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)

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!))

Looking Back, Peering Ahead

One of last year's beginning-of-the-year goals was to blog more regularly. I did okay with that, up until mid-year, when everything fell apart. In fact, that's about when my fiction-writing goals evaporated, too. I'm not even sure why. Possibly I was just trying to do too much at once, as usual, and got overwhelmed.

But even though I didn't really meet many of my 2012 goals, I can't really call the year a failure, either. Here are some of the things I accomplished in 2012:

• I wrote three novels, a short story, and a novella. I was aiming for four novels and ten or twelve short pieces, so I didn't meet the goal. But still, three novels! Two of them still need editing and transcribing, but the bulk is done.
• I printed some new letterpress and linocut pieces, finished up a few bookbinding projects, and came up with a new notebook product (at the last minute for the holiday craft fair!) that I'm really pleased with. Again, I didn't meet my goal of finishing up all in-progress projects before starting new ones, but I did get a few things off my worktable.
• I spent more time walking in the woods. Though I didn't get in as much exercise-oriented walking as I wanted to, I renewed my love of simply wandering and seeing what there is to see. As a consequence, I felt renewed and refreshed creatively, even though my writing production crashed halfway through the year.
• I changed jobs. Sort of. Though I really loved my job writing about videogames for About.com, I've been wanting to get back into something more writing or fiction or book oriented for a few years. I've applied for a few other About sites, and even made it to the evaluation stage once (the process of getting hired at About is fairly long and involves writing a lot of samples, but it's worth it). Finally, this fall, I made the switch to writing about books, and I'm now the "Guide" to Young Adult Books. I'm still editing the videogames super-newsletter, though, so I get to keep up on that stuff, too.

Those are the biggest accomplishments, I think. So on to my goals for 2013.

• I'm going to attempt, again, to blog more regularly. I've just installed Blogger for iOS on my iPad, which I hope will help with that, since I've been doing more and more work on my tablet since I got it. My two pen-name author blogs will probably only get infrequent updates still, but this blog, and my bone blog should start seeing some more posts.
• Again, I'm going to aim to finish more in-progress projects. I have plans to do a lot more linocut prints this year -- there's the Vanishing Bestiary to work on, and a triptych of fossil-inspired prints, and I just had a request to make my winter raven card design into a larger art print. I have some bookbinding things to finish up, too. First off, though, is to get those dragon pop-ups done and sent off to my IndieGoGo backers.
• I'm going to focus on getting my fiction writing and publishing activities back on track. This means transcribing and editing Familiar (book 3 in the Others series by alter-ego Nic Silver), and adding needed scenes and editing Dark Stranger (sequel to Milk Sister). Also, I'm going to get the full Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective novel formatted and available as an ebook and POD paperback (by alter ego Calliope Strange). As far as writing, I'll be finishing Reindeer Girl, and tackling the next Nic Silver novel. After that, I'm not sure, but I have a list of ideas to choose from.

Of course, I can't start a new year without a few brand new projects. This year, I have two big ones in mind.

• First, a non-fiction project. I won't say too much yet, because I'm still mulling it over, and it's the sort of thing I have a specific publisher in mind for, and if they don't want it, I probably won't make it a priority. It'll tie together my folklore background and my current writing-about-YA-books in a scholarly sort of book. This month, I'll be working on a proposal and sample chapter.
• Second, an artistic and natural history project. This is one I've been thinking about for a while, but always put off because it seemed most logical to begin it at the beginning of the year. So starting a little later today, I'm going to use a great big notebook I made for an unrelated art project and start keeping a natural history journal. So as not to be overwhelmed, I'm not going to try to force myself to write every day, though it would be cool if I managed it. I'll just write down observations and make little sketches of the world outside my door as the year goes by.

And now I think I've probably blathered on enough for one day.

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.

Latest Covers

Warning: Contains writerly stuff. If you're here for bookbinding or letterpress printing or pictures of Nova Scotia wildlife, you might want to skip this entry.

So a few days ago, I posted the last of the Frisland cycle of short stories to Smashwords and Kindle. The penultimate story, "Raven's Wing," I had started but never finished, so I finished it. Here's the cover:

The image is one of a pair of lithographs with Celtic raven imagery that I did a few years ago. I think it makes a rather handsome, if minimalist, cover. Actually, a lot of my covers are minimalist, as most of them will only ever be ebooks, since they're for short stories.



The very last story, "Great Skerry," got a photographic cover:

The photo was taken near Burgeo, NL, which was one of the inspirations for Cobbleshore, where many of the Frisland stories are set.



Now that they're all done, I'll be publishing a collection of all 11 stories in ebook and paperback, but first I want to get novel #2 done and out, plus The Coming of the Fairies in paperback. In case you missed it, the cover for that looks like this (I think it looks less good as a little ebook cover, so if you want to see it looking better, click on it to make it bigger):

So the last few days I've been working on getting The Secret Common-Wealth, my second YA/middle grade fantasy novel (also about fairies), formatted and ready for e-publication. Originally, I had planned a watercolour cover, but I'm not so sure my limited skills are up to the task (then again, they might not have been up to any book covers, but I did them anyway). I started playing around with scanning hand-bound books and adding gold-looking text, and ended up with this:

Which sometimes I like, and sometimes I don't. My biggest issue is, I think, that there aren't any of that sort of fairy in the book. No sparkly little winged women, no matter how fierce. The fairies in this book are Scottish sidhe, tall and elegant and amoral. (Also, the image really belongs to my comic, Fey, which I write/draw as nico.) But when I first made the little fairy woman gold, it looked so cool. Anyway. I don't want to take weeks to finish the cover, like I did with Coming, so I think I'll use it for now, and maybe work on it and make it better between now and whenever I manage to finish the paperback formatting.



Next on my list of writing to finish is chapter 4 of Aeryn Daring & the Scientific Detective. Then the third and final section of "Brother Thomas's Angel," which may very well bump it up from a novella to a novel, which is perfectly fine with me. Next to edit and make a cover for and publish is The Madness of Kentaurs (or is it *A* Madness? I always forget), and of course Frisland Stories.

Writing Wednesday: Sharper Pearls

So yeah, I didn't quite get around to posting the final sea things cards update, but I'll get to it soon. I also have some pictures of our resident porcupine wandering around in the front yard to share. But it's Wednesday, so it's writing update time.

I got my story "Sharper and More Fragrant" added to Smashwords and Kindle (it's up now at Smashwords, from whence it will be distributed to various other venues; the Kindle version should be live in the next day or so). This is the story that eventually led to the novel I'm back at work on, formerly known as "White Foxes, Full Moon" (which title I'm now using solely for the short story that I later expanded into the first third of the book), and which is now probably going to be called Reindeer Girl, Fox Woman. Maybe.

I also formatted and posted "Cobbleshore Knit" but it's still in conversion. It should be completed by later today at Smashwords, and in a day or two on Kindle. "Cobbleshore Knit" was originally written with a completely new character, but I re-wrote parts of it once I realized the drowning man was actually Torin Danickson, the young man who captured the selkie girl in "Sealskin." It's a standalone story (at least I hope it is), but obviously connected.

And that puts me nearly halfway through the stories that make up the Frisland cycle. Unless I write more. I'm trying now to complete a half-written story that connects "Hollow Bones"/"Remembering to Fly" with "Great Skerry" (and also, in a background sort of way, to "Fox Point Dragon").

Phew. Sorry about all those titles all at once.

In non-Cobbleshore news, but still in Frisland, I should soon have the second part of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective written (under the pen-name Calliope Strange). The cover is nearly done, too, largely because it's the same as the cover of chapter one, but in a different colour with a different flying machine image. I'm lagging a bit on the printed versions, as they require an entirely different sort of formatting, and also because I want to include an image in each chapter that will be full-colour in the deluxe (letterpress-printed cover) version and greyscale in the cheapo (photocopied cover) version. And I have yet to draw them.

And in completely non-Frislandish news, I have a new story in my head called "A Pearl Beyond Price." It's a fairytale thing with sentient dolls (creepy), weird sex (really creepy), and possibly incest (really, really creepy). All the creepiness means it gets to be by Nic Silver, instead of by Niko Silvester, because despite the fact that Nic and Niko are both me, Niko writes nice things and Nic writes weird shit. Nic Silver also wrote Brother Thomas's Angel.

New Writing Goals

While I've always been pretty good at self-motivating, even I need goals and deadlines sometimes. So, I've decided to give myself some writing goals. Not just the usual general "work more on such-and-such" sort of thing I usually do, but solid goals I can actually make myself stick to. So here they are:

• I will write one new short story a month. Sometimes they will be very short, and sometimes more like a novella. Sometimes they might even turn into a novel, which will make the monthly goal a little unrealistic, but I'll deal with that if it ever happens. But every month, a new story.
• I will write fiction for at least an hour, 5 times a week. I actually think this is a fairly modest goal, but I figure it's better to start small and find myself exceeding the goal than to aim to high when I'm out of practice at regular fictioning. Sometimes this will go towards the monthly story, sometimes toward a novel, and occasionally I might switch from fiction to creative non-fiction, but it will all be personal work (as opposed to my paid reviews and articles).
• I will blog at least once a week, but aim for three times. Why three? Because I know different friends and followers read this blog for different reasons. Some are interested in my bookbinding and letterpress, some in other craft, some in writing and some in personal stuff. My ultimate goal is to do one round-up sort of post on what I've been doing in each of writing, bookbinding/letterpress, and miscellaneous craft/life in general. So expect more frequent posting from me, but mostly shorter posts. I will also try to post pictures more regularly, because everyone like pictures.

There are other things I'm aiming for, too, like getting my website properly updated. And I've decided to venture into indie publishing (or farther in, really, as I've done little chapbooks and artist's books from time to time over the years, under my "White Raven Press" name). I plan to start with those short stories that are sitting there on my hard drive. Some were published in small or semi-pro e-zines and others got very nice personal rejection letters from big magazines. I'm going to make them available in electronic format. My idea is to have one free one every month, changing it each month. The others will be 99 cents. Once I have enough of them up, I'll release them as a collection as an e-book and POD.

I'll probably go a similar route with the YA/middle grade books I have done, but I'll figure that out as I go along. I'm not planning on making pots of money, or any money, really (though that would be nice).

So, since this post is already longer than I thought it would be, I'll end with my immediate plans:

1. put together a simple but eye-catching cover for short story #1: "Come-From-Away," either photo-based (it's set in St John's, NL) or something I drew. 
2. Get the story formatted properly for e-pub. 
3. Get myself registered on the appropriate sites and publish away. 

If all goes well, it may be up by the time the weekend is over. Or it might not. But eventually, watch for "Come-From-Away" by Niko Silvester on Kindle, Sony eReader, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and maybe others. For free for a month, then for 99 cents.