It's a stand-alone story so you can certainly read it without having read, "Land of Fire," first, but you very well might want to go back and read the first book when you finish this one.  :D



    
  
     

55 000 words!

So, writing is still going well on Freya and the Hairy Goddess.  I went over the 55 000 word mark on Friday.  In other writing news. a box of print copies of Webriders, Land of Fire, and Freya and the Golden Bear showed up this week.  Amazing to see my work in a stack of books! I plan on donating one of each to the local library, and the rest will be here in case anyone local wants to buy a copy.  They look so pretty together!  

  
We've finally had some rain here.  It is lovely to see green coming back to our land.

I feel really lucky, and I bet the trees do too, as sometimes we have to wait until mid May for real rain.  This year the autumn weather has even beaten the deciduous trees, who are only just beginning to colour up.  Some years they grow leaves, colour, and lose leaves, and hardly get to feel a drop of rain on them! 


It hasn't done my tomato plants much good though.  I've taken the nets off so the birds can have the last of the fruit.  
    

The mutant plant is still growing, and it is definitely a pumpkin.  A Kent I'm guessing since that is one of our fave pumpkins to eat and the seeds end up in the chook scraps.  

It has one little fruit on it and a few flowers still... but I'm pretty sure the winter is going to beat it!

I love the way the autumn light shines across our place on Autumn mornings.

This is the garden along the front of mum's house, looking lovely.  Autumn for us is rather Springy as plants come to life and bloom after the long, dry, hot summers that crush them so. 

I think it is time to start wearing my new shoes, don't you?  These old favorites have done as much service as they are going to!

I hate having to give up comfy shoes for new ones, even if my new ones are volleys again and will soon be just as comfortable.

I've been playing the lyre every day.  I love how versatile it is and the organic way you can use both hands to play it.   People enjoyed seeing the video I posted last post, so here is another player who has way more skills than me, and who has electrified his lyre so he can add extra effects.  He is doing a translated version of a very old Anglo-Saxon Poem, Wanderer. A very different style to the last one, but haunting and lovely.

This weekend the plan is to spend lots of time painting the new cover for the print version of Cunning Plans. I'll take pics as I go so I can do a step by step post, but this is the under-drawing.  I've already drawn back over that to fix up areas I wasn't happy with, and today will get the paints back out and start painting in earnest.  

New chickens and new writing

This was a pretty nice sunset the other night.  Nearly every evening we try to get out in the paddock to watch the sun set.  We don't get to see the best of the sunsets here as there are a lot of trees to our west, but at times they are still pretty nice.

It is Tuppy's fave time of day (apart from meals) because as long as it isn't too hot she gets to chase her ball or kong.  She's a ball fiend! 

Rosie gets to do her little bit of an agility course at a slower pace, and she will flollop out for a ball or two if we make Tuppence wait so she knows it is all hers.

 

This week I've added two new chookies to the chook pen since a couple of the old girls 'fell off the perch' this year.  Apart from our one gorgeous Australorp, Nanny Ogg, we only have the orange hyline laying hybrids.  I like them for their bright cheerful personalities and of course for their egg laying ability.

The two new girls have been dubbed Mrs Guppy and Madame Blavatsky after two 19th century psychics that are sometimes mentioned on one of my fave podcasts, Mysterious Universe.  We like to have a theme for each generation.  The last three we got are named after Star Trek characters, so we don't mind mixing it up.  Whatever takes our fancy at the time!

Madame Blavatsky lives up to her famous namesake. She is quite tame, and very adventurous.  She got herself up on the their usual night perch the very first night.  She is a pretty orange with a brighter ruff round her neck and the typical dinosaur expression of a young hen.
 

  

Mrs Guppy is a bit more of a quandary.  For some reason she decided the first night that sleeping on TOP of the chook dome, instead of inside it, was the way to go.  Each night we had to go out after dark, gently slide her sideways with a broom, and catch her, then carefully put her up on a perch inside.  Funny girl!  Here she is on her dome, wondering what all the fuss is about and where all her friends went!

She has a pretty lighter lacework around her neck.  You can see it better here.  I like to pick slightly different colours if I can so I can tell them apart. 

 
The four old girls still have their beaks out of joint, but there is plenty of room for the youngsters to keep out of their way unless they get into a corner.  I try to just wince and tell them that next time I get new chooks it will be them being the mean ones!

The first week of writing on my new Freya novel has gone well.  I do enjoy her enthusiasm and lack of restrictions! My word count is 8726 and she's already had two fights.  :)

I've finally finished the illustrations for my tween book, Dog Slobber! Seventeen drawings is a lot of art!  This is a fun one!  You'll have to read the book to find out what it's about!:

Now I've started working on ideas for Chicken Soup for Satan.  The little thumbnails  in my sketchbook gave Andrew a chuckle so I thought you'd like to see them too.

The idea is the have the white GSD from the book, Ghost, in the shot, and also a bowl of chicken noodle soup on the table. 

After fiddling with angles, I got out the camera to see how it might look in real life and got Tuppy in to be my model.  She's kind of the opposite of a white GSD but she's what I have!

Then Rosie thought, "Hang on, Tuppy is earning treats over there!" so she had to come and join in even though I didn't want two dogs in the photo. Oh well, it's cute anyway.  :)

   
   




           

A Creative Christmas!

I've really been on a roll the last couple of weeks! Every day has involved writing, drawing, crocheting and also the fun work of preparing finished books for publishing.

First off, I got to hand out some of these lovelies that I've been working on in secret:

This is Tippette the tiny crab, from a Fresh Stitches pattern, and Bunky Bob the goldfish, from a Kate Wood pattern.

The three Muscovyteers are from a pattern by Susie Farmgirl

The cute little Puffin is from a pattern by Mysterious Cats.  

The Christmas Owl is from a pattern by Bunny Mummy.

Next, I got to give my younger nieces the first printed draft copy of the book I've been working on just for them.  They'd asked me to write something that would be ok for them to read, so this was it.  I've called it Dog Slobber!  It's based around a 13 year old who lives in the year 3007 and has genetically modified giant dogs to ride, with hopefully a gentle message about the environment and about being accepting of differences in people. I have about 18 drawings to do for the book, plus one cover image.  I'm around halfway done with those.

So far it's only been read by my good old 'first tester' Andrew, and by my mum and both enjoyed it.  I've yet to see how the nieces like it.  It may need some changes to be correct for that age group. 

I've scanned a couple of pages from my sketchbook where I've been working out the images.  I like looking at sketchbooks so I hope you do too.

They often have more life than the final drawings do.  :)

Let's see, what else?  Oh yes each weekday I did daily writing of 1000 words on my current novel, Bunyip Dreaming, only having my birthday off on the 23rd of Dec.

I'm getting Land of Fire ready to go into print, and the process is going much more smoothly this time, though I really do wonder why it has to be so hard to get page numbering to work or turn off in different sections of a document.  :) 

I've also been really enjoying revisiting Chicken Soup for Satan, which is now in the editing process.  I love it when I have left a finished book long enough so that when I read it, I forget it was me who wrote it and can just enjoy it!  Not surprisingly I get all the jokes.  :D     

I've written the short Blurb for it too.  Does this make you want to read it?

"Gill Smith and his dog, Ghost, think they've found the perfect place to live. The house-mates are friendly, the house is beautiful and the surroundings are peaceful and spacious. Gill can't believe his luck!

Trouble is, strange things have begun happening around this peaceful house.  Scary things.  Who, or what, is to blame for the unearthly creatures that are plaguing the house-mates and their pets?  What creature out of the lost worlds of myth will come after them next?

Gill likes to come across as tough (and with a nickname like Satan, who would question it!) but is he tough enough to stick it out when the weird stuff really hits the fan?"

I hope it does make you want to read it!  I guess the genre is fantasy, but I think actually it has its own genre of Cosy Horror, if there could be such a thing.  :)

Since I am posting this on the very first day of 2015, I also hope for you all that you wish for in this coming year, and for my fellow dog nuts, I hope it contains lots of doggy fun!