Author: Adrian

A break in our regularly scheduled content (and my ankle bone)

Adrian

As you can see, life got a bit in the way of my best laid plans. A hockey injury snapped the little bone in my leg and cracked the big one (yes, I went to university for my fancy anatomy language). The toe of the skate jammed in the ice and the body and leg rotated around it. I think I will summarize with: “ouch”.

So my apologies for not meeting my normal frequency of content. I’m also finding it challenging to gather the mental energy to do a lot of writing or art at all. Hopefully that will change as I get healthy again. I’m also in a bit of flux on direction in my writing and art hobbies, flitting back and forth in plans and projects. So a bit of restorative rest and rejuvenation might be in order for more than one reason.

Hope your February went better than mine!

Visual Story Skeleton

Adrian

I’m a visual person. I have come to realize that writing for me is not pure words, but comes with images as well and sometimes the better tool for planning my writing is a combination of words and images. I’m thinking specifically of the broad story plot, or the skeleton that we hang all the characters (heart and brain), action (muscles), and description (skin, yucky image) on. Mixing words and images on paper lets me better understand what scenes are low key, which are BOOMING, where things are dark, what flows in the main story river, and what are secondary islands (I really use hand-drawn text and pictures on physical paper, but have substituted some random font changes here to help make the point).

In revisiting my stories recently, I’ve created a visual story skeleton for both new ideas and one completed book and it’s giving me some new confidence in both editing and forging ahead with new ideas. I can FEEL the story better when I see it in this fashion and I can see holes in story arc beter.

I’d show you an example, but why don’t we wait until I’ve published one of the books first, so the skeleton doesn’t contain any spoilers. šŸ˜€ So, in other words, if I have some publishing success, I promise to show the related skeleton (assuming I have one and can find it).

Happy Writing! And if we have a zombie apocalypse in the meantime, don’t let those skeletons get you. šŸ˜‰

Best, Adrian.

A Swipe Clean of the Chalkboard and a New Start

Adrian

Iā€™m going to start a new novel. Maybe some animation too. Iā€™d like to do a bit more of a mix of art and story on this one, if I can find the time (art is much harder for me to squeeze in that writing, simply due to logistics of needing an art table). But Iā€™d like to make an effort on combining them, even if not in the final product, but rather as a creative spur. But in any event, itā€™s scary and intriguing to start a new story. So maybe itā€™s worth trotting outĀ a process mountain again.Ā A writing mountain was one of my very first posts. But now that I think about it, maybe a different mountain would be useful. A mountain of effort to progressĀ down, but with the importance of the first steps being theĀ most important. Inverse effort and outcome. Something like the featured image above.

I’m starting it now, the premise. The idea. I have one. Hopefully it is worth the effort that follows!!!

The making of a cover

Adrian

I’m mucking around with my new animation software and thought I’d stitch together some of the progress paintings for StoneDragon’s cover image into a small movie. Each change of image is a new layer of paint (there are actually more changes, but these are the more significant ones). I originally wanted to put some music with it, but then navigating the intellectual propertyĀ jungle gave me a headache,Ā so I just plugged in some moody words over top. You can always turn the volume off if you don’t want to hear my mutterings. šŸ™‚

The link is here:Ā Ā StoneDragon Cover video

Warning: once again, please mute if you don’t want to hear audio.

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Featured image is an old unused cover sketch, just for some eye candy…

Thanks!

Adrian

Just wanted to thank everyone that downloaded StoneDragon! During the time of its promotion, the book cracked the top 100 inĀ one of theĀ Amazon categories and gotĀ aĀ five star review from one gracious reader. I couldn’t be more thrilled.

 

top 100 free copy

 

For those who enjoyed it,Ā additionalĀ Amazon reviewsĀ are very much appreciated!

Thanks again,

Adrian.

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The featured image is an out-takeĀ from the black and white chapter headings that adorn StoneDragon. It didn’t make the final cut. But it makes a nice thank you present. šŸ™‚