Creating the cover of my novel
Back on to the creation of the cover. As I said in my previous post, my designer Paul Deuis of Jethryk (http://www.jethryk.com.au) guided me superbly in what I needed to give him. In this post I’ve included
SoulThief
DAZ Studio – an author’s tool when you want to create art
I am placing this post between parts one and two of “Creating the cover of my novel.” This is because I want to demonstrate how easy the creation of a simple image can be with a tool like DAZ Studio. (I feel like a magician revealing tricks of the trade) DAZ Studio is a free (yes, free!) piece of software that permits the user to arrange and pose 3D models.
Creating the cover of my novel – Part 1
Whoever said that you should not judge a book by its cover was obviously swimming against the tide. Judging a book by its cover is precisely what most people do. You only need to stand in a book shop (you remember book shops don’t you?) and watch people browse. The books with the great covers are constantly being examined. Anyway, I wanted a great cover. And I wanted it as
What I want in a Villain & The Curse of the Bad Chapter
This is two blog posts for the price of one as I have been dwelling on both of these things. The first is finding the villain that I find perfect for the novel. Yes sure, I’ve already named and described him in the first draft. But I really need to tease him out more. So I have been watching films and documentaries of actors who are known for characterisations
Writing my own gestalt-sentient beings
In the mid-1990s I read a book with an idea that captured my imagination. In Verner Vinge’s “A Fire Upon the Deep” I read of a canine gestalt-sentient species called the Tine. A gestalt-sentient species, as portrayed in that novel, was one that had a sort of group mind or group consciousness. So an “individual” might be made up of five or six beings who shared a consciousness. What really
Quantum entanglement & Sympathetic magic
Well, as any of my dear friends out there know, I am trying to create a world in which magic is merely science that is forgotten. I know, not a new idea. But I am trying to express it in a way that is true to most reader’s expectations of fantasy while providing a rationale that satisfies my own need for logic and consistency. Anyway, I’ll write more about that
First step in seeing people
I love the way that some authors can catch the essence of a person in a few sentences.
Two’s company. Three is more interesting.
The other day I found myself wondering why a certain scene of mine was so dull. It had conflict. It had heightened emotions. Yet it was still dull. Essentially the scene was an argument between two characters regarding a course of action. The principal risks were to do nothing and definitely kill 300 people or do something and let an unknown (possibly extremely dangerous) entity loose upon their world. Both
Swearing, obscenities and so on in my fantasy and science fiction
Is it just me, or does everyone think that the use of the word ‘frak’ in science fiction and fantasy