At long last, Deadlocked is finished, and a cute picture I drew

You heard it here, and maybe during my self-congratulatory tweets last night. Deadlocked‘s first draft is finally complete! I really struggled with this one, lots of stupid life-stress caused huge amounts of writer’s block. But, I crawled forward in 200-word blocks until the end, where a few more substantive writing sessions finally finished it.

Today, I’m going to be taking the Red Pen of Doom to this lovely manuscript, to fix the damage writing in 200-word segments can do, general coherence and to tighten up my descriptiveness and prose. Whatever prose really means.

In other news, The Zombie’s Bride is approaching 2500 downloads. That’s a nice number, but it seems to have little to no effect on sales. I’ll focus more on the main Zombie Bedtime Stories plot line for now, as I want Bedlam to be released by Christmas. This is, of course, barring extenuating circumstances, such as finding full-time work.

Finally, some artwork. My recently was able to get my hands on a Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet courtesy of my boyfriend’s wonderful negotiation skills. After figuring out how to draw with it, and a crash self-taught course in Photoshop Elements, I came up with this little thing:

Brains

My cover artist‘s job is safe.

The Blog Improvement Project

With release of my first story hopefully about one month away, I decided to clean up a little, make this joint just a little nicer. There may just be one or two more drafts before I stick a fork in it. Additionally, the rough draft of part 2 is approximately one third done.

I noticed the About page is getting some hits and badly needed some love. As well, I realized that I had no dedicated place for my magnum opus, Zombie Bedtime Stories. I fixed that, and tried to express my vision for the project, and why it’s unique and deserves your attention.

Contact me is basically shameless self-promotion, and an email address. In case anybody wants to email me. I like emails.

Otherwise, my cover for Locked In is getting an overhaul. I realized that the text is unreadable in the thumbnail. Anonymously-obsessed-boyfriend (Now on Twitter!) is on the case.

Vlog-wise, I’m hoping to get my cooking videos up. I made one about how to cook chili that needs a good amount of editing, and today I made matzoh balls, which also require edits and cuts. The latter half happens to be hilarious, but I need to learn to look at the camera, not the cameraman. It makes me look psycho. I might step up the standard vlog a little, too. Make it edgier.

Cover art sneak peak! How to make a (good?) cover.

Today, anonymously-obsessed-boyfriend and I used the holiday Monday to full advantage. As promised, here is the cover for Locked In, followed by what I learned about fake blood:

(Update: Link to larger image was broken, got it working)

Locked In cover

Now, for how to make a cover with zero budget, a digital camera and an image editor:

1. Food colouring is amazing, but you can’t use it alone for “blood”. This was the first (and obvious) observation. However, it is very good at planning out where you want your hand prints to go.
2. To make thick blood, corn starch and flour seem like very logical choices. However, while the blood will have great consistency and will stay where you put it, it will be fuchsia. See also: Klingon blood from Star Trek IV. Not zombie appropriate.
3. Coat self in flaming pink blood.
4. Walk into glass door and smear self convincingly on glass.
5. Take pictures. Shower.
6. ????? with Image editor
7. Realize that everything looks awesome in grey scale.
8. Profit? (Or a book cover that doesn’t involve making a sugar-based fake blood and sticky re-takes.)

There you have it. Time to get back to work.