End Of 6-Month Blog Hiatus

So. It's been a while, as Staind once sang. Thankfully, my reasons for not posting on the blog since February are far less angsty or wrought with existential insecurity than the song. Blogging just took a bit of a nosedive, priority-wise, over the last few months, what with finding and starting a new job, moving from two flat-shares into (finally!) my own apartment, planning and going on holidy in Canada and USA, and of course, writing. Always the writing. ;-)

In fact, writing remained my touchstone throughout the crazy times. And it paid off. I finished another first draft of a novel the day before I left for Canada. Yay me. I'm really excited about this project. It still needs considerable revision and editing work, but the fact that I'm still excited about it after finishing the first draft, and that I already have ideas for books 2 and 3, tells me I might really have something here. Now I just have to make it good, better, the best it can be. Master of Lists that I am, I already have a plan on how to accomplish this.



In other news, I simply have to pimp a book that had me reading until 5am for the first time in at least eight years: Magic Breaks by Ilona Andrews. This is the seventh book in the Kate Daniels series, and it just keeps getting better. It's Urban Fantasy at its best. If you were ever curious what this genre is all about, this series is the place to start. Book 1 is Magic Bites. It is good. By book 6, Magic Rises, we've reached phenomenal. The only reason I didn't read number 6 through the night is because I started reading it in the morning. Instead of slacking off, as often happens in such series, Magic Breaks stays the course. This. This is writing that inspires me, and that I aspire to. A lofty goal, but you gotta dream big, right?

Cover Art For My Work-In-Progress

I'm running full steam ahead with my current novel. It's going so well it's almost uncanny. I had the general idea for it over a year ago and started something, but it petered out about a quarter through - I'd just started it totally wrong. A few months back I had a better idea of what to do with it and couldn't wait to get started. So now I've managed 48.000 words since the beginning of March and am still going strong. Considering that I work full-time and have my studies (more on that in the next post), plus spring is keeping me outside a lot, I'm really proud of myself. This story is so much fun with every scene. Sure, it's still a very rough first draft because I'm burning through it so fast, but I'll fix it when it's finished. The fact that I now use Scrivener makes not editing everything right away even easier, because it's a breeze to jump around in the manuscript and find certain scenes, or change them around or... it's just easier. Totally worth its price. Period. 


Anyway, I always like to do mock-ups of covers for the stuff I'm writing. I get some pics off Google Images and create something in MS Power Point. The first one I did for this story, the first version about a year ago, looked like this:

Not too shabby, all things considered - Power Point isn't exactly an image editing program. But of course the pics are copyrighted and I didn't buy them or the rights to them, so on the off-chance that I decide to publish this novel (or any of my others) through, let's say, KDP, I couldn't use something like this. So a few days ago, I finally decided to have some fun doing this the right way. I opened an account at Shutterstock and bought the five-pic download option. I downloaded two pics that fit (I found many more, but these two just screamed I'm The One for this!!!!). Then I bought and downloaded Pixelmator, the image editing software for Macs. I thought about getting Adobe Photoshop, but that's very expensive and I've never used such software, so I decided to start out 'slow'. 

Incredibly, not even two hours, lots of fun and only a few cuss words later, I had this:

I realize this isn't perfect, either, but it's miles closer to something usable, and lightyears closer to the tone and feel of the story. So for now, that's going to be the cover of my work-in-progress.