Books

Thursday, October 12, 2017

WIP Soundtrack

          Today on #WIPJoy, we're playing with soundtracks. My characters are in a fantasy world and don't generally have a way to listen to music whenever they want, so I never think of them as having a soundtrack. On the other hand, I create soundtracks for my books religiously, so here are a few songs for each of my main characters. I have way more songs than this, but this is just a sampling of songs that don't leave my playlist when I'm writing these characters.

Kuzunoha
Monster by Imagine Dragons

Deckard
Hero by Skillet

Richard
Hero by Darren Hayes


Himiko
This Life is Mine by Casey Lee Williams

Songs About the Story
Red Like Roses by Casey Lee Williams
This Isn't Love by the Birdsongs

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Keeping busy

          My tendinitis is acting up... again? Still? At any rate, I'm under doctor's orders to not abuse it and take painkillers steadily until it starts feeling better. The doctor said a week or two and it been nearly double that now, so hopefully it will be fine soon. On the one hand, I though I'd be dying without my ability to write. And while I will be soon, I have found things to keep me occupied.

1. Reading
          Okay, so this is always my first fall back and this time it came with the added bonus of allowing me to start editing it since every edit includes one full read-through to see where it currently stands. I put the second novel of my Kitsune-Ken series on my Kindle app and 5 chapters in, I can say thats its well written but I will need to rewrite/replan the beginning of it. I changed one thing in my first novel and completely killed the original conflict the novel started off with. That's why I always start off with a base level read through.
          I also picked up a few books, the Howl's Moving Castle series, Your Name and Romancing the Inventor. I haven't started the series yet, but the other two are amazing so far and I would totally recommend them. Fair warning if you do pick up Your Name; it doesn't explain the cultural context of pretty much anything and assumes you'll already know it (sort of like a book set in modern day England wouldn't explain what a biscuit was or why they were having it with tea). So if you know something about Japan, this is an awesome read. If you don't, be aware, its going to take you a bit longer to wrap your head around it.

2. Inktober
          Inktober, if you missed my last blog post, is a monthly challenge to improve your inking skills. Annoyed by my pens inability to blend at all, I went out and picked up some copic markers. They are amazing. If anything, its my art ability that limits their potential. (See pictures below).

3. #WIPJoy
          Unable to do anything by half, I am also filling my resting time with the #WIPJoy challenge. Created by an author who wanted to interact with her story a bit differently, #WIPJoy challenges you to answer questions about your current work-in-progress everyday. I didn't start it until yesterday, so I'm currently behind, but I am catching up. Check out my author page on Facebook for all of those updates.

          So, yeah... this is how I fill up my resting time. What's keeping you busy this week?

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Inktober

          I'm going to divert a little from my normal track here and talk about something other than writing for a few minutes here. October has now become Inktober, with a hashtag and everything. Yes, it's another challenge month, and this one I thought was quite fun. The idea is to improve your inking skill and draw a picture in ink every day this month. Since I am a good copy artist, but not a very good artist, I've decided to take part. The drawings don't take more than 20 minutes a day for me to do, but so far, I've had fun. I'll add in the three pictures I've done so far below, but I warn you, they are laughably bad. Please let me know if you'll be joining in #Inktober with me and what your favourite picture of mine is in the comments below.

Day 1 - A character from the video game Journey. Not great, but I had fun creating one essentially from memory.


 Day 2 - Inuyasha. I was going to draw a chibi-Inuyasha, but the eyes got messed up and I decided that regular adult Inuyasha was better... also, for no discernable reason, he's naked.

Day 4 - I missed day 3 and decided today to do a Sailor Moon picture. I told you, laughably bad. I have had the most fun trying to figure out how to shade these pictures though. The pens I have do not mix together at all and most of them are too dark to be used complementarily.