Changes made

This evening was spent migrating the ebook of Bobby Carapisi to Kindle, for its ebook. It was being sold through them, but the group that set it up, Pronoun, is shutting down, in January. Not enough interest or sales for the titles they carried, I guess.

Anyway, that gave me an excuse to simplify the cover image...which was a lot more work than it needed to be. But I couldn't find an unflattened background so had to start from scratch. Which meant finding the original image somewhere on one of my thumb drives.

God, those things are a mess. Lots of repetition in saves, which isn't necessarily bad...but two of the same folder on one drive? That's silly. One of these years I need to go through them and sort them out, better. I had to dig through nearly a dozen to find the guy's photo.

I'm also fighting off a cold, again. Not sure if it's the same one and just sort of goes into hibernation for a while or what, but I started feeling it today and I'm now loaded down with Vicks and Advil and liquids. Felt better for a while but now comes a long hot bath to steam some of the crap away.

My niece is getting married in Texas, come March, so I'm using points to fly down and back. It's on the same weekend as the NY Book Fair so I can't stay long...which is my excuse for getting the hell away from that state, as fast as I can. Members of my family voted for Czar Snowflake and I don't want this to become a family feud in the middle of Krista's wedding. Not cool.

But, goddamn, I hate anyone who voted for that son-of-a-bitch.

Step by step...

Another slightly different rendition of the cover...this one with Adam seeming a bit more heroic and with a slight connection between him and Casey. It's closer but still no cookie. Maybe if I have Gertrude handling the '65...or put her lower so I can keep the '65 close to Alice.

Another possibility is lowering Adam a bit and having Gertrude at more of an angle, then slip the '65 into that little triangle space. Thinking about it, I don't like where his right hand is, anyway. I'd like it closer to her feet. And she does need to be a bit larger, to be in proper proportion  to him. Oh, damn...I made his left wrong.

Man...lots of changes to do, still.

All I can do is keep at it till it clicks, completely. 

Oddities...

I thought about working up an image of Adam's face, to see what I could do with it. Did it in graphite, then I inked it in and erased...but I like the graphite look better. Pen and ink works fine and gives me space to color him in...but I liked the feel of the graphite. The softness and fullness of the image. This turned into something out of a coloring book.

I think I'll do another one, tomorrow. Maybe a different expression and more of a head and shoulders, to show his suit is only half on and his shirt is ripped up. I still like the idea of the vines and characters, but this may change me. I may also try a thicker line, not this delicate thin black piffle.

Thing is, I don't know how to color over a soft pencil rendition...and the cover demands color for everyone, not just the background and vines. But I like the softness of that style, so maybe I need to farm this out to be colored.

I think I'll do one of the vines and characters, too, in a heavier pen. Then I could change the color from black to a sort of mahogany to match the feel of.

Hmm...I guess this means I'm settling in on a cover.

Is the media the message?

I dug through Shutterstock's offerings, today, looking for images to use and found nothing like what I wanted. I did find a great face for Adam and a decent idea for Casey lounging on a vine. Gertrude, I've already got. And I do like grape vines in their twisty-solid way so saved a couple images of those. I just need to get down to it and work up the art.

I did a first rendition of Adam in graphite then inked it in to see how it played, and I don't think my idea about having his glasses broken will work on the cover. They'll just be a blob in the artwork, like a patch over his eye. So I think I'll drop that idea.

I may also swap the shoe and shoeless foot. Make it more obvious one of his boots is gone. And his shirt looks too much like his suit coat. Or should I call it a suit jacket? Hell, I dunno; I don't even own a suit. Anyway, I don't want to rely too much on color to tell aspects of the artwork apart. It minimizes their effect, in my mind.

What I would like is a style like this, but I contacted the artist and he turned down working on the cover. Said his style didn't really mesh with the story. Which I can understand, to an extent, but at the same time, I think he's wrong.

I'd replicate it, myself, but I honestly do not know how. I've tried and my renditions look like crap. It may be I don't have the tools, really. Maybe a sketch pad linked to an updated version of Adobe CS or something. But his color lines are so clean, I'm pretty sure there's more to it than just drawing it or filling in like you do a coloring book.

Oh, well, art least I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the book jacket cover.

Getting REAL close to a cover...

I think I've found the beginning of my dust jacket for the hardback edition of The Alice '65. Something a lot lighter and more indicative of the book. The ratio is off on these two sketches, but that can be corrected, easy enough.

I'd use a sunshine yellow as the background, with bright green vines and leaves. Have Casey in a dress that matches the color of the original book. Adam will be in his ruined navy blue suit and burgundy shirt, one shoe on, one shoe and sock off, half his broken glasses over one eye. Gertrude lounging at the top, holding the other half of his glasses.

I'll need to play with the positioning, some more, and sizing. But this is close. I feel good about it, even though it's a bit busy. Hell, the story's busy. I might make the characters a bit smaller, to have more breathing room, and no tag line. Don't need it. Just the title in bold, gold letters and my name.

I can work on it some more, tomorrow. Right now I've got a headache, and I know why this one came on -- I pinched a nerve at the left base of my neck as I was getting laundry out of my car; I could feel it when I did it, and it's been building ever since.

It's no fun getting old...

lazy day...to the max...

I had an idea for A65 as I was getting into bed, last night...so worked it into the book, right then, and didn't get to sleep till 4am. Woke up at 2. Crick in the neck. Sluggish. Peed for 5 minutes. But soon felt like I was human, again. And the idea works a lot better than what I had. Less clumsy.

Of course, that shot the day. So I worked on paperwork and updating my finances...and think I'm still owed expenses for a couple of jobs from back in October; I need to see about that, because it's over $1300. And I did Christmas cards early, for a change. Get them out of the way.

I also did a bit of thinking on the cover and had some more ideas...but still nothing to make me jump up and down. I may do some workups during laundry, tomorrow. I need to figure this out.

And...I got into a fun fight on Facebook with a guy in Texas who refused to accept a transexual man was male because his birth certificate said female. The trans guy's got a beard and hair on his chest, but some places would force him to use the women's room because of a piece of paper. It was fun until he got huffy and blocked me. Texans, such buttercups, they are.

I think I'm printing up A65, again, to do the detail work...the polish and backwards check for typos and errors. It's easier...just not cheap. But necessary for it to be the best it can be.

Dammit.

Another draft done...

This pass on The Alice '65 does count as a new draft because of significant changes. Not in the action or storyline, but in the shifting of meaning and expansion of ideas. I'm at the point where everything is in its place and everyone is doing what they should to forward the story; I just need to do a polish for consistency's sake.

I tested the current rendition in a 5x8 format, for paperback, and it wound up being 206 pages long. Total word count is 65,220. That sounds good. Not too long to be intimidating and long enough to be worth a price of $10.95, I think. Ebook will be $1.99, as usual.

I'm kind of fuzzy-brained, right now, thanks to working on this all day. Another reason to go through the full book, one last time, to make sure I haven't screwed up the formatting and the look of it. I also need to figure out how to replace a long dash with an em-dash. I can't just cut and paste into the replace windows with the long one; I may have to go through and replace them one at a time.

I'm also wondering about my pricing...to an extent. I did a Secret Santa on GoodReads and got someone who wanted a particular book. It's available in Kindle, so I went online to send it off...and saw the author's charging $2.99 for a 97 page Kindle. Granted, that's in their format so it's probably a lot longer, in print...but I only charge $1.99 for OT and that's more than 3 times longer, according to Amazon.

I may need to rethink a lot of things, in the next few weeks...

It's never over till it's over...

Hong Kong is still being an issue, but it's out of my hands, now. Seems everything we did on two specific return shipments, last year, is not valid this year, even though we're doing everything else the same. The shipments came in with multiple dealers on a pallet and were accepted that way...but now we can't ship them out the same way because...oh, I don't know why. Their explanations make no sense.

So it looks like the two problem shipments will wind up shipping out like I worked them up, back on Monday -- each on its own pallet. My one real mistake was in putting a crate onto a pallet and forgetting to factor in that it would be charged an extra 100 kgs in dimensional weight. I thought that would make it easier to move, but it's not worth it for that much higher cost.

This is another reason my bosses should handle next year's fair. They can make decisions about how best to deal with this crap right then and there, and I won't have to worry about being caught in the middle or make what are claimed to be "unworkable" decisions.

At least I got back onto A65, today, and now only have about 130 pages left to rework. Then a quick polish. Then my proofing. And that is that. Then all I'll be faced with is figuring out a cover.

I can use the art Zan Varin did for the ebook. That's not as demanding and may give me a bit of breathing room for the final product. Needs a better font and correcting Casey's left hand, but that's easy enough. And the book is too big, so that will change...but the feel of it is right.

Maybe I'll do the paperback first, after all. I might be pushing too hard to figure out a great cover for the hardback's dust jacket. Maybe that's why what little ability I have is all but sitting back and flipping me off when I try to figure out something.

But I'll get there, dammit.

Home from the wars...

I'm not going to Hong Kong, next year. I'm going to suggest Hugh or Mary Jane go so they can make sure everything is done exactly like they want. It would be better, for all concerned. Let them wrangle with the Chinese way of doing things -- as in, smile and nod and ignore your instructions.

The move-out from the fair went well, but the next day I went to the warehouse and got everything in order, exactly like it needed to be...and our Chinese contact said we couldn't do it that way. We had to do it a different way. Their way. After discussing it for 20 minutes, I let them set it up to go their way...and got blistered by the powers that be because that is not how it was supposed to go.

So instead of a leisurely day leading up to my flight, I had to go back out to the warehouse, put the shipments back the way I had them, despite our contact not liking it and refusing to take responsibility, and then I wrote out exactly what information was needed where. I barely made my plane. I literally got to the gate as they were finishing boarding, still stopped to send an email with my updated information on it, and thought that would be it.

But no -- it's still, We can't do this, we have to do that. So my information was being ignored, as was the very specific and detailed cargo manifest sent to them by my associate, in Buffalo. I just finished a series of emails re-emphasizing that we want them to work up the shipments our way and that is that. Took up most of this afternoon. After I've driven back from Toronto and was ready for a nap.

I'm angry and upset at how this has gone. I don't like Hong Kong all that much to begin with. The food is crap if you don't like Chinese, which I don't. It's crowded and warm and, unless you're buying something from them, the people are rude or flat out ignore you. I've already seen everything I might want to see. The only positive note about this journey is that I get to visit with a couple of dealers I like and that's it. For one of them, Hong Kong is the only place I get to see him.

So I'm not getting A65 finished, this weekend. No way I can do it, nor will I let myself just rush through to make a silly deadline. Besides, I still don't know what the cover is, yet. Nothing I come up with grabs me by the throat...and who knows if that ever will happen. I may wind up with a simple bland shot of the original book and the title, nothing more. It seems to keep coming back to that...which bores the life out of me.

Positive aspect to the last couple of days is, I want the book DONE so I can get back to Place of Safety!!!!

Pleasant day and everything done...

Friday morning, I dropped by the Maritime Museum to check on everyone, and there were a few things that needed addressing. Not on my end but in preparation for the move-out. Overall, everyone was happy...me included. Especially since I got to see two of the book dealers I used when working up Adam, in A65.

One provided me with Adam's beginning manner, curious kitten expression and sweet smile. He's tall and lean, like a basketball player, while Adam turned out short and solid...but in a suit he looks just right -- neat but not flashy. He's also got that aura where, even though he never demands it, you know he'd love to be petted.

The other is how I see Adam at the end of the story -- buff, sure of himself, walking with confidence and wearing a suit like he's straight out of Gentlemen's Quarterly. Broad shoulders, trim hips, looking sexy as hell in a fitted shirt and slim-cut trousers. He's an alpha who's faced catastrophe with a Let's get through it attitude...so very British.

Both are extremely knowledgeable in their fields and have good reputations, from what I can tell. I've used what they know as much as I could. I'm tempted to ask another friend in the antiquarian world to read the book and let me know if I've got it right, but I can't them; I almost think they might recognize themselves and I prefer to wait till it's published before having to deal with that...in case they don't like what I've done.

Which is silly. Adam's like about 5'6" or maybe 5'7" and both of them are as tall or taller than me (I'm 5'10"). He worked out that way as an even bigger counterpoint to Lando, who's the perfect image of an American man in every way except intelligence and personality...and maybe even those, depending on how you view Americans. The contrast was needed so Casey's shift from being torn up at Lando's betrayal was shown better and made sense. It also adds to her hate for Veronica, who's already tall yet still wears 6" stilettos, forcing even Lando to wear lifts so he's not a midget next to her.

Something that's come out in the story, to make Casey more of a fully-fleshed character, is her concern with image. How the gossip rags have abused her. How she has to show the Hollywood world she was able to land on her feet after breaking up with Lando. What's left unsaid is how she feels that's more important than just letting herself grieve and get through it.

She contrasts with Adam's actions after learning his father was dead. He's 15 and winds up having to just get through it because his mother and a brother shut down and the other brother and sister are handling funeral arrangements and a burial plot. He's the one who makes arrangements for their father's body to be brought back to London.

Of course, I may be reading a lot more into my writing than is really there. I dunno. But to remind myself of what my obligations are to my characters, and to keep myself from taking an easy way out, I've re-read some of the critical reviews of my books -- the ones that pointed out what I can now see were lazy or inconsistent character development in The Lyons' Den and Porno Manifesto. The LD one focused on Tad and how I made him 3-D until the end, when he became a one-dimensional character; PM's was about how Alec never got past the superficial in looks when it came to choosing a lover.

I just hope I'm doing the right thing by Adam, Casey, Patricia...and even Lando and Veronica.