OK folks, today’s self-indulgent post will cover my:

• progress on my novel revision
• plans for a daring new art work (well, daring for me)
• countdown to Europe (yippee!!!!)

Novel Revision

Every day at work at least one person will ask me how the novel is going. So far its been going almost two years. Eeeeek. I had intended to write it in six months and be a world famous author within a year, have a film contract within 18 months and be a multi-millionaire by now. Damn! I really need to stop procrastinating with all this revision because I am behind schedule.

Today I had a little epiphany (so many double entendres – so little time!). One thing that had bugged me about my plot is that there seems so little linking all the plotlines together until the very end. It seemed a little artificial. A second thing that bugged me was that in order to make tension and move the plot to where I wanted it I had to have a couple of characters seriously over-react to a situation. I did not like this at all.

A couple of posts ago I wrote a brief overview of Pari Azar. Thinking on that overview it suddenly dawned on me that I could use one of her “flaws” to my advantage and solve both of these things that bugged me. I was so thrilled that I almost did not notice my hour long journey home today – I just kept going over scenarios in my head looking for flaws. I could find none. Alas I cannot tell you more because that would mean spoilers – but it really encouraged me. 🙂

My next daring piece of art

Well, it’s only daring for me because I have not done a nude for a long time. One of my blogosphere pals is a photographer named Liz Zusev. She has a few sites around the web and her photos explore people in a number of ways, some very “arty” (in the good sense of the word) and others deeply personal. Her blog is at http://lizzusev.com. She recently posted a semi-nude with a rich red curtain way back in the background. I commented that I would like to see that curtain used more and she laughed and said that she hated those curtains.

For me I just imagined the combination of the rich colour contrasted with pale skin and also playing with different textures (roughness of fabric vs. smoothness of skin). So I thought to myself that maybe I should be trying a nude in front of such curtains. I have researched making curtains in Blender in order to continue my determination to learn that program. I will do the figure and the posing in DAZ Studio, though I am not sure whether I will use LuxRender or the native renderer. And probably some post-processing in Photoshop as I have recently watched some really good tutorials on skin and hair.

For the pose I am thinking something like a ballet stretch, side on. Triangular. Strong light-dark contrasts. I might see if I can make the red curtains shadows a deep blue.

European holiday

Ever since last September I have been planning a European holiday for the family. My daughter Rhiannon has never left Australia and next year she goes to High School. So I want her to have a sense of the world. Just imagine if, when learning history in High School she can actually say that she has visited such places. It excites me and makes me feel like a good father. 🙂 Anyway, given my limited income, I had to pick one part of the world where she could experience a lot of different bits of culture – so Europe it was.

So this September we are off. We will spend a week in the UK, then go on an 18 Trafalgar Tour of Europe, hop off the tour at the end in Paris for a few days, and then go back to the UK for more sight-seeing and relative visiting for a fortnight. I mention all this because I might start asking for advice about places. For example, in Paris I promised my daughter a visit to Euro-Disney and would love advice about that.

OK – so that’s my “talk about me” post for the day.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Greg