The Wound of Words – Page 5

September 11, 2019

Cover Images: Your Opinion Please (Again)

Two and a half years ago (can you believe it?) I asked you all, my dear readers, to weigh in on the question of what cover image to use for Restoration Day, with ten images paraded before your eyes. (Spoiler: the winner was Contestant #2.)

Now, with The Wound of Words making its way through the convoluted pipeway to publication, I find myself in need of your opinions again. As before, the selected image needs to look good in every size from thumbnail to 14x21cm – and preferably also in black and white; it needs to not disappear into the (white) background on a webpage, and of course, it needs to draw the reader in without giving a false impression of the book’s contents.

Also as before, there are ten images. But this time, either because I am getting old and boring or because I am getting more mature and have a better idea of what I like (consider what you know of me and pick accordingly) they are variations on six themes, instead of the seven last time.

On the plus side, my GIMPing skills have advanced to the point where each cover image is approximately the shape/proportion of the actual cover, so what you see is more or less what you will get, except of course that the final version will have a professionally-designed title and name on it and will therefore look Much Better.

Here then, for your discriminating judgement and critique, are our ten contestants.Continue & Comment

August 2, 2019

What Next?

The Wound of Words (draft 2.2) has now been despatched to the lovely people who volunteered to be beta readers, and I… what am I going to do?

I’ll be carrying on with the Grand Productivity Experiment, but doing less writing work and a lot more house and garden work. Especially garden work.

You don’t catch me using a chainsaw in a tree. Or anywhere else. I am attached to my limbs and I would like it to stay that way.

There’s the redcurrant to prune (at last!), the mighty Balrog to hack back again (the shed porch disintegrated and collapsed under its weight this year), and the dozens of poles shooting out the top of the apple tree like some sort of living candelabra to slice off.

And once I’ve done all that (no doubt with the assistance of the Caped Gooseberry’s superior musculature), it’s on to the potting, the planting out and the weeding.

Inside, for those inevitable days of Much Water, there’s pruning of another sort to be done (aka decluttering), and a truly remarkable quantity of mending to work my way through.

At some point, of course, whether sooner or later, it will have to be decided: what writing project do I work on next?

July 26, 2019

How a Dream Takes Shape

I had a dream about a year and a half ago, a vivid and exciting dream, full of plot and action. I scrawled it down on waking, and then hastily typed up my scrawled notes before I forgot what they said and became unable to read them. That was the sixteenth of November, 2017 (an otherwise fairly uneventful day in world affairs).

About three months later, the dream drew me away from what I was supposed to be doing, and I started rolling the idea around, probing the ever-interesting question of What Happened Next? Why has he got that orange thing round his neck? Is that his granny? And what’s that girl with the heavy fringe glowering about?

Continue & Comment