Thanks and One More Original Art Piece for the Pay-What-You-Want Sale

So, thanks to the generous people who bought things from my pay-what-you-want sale (details here)! You guys are fantastic. The immediate oh-crap-ness has been remedied, but I'm going to keep the sale running a while longer because I know a few people were still making up their minds, and I still haven't  received that cheque for that big job that I was waiting for, so I'm not quite out of the woods yet (and then there's that tax bill, which I think I can pay in instalments...)

But I didn't start writing this post to whine, I did it to say thanks. A huge, huge thanks.

Once again: Thank you.

But also, there is one other thing, a bit of art I'd forgotten all about until I was flipping through my sketchbook just now: the original pen&ink and watercolour cover illustration for Reindeer Girl:

It's on acid free medium-weight sketchbook paper, and it measures about 9.5 inches wide by 14 inches high. I get nervous about selling original pieces (I'm both a huge packrat, and a worry-wart about what if I didn't scan it at a high enough resolution in case I need it later), so I don't do it often, but while I'm cleaning older work out of the house, I might as well add it to the pay-what-you-want sale.

So yeah. And apparently my next post will be my 1000th on this blog. That's a whole lot of babbling. I feel like I should probably make it something significant. I just can't think what. I know I need to do another writing update, but is that 1000th-post worthy?

Pay-What-You-Want Handbound Blank Books

For info on this sale and how it works, please see this post.

This batch of goodies is all the blank books and journals I have on hand. They range from simple pamphlet-style booklets, to full-on leather-and-marbled-paper hardcovers. Many of them I will never make again, except as a special order, or on a whim.

I also have a small stash of demo pieces and seconds I'll be including here and there, secretly, in people's orders, as long as I can do so without bumping up the shipping cost.

Rainbow Raygun Monochrome

These are little hardcover notebooks I made as a challenge to see if I could make a whole rainbow of books where each one used only one colour. They are pamphlet-bound inside, and the pages also match the covers (so the red book has red pages, the blue book has blue pages, etc). I only made one of each, and will never make more. They were originally priced at $20 and measure about 3.5 by 3.5 inches, and about 1/2 inch thick.

Dragonfly Pamphlets

These pamphlet books were printed from hand-set type and a linocut on handmade paper. The small one is 4x6 inches and has cream paper inside (11 available), the squarish one is 7 by 8 inches and has cream paper (1 available), and the larger one is 6 by 9.5 inches -- three have yellow stitching and yellow paper, two have green stitching and green paper, and 3 have brownish stitching and yellowy-brown paper. Original retail was $6 for the small one and $12 for the larger ones.

Miscellaneous Pamphlets

These little booklets were also printed from linocuts (except the blank one and the pointy finger which is a vintage printer's ornament with gold embossing powder) on handmade paper. The one with the silk ribbon has kraft paper inside and is 3.25 by 4.5 inches (only 1 of these available). The fish at the top is 4.5 by 5.5 inches, and has pale green paper (1 available), the dragonfly is also 4.5 by 5.5 inches and has orange paper (3 available), the fish on the right is 4 x 6 inches and has cream paper (6 available), and the pointy finger book has pale kraft paper and is 4.5 by 4.5 inches (1 available). Original retail was $6.

More Blank Books

The two two books are accordion-fold with red paper, Japanese paper-covered hard covers and a satin ribbon tie. They measure 2.5 by 6.5 inches, and originally sold for $10. The two shown are the only ones left. The red book on the left is a cross-structure notebook with cardstock cover and blue interior paper. The image was printed from a vintage printer's ornament with gold embossing powder. I can't remember the price I had on it.

The two red books on the right are cross-structure with cardstock covers, printed with hand-set metal type. the paper in the TOP SECRET one is cream and green, and in the mine one it's pale green, yellow, and orange. They measure about 4x5 inches and original retail was $20.

The ochre book in the middle is an English craft binding, hand-sewn in sections. The cover laces into the book block (not visible when you look at it, but it makes the book very strong), and it has cream paper inside with deep blue leather and marbled paper on the cover. I make very few of these and generally sell them for way less than I should. Original retail was $60.

Steambooks

My tribute to the steampunk genre. These are cross-structure books with parchment-patterned bond paper pages. The covers are recycled garment leathers and suedes, lined with Japanese paper. The fronts have laminated-on real wood veneer, and each one closes with either a vintage key (deliberate rusted and sprayed with matte sealer) or a clock hand. Retail was originally $65.

Fan Books

Made on a whim during a particularly hot summer, these blank books have cardstock pages and are post-bound with a single post so the can open normally, or fan out in a circular manner. The label on the gold/burgundy one is not adhered, so you can put whatever you want there.

One more upcoming post, or maybe two, and I'll be done! Next: book jewellery and printing plate jewellery.

Pay-What-You-Want Artist's Books and Books With Content

For info on this how and how it works, please see this post.

I debated whether or not to even include artist's books in the sale, but I need to raise funds quickly, so I'm putting just about everything on sale. So now's your chance to get some things cheap I would normally not put on sale (and may never put on sale again).

Aeryn Daring Lives Up to Her Name

hand-bound book with hand-pulled lithograph pages and cover paper
there are three different versions of the cover (taken from three different sections of the same image), but the insides are all the same
made in an edition of 9, signed, numbered, and dated on the colophon page
4 left (numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9)
original retail was $120

Leaf Book

hand-bound book, accordion-fold, printed with 3-colour lino and rubber-stamped text

made in an edition of 9, signed, and numbered, on the colophon page, date inside the front cover
4 left (numbers 3, 6, 8, and 9 -- 9 has a slipped rubber-stamp impression inside the front cover)
original retail was $40

Halifax Through the Stereoscope

6 stereoscopic images in an illustrated folder, hand-pulled lithographs printed from 4 aluminum photoplates colour-separated from colour photo negatives shot by me on a vintage Sputnik medium-format camera
edition of 10, signed, numbered, and dated on the back of the folder
includes a fold-out stereoviewer
4 left (1, 3, 6, and 9 -- 1 is a bit worn from handling and is missing the stereo viewer)
original retail was $75

Waterlily

hand-bound origami book made by attaching origami lilies as sections of the book
letterpress-printed traditional Japanese haiku about water, printed on Japanese two-tone paper from hand-set metal type
edition of 9, signed, numbered, and dated on the colophon page
6 left (numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9)
original retail was $50

Fey Mini-Comic

hand-bound pamphlet-style mini-comic book with letterpress-printed cover and laser-printed pages
edition of 25, numbered and signed on the back (the green one in the photo)
3 left (numbers 7, 19, and 24)
original retail $2

Fey Full-Size Comic

not really an artist's book, but I thought I'd throw it in here anyway
digitally-printed comic with full-colour covers and greyscale interior
available online, but I have 3 copies on hand I'd be happy to sign and doodle on
retails for $3

The Coming of the Fairies

also not an artist's book, but what the hell
this is my first novel, for middle-grade readers, and it's about fairies
I have 4 copies on hand I can sign and doodle on
retails for $9.99, also available on Amazon, and as an e-book ($2.99) from the usual outlets

Vixen by Nic Silver

one more not-artist's book
this one is my urban fantasy for grown ups (warning: contains sex and violence), written under one of my pen names
I have 4 copies on hand I can sign and doodle on
retails for (I think) $12.99, also available on Amazon, and as an e-book from all the usual outlets (currently free or 99 cents for a limited time)

Comic next: blank journals, including some one-of-a-kind

OK, Yet Another Cover Post

No blurb written yet, but I'm working my way towards finishing the edits on Dark Stranger, so I made a cover for it. I wanted it to match Milk Sister, since it's the sequel (even though Milk Sister was originally written as a stand-alone novel, one character wouldn't get out of my head and kept insisting I ought to tell his story, too). Here's the cover for Milk Sister:

If you click to see if bigger, you can see the lovely leather... The background image is an actual book that I bound a few years ago (it's a K-118 binding, for you bookbinders out there), and that's pretty close to the actual colour of the leather. The fairies are excerpted from an intaglio print, also from a few years ago.

I knew I wanted Dark Stranger to be blue. No real reason, it just seemed right. SoI used Photoshop to make the same book image blue, re-did the typography to more-or-less match, and then had to find an image to use. Like I said, I wanted the covers to go together, so it made sense to excerpt another old intaglio of mine.

There aren't really any moths in the story, but books are kind of important (in a roundabout sort of way), so I guess it works. It's more about the feel, anyway (and the fairies in Milk Sister aren't the tiny winged kind, either, so ... yeah).

Dark Stranger should be up for pre-order in the next few weeks.

One More Cover Post

I decided that while I liked the covers with just the art, there really needed to be some indication of genre, so I added silhouettes. I've only done the first three, since I haven't written the rest yet. (I'm also adding links to Amazon and Smashwords, just in case... you know, you might want to buy one -- they're also available from Kobo, the iBookstore, Sony, Barnes & Noble, the other Amazons, and a few smaller places.)

Vixen (The Others #1)

buy from: Amazon | Smashwords | Paperback

Hexen (The Others #2)

buy from: Amazon | Smashwords

Familiar (The Others #3)

buy from: Smashwords (pre-order)

Future Others Series Covers

Blurbs for Nic Silver

Apparently, it's a long weekend, which is always a little disappointing for me, since as a freelancer the whole concept of "weekend" or even "days off" is a sort of mythical thing that other people have.

But sometimes I pretend weekends are real and use them to take time off from the work I have to do to get a paycheque, and switch to the work I want to do, the work that brings in dribbles of money now and might (I hope) get me more in the future.

So this labour day weekend, I have some things -- some non-freelance paid work things -- that I aim to get done. Or at least worked on thoroughly. And most of those things relate to the books I write under the pen name Nic Silver.

I started today working on book covers. Though I kind of like the cover I did for Vixen, I've never been entirely happy with it, because my main character is half Asian (and looks mostly Chinese) but my cover model is very white (and is me, actually). And the cover for Hexen was meant to be a placeholder until I could get something better done (also see comments on Vixen cover). Now that I'm getting ready to put Familiar up as a pre-order (it's written but needs final editing), I need another cover, and I figured why not re-do them all at once?

So I used the same layout and images I already had, except I took the person off the cover. Originally, I intended to find or paint new images of Su to add on there, but now I'm thinking that might not work so well with the lovely classic paintings and prints of foxes I'm using (except book 2, and some future volume, which use my own prints). I may do versions with characters on the front, too, just to see how they look. After all, these covers don't really scream "urban fantasy" and I do rather want people to know at a glance what they're getting.

On the other hand, I find a lot of urban fantasy covers annoying and implausible. So.

Anyway, I now have five covers on my computer, more or less done (e-book versions only -- I'll have to re-tool them a little for print). Well, on one I used the wrong image, so I'll need to swap that out, but otherwise... New covers for Vixen and Hexen, and a cover for Familiar, plus covers for the next two books that I haven't even written yet, with the working titles Koldun and Sister.

The other thing I'm working on this weekend is blurbs. Again, re-writing the ones for Vixen and Hexen (again), and doing one for Familiar. I'll leave the ones for the unwritten books till they're written, since I won't know what actually happens until I write them.

I suck at blurbs, but I'm trying to improve. I'm very seriously considering taking Dean Wesley Smith's "Blurbs and Pitches" online class, but I have many things to pay for in the next few months I'm not sure I can swing it (damn house insurance!). But maybe. It would probably pay for itself eventually. Maybe even quickly.

Anyway. My next few posts will be new covers and new blurbs. And hopefully that will get me into writing on the blog more often again.

And now, here is a picture of some tomatoes from my garden, just because.

A Quick Writing Update

So, it seems to have been ages since I last posted here. Oops. But I found a big stash of old articles I wrote when I was the "Guide" at About Creative Writing for Teens. The site no longer exists, so I can use the articles however I like. So I think I'm going to start posting them here. I'll edit them some, probably, because my views on some things have changed over the years.

But, the reason I started this post was to say something about the writing I'm doing now. When I first started this blog, it was a way to keep track of what I was working on publicly, with the idea that if people could see when I was being lazy, I'd be less likely to be lazy. So I'm going to try to start doing that again. This could mean lots of very short posts like back in the old days, so be warned.

Anyway. Right now, I am just about to start on today's word count on Dark Stranger, the sequel to Milk Sister. It's coming along very well, at 44, 234 words, and I think it's just about to head full speed into the finale. But I also seem to be leaving a lot of unanswered questions, so there's going to be a third book, most likely. Milk Sister was Maddy's tale, Dark Stranger is Dubhghall's, and untitled book 3 will be their story together. Or something. Then again, I did introduce a pair of interesting new characters in this book, who also have a story...

Other writing news... Reindeer Girl (aka White Foxes, Full Moon) is being serialized at JukePop Serials. Soon I'm going to reach the end of the bits I've written and start writing new stuff. Fortunately, I know more-or-less where it's heading. Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective, by alter-ego Calliope Strange, which was formerly serialized at Doctor Fantastique's is now also being serialized at JukePop. It's been finished for some time, so it will appear a chapter at a time until the end (14 installments). After that, I plan to write the next chapter in Aeryn's story. Especially if the current book proves popular.

And finally, now that this update has already gone on longer than I meant it to, Kentaurs. I had a reader (a fan? Do I have a fan?) ask if/when there would be a sequel to A Madness of Kentaurs. The answer is, this summer, if all goes well with finishing up the projects listed above. It'll be called Melanippe's Odyssey, and though it's not a direct sequel (Octavian and Ixion probably won't be in it, except maybe at the end), it will tie into the larger story.

So, there. That's what I'm up to. Now I need to go get Dubhghall a little closer to finding Maddy and figuring out how to escape his destiny.

(PS. I will come back to this later and add links. I'm on my iPad right now and the Blogger app is a bit of a pain for doing much other than text. Edit: JukePop links added (and pictures, too!))

Corvus corax Sketch

Yesterday's entry in my new, giant natural history journal was the usual weather report and list of beasties in the yard. We had a new visitor, though: a raven.

Although we have a lot of ravens in the area, the closest they usually get to the yard is flying high overhead. For a few weeks in the fall they would gather in the evening in the woods just beyond out property line -- I could hear them gossiping and saw them fly over, but that was it.

But yesterday one stopped by to check out the seeds I put out and stayed long enough to pick some of them out of the snow with her enormous beak. She didn't stay long, though, because our resident crows, which are much, much more skittish than city crows, saw me watching from the window and flew off in a flurry of wings. That made the raven nervous enough to fly away, though she hadn't seemed concerned herself that I was watching.

This sketch isn't from life. I ran to get my camera, but when I came back was when the crows decided to cause a fuss, so I didn't manage a photo. Instead, I found a picture online that matched more or less the raven I saw. It's a pretty rough, quick sketch, but I think I succeeded in capturing, at least a little bit, the range of textures in the bird's feathers.

And, as promised, here's what the book looked like in its original  installation. Not very good photographs, I'm afraid, but I hope you get the idea.

Reindeer Girl Cover

If you're a Facebook friend or you follow me on Twitter, you'll have seen pretty much everything in this post, but I thought I'd bring all the work-in-progress shots for this book cover together in one place.

First, a bit of background. I've been working off and on to write a novel about a character called Maring Darkberry, who belongs to a culture called the Reindeer Herders (or just Herders)--a genetically mixed people who live on the barrens of my imaginary island/continent of Frisland (also the setting for many of my short stories, and for the Aeryn Daring stories I write as Calliope Strange).

The story started out as a short story called "White Foxes, Full Moon," but I soon realized there was a lot more to Maring's tale. But for some reason I never got farther than perhaps two-thirds finished.

So recently, I saw a call for submissions from a place called JukePop Serials which had an interesting business model. And I thought maybe by serializing the thing, so there were people waiting for the next chapter, I might actually finish it. And the editors at JukePop liked it. So now the title is Reindeer Girl, and it'll be serialized starting in September. And it needs a cover.

Maring

First I needed a reference for Maring. It didn't have to look like her, exactly, as long as the pose was right. So digging through a box of old pictures, I found this one of my beautiful mother with my sister and me (I'm the chubby one on the left) in her lap.

I did a sketch I was pleased with, changing her features to make her look less like my mom and more like the character in my story. Though in the story Maring has fair skin and blue eyes to go with her black hair, I wanted it to be clear from looking at her that not all her ancestry is European. Her people have intermarried all over the place, and they currently live quite close to a people they refer to as the Snow People (who are, of course, Inuit). So I wanted Maring to look like some of her recent ancestors were Inuit or perhaps Siberian or even Mongolian.

I could already tell that I probably hadn't really left enough room for the rest of the picture, but I was thinking about scanning the inked drawing and colouring digitally, so I went ahead and inked the drawing on the sketchbook paper, rather than transferring it to watercolour paper.

Text

 I spent a long time looking at type, and found what I thought was the perfect typeface for the title. It was Celtic, but rough-looking; calligraphic but loose. Unfortunately, none of the links on the designer's website worked. So I kept looking and eventually decided that what I really wanted to do was hand-letter, a la Walter Crane, or more recently, Charles Vess.

Of course, I then decided I also wanted to hand-colour, so I had to figure out a way to squeeze everything onto the page.

Background

I had in mind a particular photograph, taken on the barrens of the southern Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, which just happened to have caribou in the shot (for the curious, caribou and reindeer are the same animal, Rangifer tarandus, the first usually used in North America and the second in Europe). Alas, there must be another box of my photographs still in storage at my mother's house in BC, because I couldn't find it. So instead I used this one, taken somewhere between Cape Ray and Gros Morne, Newfoundland.

I started with a blue wash, and quickly began to wish I'd taken the time to transfer the drawing to watercolour paper before inking.

Then I added green and yellow. You can see the paper getting more and more wrinkled with each colour I add.

Then some brown and grey, and a little red and purple.

Finally, I brightened up some of the colours and added a few details with pencil crayon.

Then I had to flatten the thing so I could get a good scan. I did this by thoroughly spritzing it with water from the back, until the paper relaxed and it lay flat. Then I put it between sheets of printmaking rag (I used some old proofs) and newsprint, and put it under a goodly amount of weight to dry. And the next day it was perfectly flat.

I had to scan it in two pieces, because it's too big for my scanner--thanks to Photoshop's "photomerge" function, putting the two pieces together was a snap.

And if anyone's interested, I've made it available as a print through Zazzle (if you order, make sure to let the preview load for the size you select--some sizes will cut off the top and bottom of the image). I may do my own prints at some point, on my very nice super-deluxe photo inkjet printer on digital photo rag paper. If enough people ask, that is.

More New Books, Plus a Kickstarter Campaign Worth Supporting

New Book: Frisland Stories: Eleven Tales of Folk Magic

Frisland is--or was once--an island in the North Atlantic, created by the gods of the sun and moon on a whim, and full of subtle magic. Now and then, there are dragons, but more likely you'll encounter magical foxes who are really fairy folk, people who can turn into reindeer, or a woman who built her beloved a pair of wings so he could fly.

Frisland Stories: Eleven Tales of Folk Magic includes all eleven Frisland short stories, including the two previously published in Two Tales of Frisland:

• Hollow Bones
• Remembering to Fly
• Sealskin
• Sharper and More Fragrant
• Cobbleshore Knit
• Daughters of the Sea King
• Fox Point Dragon
• Perilous Child
• Raven's Wing
• White Foxes, Full Moon
• Great Skerry

Buy from Smashwords
Buy e-book from Amazon
Coming soon in paperback from White Raven Press.

New Book: Vixen

Su just wants to sit in a dark corner for a quiet drink when she spots a newborn vampire across the bar. He's confused, and he's starting to draw attention to himself. And he's hot.

So Su decides to give him a few pointers. Then she realizes that the reason this baby vamp is wandering around without a protective escort is that she killed his parent vamp earlier that night.

Now Su feels responsible. A newborn vampire is helpless until he regains his memories and learns how to act like a vampire. Su knows enough about vamps to be able to teach him that. But Su has her own problems. She doesn't have much of a memory, either, and while she's not a vampire, she's not exactly human.

Su doesn't know what she is, and she doesn't have a kindly stranger in a bar to tell her.

Buy from Amazon
Coming soon in paperback from White Raven Press.

Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders Kickstarter Campaign

Doc F's is the magazine that publishes my (as Calliope Strange) serial novel Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective. They're trying to raised enough cash to have the first issue of 2012 offset printed, to avoid the enormous cover price the POD magazine costs. There's lots of great fiction in here besides mine, plus articles, reviews, and more on steampunk-related topics.

Support Doc F's Kickstarter

Book Review: Unexpected Destiny by Ariana N. Dickey

I meant to have this posted ages ago. My, how time flies. Anyway, here's my first (and so far only) review for Self-Publishing Review, which describes itself thusly:

Self-Publishing Review is a central site devoted to self-publishing news and reviews. It is also a social network where writers, readers, and everyone can join and connect. . . . The aim of the site is to improve the attitude toward self-publishing and help authors find readers.

---

Book Review: Unexpected Destiny by Ariana N. Dickey

First impressions are vital with self-published books, especially first novels with few user reviews. Unexpected Destiny has a fairly bland cover, rendered unfortunately dark and murky by Lulu's printing process. The interior layout is mostly professional-looking, with a few odd formatting choices (most notably in the way non-human dialogue is set, which is not only strange, but inconsistent). Typos are mercifully few, and though I did notice a slight increase the farther I got into the book, I've seen much worse in mass-market paperbacks from top publishers.

But I don't expect you really care that much about the physical book, as long as it's not distractingly badly done. You probably really want to know about the story, the characters, the writing. Curiously, those things, the things that make you want to read a book or not, mirror the book's physicality. By which I mean, there's a lot of heart in Unexpected Destiny, but it's very apparent that this is a first novel.

Ms Dickey has no lack of imagination. The pages of this book are bursting with colorful characters, made-up fantasy species (and some that are more obviously based on myth or folklore or previous authors of high fantasy), and lovingly-imagined locales. The plot proceeds at a breakneck pace, sending the three main characters off on a quest and putting them in harm's way immediately--a different sort of harm on every page, it sometimes seems.

Our three heroes, Ely, Colin, and Faythe, are the latest reincarnation of the Blessed Ones (yes, in caps every time). It is their destiny to free their world from its tyrannical king and the depredations of some nasty gods and their even nastier minions, or to die in the attempt. Which makes me wonder exactly how their destiny is unexpected, since we (and they) know about it in the first chapter. The heroes have a magical map they must follow in order to meet said destiny, and it takes them from place to place where they save people, get attacked by people, kill a lot of people (both on purpose and by virtue of others trying to help them and dying), and learn how to harness their Blessed powers. It often feels like the writer also had a map, or a plot outline, that she followed from incident to incident, in as much of a hurry to get to the next plot point as her characters are to get to the next location on their map. Quite often, I wished she would just slow down, breathe and enjoy the journey.

Unexpected Destiny certainly isn't a bad book, but I can't quite say it's a great one, either. I give it 3 out 5 stars because though there's a lot of promise here, it's promise a good editor could have gone a long way towards bringing out. The writing is grammatically competent, but there are too many stock phrases and clichés, too much telling and not enough showing, for it to ever become truly absorbing. And though the story does reach a sort of resting place, it's not over, as this is the first in a series. To get the whole story, you have to read the rest of the series, which isn't out yet. I certainly wish Ms Dickey the best with her writing, as I think she could produce some fine stories if she's willing to put the work into developing her craft.

New Book: A Madness of Kentaurs

A Madness of Kentaurs

Octavian wants two things: to see the kentaur herd pass by on the plains, and to have a horse of his own. Ixion is a kentaur shaman-in-training, considered special by his people, but also set apart from them. During the season of madness a runaway horse brings the two together, where they learn that humans and kentaurs have more in common than they thought, and that their nightmares are connected.

It is the time of year when once wild things become wild again, still wild things become wilder, and civilized things shut their doors and pretend they had never been wild.

During the season of madness, the kentaurs of the Pelion foothills—those half-horse, half-human creatures that humans call “centaurs”—journey from their home villages to the sacred lands across the Acheron River. Horses find the kentaur herd irresistible and often run away from their human masters to join the herd. One day, Octavian, stable-boy and floor cleaner at the local inn, gets carried off by the innkeeper’s horse, and ends up trapped in the kentaur herd. He is placed under the charge of Ixion, a young kentaur shaman-in-training, who begins to teach him that kentaurs are not the barbaric, half-sentient beasts he had thought they were.

And then the dreams begin. Dreams in which ancient, cold things with too many teeth steal the boys’ tongues and threaten to steal their sanity. Now Octavian and Ixion both have to learn enough about the otherworld to make it though a grueling initiation ceremony across the Acheron, River of Woe. But first, Octavian has to gain acceptance from the kentaur herd.

Buy from Smashwords

Buy on Kindle

Coming soon in paperback