I've decided to move to a new blog this year. It is up and running: Wordsteading.blogspot.com.The Daring Novelist has been a fun ride, but it has drifted so far from its original purpose -- to track progress in a daily writing dare -- that the

Finding Bill Doans - the Drama of Discovery

May 13th, 2016

I started to write again this week.Not much, really more editing than writing, but after what amounts to a three year lay off, it really felt good.It has been a rough three years, perhaps the roughest while I was still trying, still in denial.

Quick Checkin - and a Pulpy cover

Feb 18th, 2016

Still drawing and building up some stock before finishing up more covers. I decided, though, to post an unfinished one. (It's ALMOST finished.)This is a 1950s style cover, often used for hard-boiled and thrillers -- but also often (in those d

Sunday Update - The Well-Stocked Pantry and Geneaology

Feb 8th, 2016

I think that, technically, I made my goal this half week. No I didn't upload any new covers. (More about that below.) But I did upload 18 images to a stock site. And I've got bunches more to upload - but it's a slow process at first. (And

ROW80 update: Writing Rears Its Head

Feb 4th, 2016

I don't have a lot to post today, because I'm going through a transition. Well, two of them.One is simply that, because I decided to expand my art horizons, as it were, I've been working on things that aren't ready to post. Also, I've been doin

ROW80 update - started my own cover site, sort of.

Jan 31st, 2016

I guess I just got tired of designing without typography. (Or actually, designing with the idea that someone will do bad typography over the image.)So this week I decided to stop posting to Self-Pub Book Covers as soon as I was done with the im

Charles Lane - Character Actor Extraorinaire

Jan 26th, 2016

Just found out that today was the birthday of Charles Lane, and I thought I ought to give him a shout out. (I didn't have time to draw a picture so here's a photo - it might replace it with a drawing later....)If you've watched any television

Sunday Update

Jan 25th, 2016

Life went and took away my entire evening. I am stressed to the hilt, and need an episode of Mannix.So without much ado, here are the five covers I did since the previous post. I am inordinately fond of the ruby ring. The texture for the jew

ROW80 - Four Colorful Covers

Jan 21st, 2016

Sigh. In three days, only four covers. (The goal is two a day, uploaded to Self-Pub Book Covers for sale.) There are additional unfinished covers, but that's all for the finished and uploaded. (Turns out the same forces that interfere with m

ROW 80 - A Book Cover Dare!

Jan 17th, 2016

So.....I have decided that I can't be "The Daring Novelist" if I don't do some kind of dare once in while. Even if it's an Art Dare rather than a Writing Dare.As a result, I'm rejoining A Round Of Words in 80 Days (ROW80), even though it's been

Every Cover Tells a Story (but not the story you think)

Jan 15th, 2016

I remember when I took my first design class. It was the intro class for all art study, and it was all about design principles. You know, balance, repetition, pattern, etc. And often our assignments involved cutting out black squares and arr

The New Year's Eve Post - Wordsteading

Jan 1st, 2016

I'll just cut to the chase and make this announcement: I am now officially an Amateur Writer. I know I've flirted with it before, talked about having a foot in both camps (that is, professional and hobbyist/artiste). I've talked a little (and

More Cover Fun

Dec 10th, 2015

I've been playing with Blending Modes in Photoshop. The colors on one layer blend with those below it, to create something altogether different. While it's nice for creating effects for photos or artwork, I find that it can really be fun to u

More Art - Landscape and Inverse Lanscape

Oct 29th, 2015

Still playing with the same technique I used on the trees, but this time playing with abstracted backgrounds. I say "Landscape" but really, it is pure abstract that just suggests landscapes: layers that lay horizontally across the page. It's

Art - Spooky Trees for Halloween

Oct 27th, 2015

Practicing some watercolor brushes in Painter. This wasn't actually what I planned to do tonight. I was playing with abstracts for backgrounds -- fiddling with blue-on-blue, actually -- and I started following what the brush gave me, and ended

Not Doing Nano - Doing History

Oct 22nd, 2015

I have decided not to do Nano. This is partly because I realized something about Nano -- it promises a fun and fulfilling time - the joy of Just Writing, and the Fulfillment of Finishing... but the rules take all the fun out of both things by

Some Art - Loretta Young and a Cover

Oct 9th, 2015

So I did do some of my artwork. The Loretta Young picture came out splendid, but I should tell you that this is a photo replication: that is, I pin down certain key features with an overlay before I begin my drawing. (On paper, I'd use a grid

Thinking of Doing NaNo This Year

Oct 7th, 2015

Usually I find it impossible to do NaNoWriMo. The restrictive rules and timing make it impossible to integrate into an existing writing plan -- you have to start something "new," you can't start ahead of time, etc.However, this year some things

Town Research Revisited: A Marshal in Tiny Beulah

Sep 23rd, 2015

In the last post, when I told you about researching small towns to figure out what kind of police force you might use in your small town cozy mystery novels, I mentioned the little town of Beulah Michigan, which is too small for its own police

Writing Cozy Mysteries: Researching Your Town

Sep 7th, 2015

Over on Elizabeth Spann Craig's Writing the Cozy Mystery this week, she's writing about developing a mystery series, and things to think about when developing your sleuth. Someone in the comments asked a question: can a small town have a polic

Real Innovation - What Problem Are You Trying To Solve?

Aug 1st, 2015

We talked about "enhanced books" on #futurechat today. Whenever that subject comes up among publishing professionals, I always end up chewing through a steel filing cabinet in frustration.I mean, Friday's chat was actually a pretty interesting

Which Way Did She Go?

Jul 31st, 2015

I didn't disappear. I've been right here.I just discovered that if you're going to disengage for a while from the Writing Community, it is best not to announce that you're going to do it, or say when you expect to be back, or what you'll do whi

Artwork!

Jun 9th, 2015

I suddenly got all artistic, and I wanted to share some images I created tonight.First a little background: I've been thinking about a couple of different kinds of images, and it occurred to me that it might be fun to combine two very different

Update - Breaking for June

Jun 1st, 2015

I thought I wrote an update post, but it is nowhere to be found. It will undoubtedly show up after I rewrite it from scratch....Pretty Little MayMay turned into another month from hell. And I am currently not feeling well. I am late on the n

Pen Names - Should I or Shouldn't I?

May 25th, 2015

When I first started self-publishing, I considered using a pen name for the first couple of books I published. I didn't because I write too many different kinds of fiction, and if any had a different name, they probably all should have one.Eve

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