Drunken Owls and Other Delights

The start of a revision process always feels like it takes forever, doesn't it?  I still feel like I haven't even made a dent on In My Blue World, even though I've been giving it a hard push over this last week.  But considering that I'm now looking at the story as a whole instead of a series of 750Words sessions, I still don't have a sense of how long this story actually is.  I know it's novel length, but I don't know the word count.  [On the plus side, I've already strung together about 15k words, so I think I'm still on schedule.]  My process here is that I've been copying a handful of those 750Words sessions and stringing them together in chapter form until I have about 15-20 pages to work with.  It's working so far!

I spent a few hours yesterday fiddling with the book cover lat night, and I think I'm getting close with it.  Bought the usage rights for the picture, played around with the filters, and made another attempt at the text.  It still needs work, but it's getting there!  Thanks to my friend and ex-roommate Bunny for teaching me a few nifty Photoshop tricks this morning that I can use for it! :)  The plan here is to get the cover finished so I can create postcards in time for Worldcon. 

So yeah, the first week of Revision Month seems to be going pretty well.  Slow, but in the right direction!

As expected, though, I've been ridiculously busy.  I'm also putting in time for the Apartment Complex story and other things, all while trying not to hide from the world.  It's tricky, but I'm managing it so far! 

Have a good weekend, everyone! :)

Weekend? What is this 'weekend' you speak of?

*whew* What a busy couple of weeks! Sunday night going to the symphony then waking up stupid:early AM to jump on a plane to Hawaii for a week. A relaxing 5.5 days in sunny (and occasionally rainy) climes to get back late Saturday night...only to wake up early on Sunday to meet up with a few east coast friends in town for their vacation. Then back to the Day Jobbery on Monday. And with one major (but thankfully fixable) screwup, Emm and coworker have just been dropped off at SFO to head out to Manila again.

So yeah...lots of great times had over the past few weeks, but MAN OH MAN was it jam-packed! I do not want to do anything at all this weekend. Maybe some grocery shopping, but that's about it.

Well. Me being me, left to my own devices on a weekend, I will most likely be staying in Spare Oom and cranking out more pages for the final wrap-up of The Persistence of Memories.

Oh yeah! Not sure if you saw my cover mock-up that I posted elsewhere online a few days ago, but if not, here you go:



I think this one fits the theme of the book quite nicely! I knew I wanted a night image, or at least an earth/space one, given that I wanted stars visible. I downloaded the hi-res/no watermark picture from Shutterstock (same as last time) and will be using the same software as before. I'm aiming for a mid-April release for TPoM, so I will let you all know as soon as I have a hard date planned.

In fact, April is looking to be the first of a few busy spring/summer months for me. I have a lot of fun things planned for my blogs as well as other projects. Will let you know more when we get closer to the dates!

On that note, going to sit back, relax, and...not do much at all, really. :)

After a slight bump in the road, in which I had to call Shutterstock to get them to process my payment correctly, I purchased a package of 5 downloads (which is good, considering I can use the others for books 2 and 3) and commenced playing with both Photoshop and PicMonkey to get what I wanted. I also consulted A. for her input on the visuals, asking what seemed to work best for a reader like herself.

The picture was taken by Tommy Zhang. :)

The funny thing is that I'd used Photoshop only for the cropping, as I was less than happy with the fonts they had available. And since I needed to work within the submission parameters most want, I had to make sure I had the right ratio. Which meant eyeing it because I can't do ratio math to save my life, measuring the picture using an actual ruler against my monitor (LIKE A BOSS) and considering it done. It's as close to the 1:1.33 ratio as I could get it.

As for the fonts, I used PicMonkey.com (thanks to Meagan for the suggestion!), which is what I'd used for the original outtakes. Goddess knows I did not want to use the Papyrus font (aka the pseudo-Celtic Wiccan font you see on all the New Age books), nor did I want to use the same science fiction fonts everywhere else. Something just that bit unique, but not overly so. The title is Geo Sans Light (bolded), and the subtitle and author name are both De Walpergen Pica.

So, total cost today? Just $41 for the five download credits on Shutterstock. I already own Photoshop, and used the free level of PicMonkey. Not bad at all.


Next up: Continuing the work on the final line edit, and uploading. :)