Interrupting Tortoise

Posted on September 21, 2017 by

So it’s been a while since I updated, though not for lack of progress of various sorts.  I have to show you why I can’t make progress today, though.

This is my neighbor’s tortoise.  This is also my house.  Do I know which neighbor owns the tortoise?  No.  Does it belong in my house?  No.  Does it want to be in my house?  Nooooot really.

(I’m currently writing this from the backyard, where it’s taking offense to the chainlink fence.)

How did I end up with someone else’s tortoise?  A kindly passerby saw it strolling down my street, stopped her car and rang my doorbell.  Most people on this block aren’t around at noon on a Thurday (I have learned this by ringing a lot of doorbells today) but Thursday happens to be one of my days off, so here I am.  My cover artist is also here, on the first day of her visit, so we popped our heads out to see what was going on.

Now, I’ve seen this tortoise or one of its friends before, trundling down my road.  They are apparently escape artists, and this one’s pretty energetic when it gets going.  It doesn’t really let anything stop it either.  So after I managed to urge it off the road, it decided to go up my walkway and then into my house.

Alas, I have no tortoise food, and it’s a bit ornery, so to make sure it doesn’t stay long, I put up  bunch of posters.  DID YOU LOSE A TORTOISE?  CALL ME.  PLEASE.

Now we’re in the backyard, playing the waiting portion of this game.  When does its owner get home?  Will they see the posters?  Who knows?  Life is an adventure.

This is why I’ve gotten nearly no editing done today.

Advertisements
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Monday Music: Absurd Minds – Serve or Suffer

Posted on July 17, 2017 by

Absurd Minds – Serve or Suffer, from the album of the same name.  Darkwave.

In honor (and relief) of my Book 3 document issues resolving (cross fingers, knock on wood), here’s a Book 3 theme.  I find it suits well from Emperor Aradys to Archmagus Enkhaelen.

Continue reading →

Posted in Fluff | Tagged

Argleharghargh!

Posted on July 13, 2017 by

I’ve already complained about this to my Day Job peeps, but oh my god.  I’ve been working on the formatting improvements for the earlier books (particularly Book 1, since I lost the print-formatted version a couple years ago when my old computer died).  Everything’s been going just fine…

Until I got to the Book 3 files.

Because the Book 3 print-formatted file is four pages long.

*pause for cracked, maniacal laughter*

Now, mind you, this is the book that in physical print is 648 pages long.  So, uh, no.

But I had my ebook-formatted file, and it was fine, right?  So I could just make a copy of that and not do the print-formatting yet, and just do my tweaks in peace and safety, right?

So I tinkered with that for a couple hours.  Went to work.  Went to bed.  Woke up to start working on it again.

Four.  Pages.  Long.

Granted, all the info is in there.  Packed away somewhere in the data.  I can find it when I open the document in a Notepad file — with all the formatting markup there in plain text, making it the work of madness to try to copy it over to a new file like that.

So…

Well.

*pitiful whimpering*

I still have that ebook-formatted one!  I can just make a new copy and–

Hold up, let’s not be a crazy person, trying the same thing again just in case there’s a different outcome.  Let’s be smarter than that.

So I figure it’s the size of the file that’s the problem.  (Cross fingers that’s all it is.)  I’d been having formatting issues with the Book 3 print version from the beginning, because it’s a beast, so the best thing to do would be to split it into two documents and work on it at a size where my writing program won’t choke to death.

Did that for eight hours today, working on the first file.

I have now saved it, and backed up a version in another document format, and am hoping beyond hope that nothing screws up this time.

Please cross your fingers for me.

 

Posted in Writing | Tagged ,

Book 4 Cover Process #2

Posted on June 22, 2017 by

Previously, on Cover Process #1:

Now…

Continue reading →

Posted in Art | Tagged

Halion Ogres!

Posted on May 26, 2017 by

D. D. Phillips is still chugging along on the cover (post inbound within a week or so, I think!) but in the interim, when she doesn’t have access to her cover files or the energy/attention to work on all those layers, she sometimes does creatures for me!

Well, this time she did some ogre tusk tests…which morphed into something more.

She’s done a bit of ogre work for me before, as seen in the sidebar, but we never got proper finished/colorized versions together.  This time though, she went researching hippos (which are the base for my ogres) and got me the tusk types below.  Alas, while tiny hippo ears are almost unbearably cute, they’re a little too hippo, and I was concerned that on the more greenish-skinned ogres they’d start to look a bit….Shrek.  So after the pic below, the ears get shifted larger and downward.

Continue reading →

Posted in Art, World Info, Worldbuilding | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Friends’ Projects: Transitions — Published!

Posted on May 13, 2017 by

My good friend at Sanguine Press has just gotten the Transitions and Awakenings: No Regrets anthology out in ebook format, with paperback soon to come.  Check it out!

Posted in Writing | Tagged ,

April Update

Posted on April 17, 2017 by

Yes, I’ve been quiet.  I think I’ll continue to be quiet-ish until the series is over — with maybe a few info posts here and there, plus teasers, etc, but nothing major until I start prepping for the collaboration I have planned with Erica Dakin or the second series I have in mind.

Meanwhile, the Book 4 cover work continues (slowly).  This isn’t entirely bad, because I have figured out a few things that need tweaking in the final draft, which I’ll be fixing shortly.  I am also halfway done with the rough draft of Book 5 (which is what helped me realize the need for tweaks) and just finished a hopefully-final edit of Book 1 that took into account much of the critique from readers as well as some issues that had always nagged at me.  I feel that I did rush publication of Book 1 due to (over)enthusiasm, and that this current version has fixed most of the book’s problems.  I hope to roll it out within a month or two, once my beta readers go through it and confirm I haven’t somehow butchered it.  >__>

I plan to go through books 2 and 3 eventually, but they don’t have nearly the issues and will probably just get trimmed/error-corrected.

Anyway, that’s it for now!

Posted in Writing | Tagged ,