I have done some reworking on the novel, and on the cover as well.
I digitally painted it in Painter and Photoshop.
Additionally I tweeked the subtitle: A Paranormal Romance Mystery
You can buy a copy of the novel at any ebook distributor.
Tag: Clockwork Genie
Anyone who follows me on facebook or twitter (or Google+) will know I recently released a new story as an ebook. I really hope to be doing this more often, but for now here’s a little something about this one.
This short story was almost more fun to write than the original novel CLOCKWORK GENIE.
Though it didn’t start off all that fun. I had begun by working up a sequel novel, but all the characters wanted their moment in the spot light and that resulted in distractions from the main plot of the book. So I pruned away some of those side lines and found a very beautiful flower, which I call:
THE COP WHO WOULDN’T DIE: A Clockwork Genie Story
Police Detective Whitney Manning escaped from the horrors of the crimes she witnessed nearly everyday into the fantasy worlds of her books. Then one day, fantasy became all too real when she met a girl with a power genie and her life would never be the same.
Having faced on of the most powerful beings on the planet, and survive battle with a dragon made of living stone, how can Detective Manning return to the everyday world of crime and murder?
She was off duty and wasn’t supposed to be there when the bullet struck her chest. Detective Whitney Manning should be dead.
THE COP WHO WOULDN’T DIE
This is the first short story in a series of stories taking place in the world of CLOCKWORK GENIE, and eventually will all be collected in an anthology.
The next story in the series will be about the handsome homicide Detective Marcus Lambert as he discovers more of the secrets his new wife’s family and the genie of the watch.
After this anthology is complete I will return to the second novel fresh.
To those who have read and enjoyed CLOCKWORK GENIE (which you can purchase at one of the links to the right), let me know which of characters from the book deserves their own short story.
Thank you all again for your support.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
With CLOCKWORK GENIE already on virtual stands and book shelves, and REVENGE OF THE MASKED GHOST about to join it in the next few weeks, it’s time to start working on another novel.
The next novel, which I am planning to do a pseudo-NANOWRIMO through the month of February, will be a Young Adult fantasy which I’ve had sitting on the shelf for several years and have decided now was the time to dust it off and make it ring.
Speaking of making the story ring, can someone explain to me the use and necessity of ring tones?
In my story a cellular phone plays an important roll (does anyone call them cell phones anymore, or are they all smart phones.)I’ve been thinking about what ring tones my lead teenager would program into her phone. The more I thought about it, I began to wonder what would be the point.
Why do people have ring tones? Why purchase a song to play when someone calls?
I have had a cell phone (three or four) over the last 15 years, and have always set them to silent or vibrate. Never saw a purpose to have the ringer on.
You want to know when someone is calling you, that’s for certain, but how many of us like to hear when other peoples phones start ringing.
If we’re fast enough, we usually can answer the phone just before the third ring, so why do people want to extend those rings by turning them into songs?
Have you ever noticed that when someone has a musical ring tone, the longer it plays the harder they have in shutting it off and it usually becomes a real embarrassment?
While in the movie theater there is always that slide that comes up repeatedly to remind you to turn off the your phones, or worse that audio clip where every sound in the theater is amplified with every possible phone or noise that could be made.
Recently the Muppets did a very nice version of this before their movie.
Why is this even something we have to think about any more? People’s phones ringing loudly and long, in the theatre, middle of church, a business meeting, or dinner.
Yes, some can hear the buzzer of my phone. Usually when it vibrates through the table or desk. But it’s usually low enough it doesn’t bother anyone. But I do turn it off in the theater.
The other day I was watching a rerun episode of THE MENTALIST, and there was major mistake with the use of a cell phone. The lead of the show has just broken into someone’s home. Only a few feet inside the house, his phone rings. His phone rings. This was not done for comic effect. You’d think that if you were going to break into a house and not want anyone to know you were there, you’d turn the phone off or have it on vibrate. The Folly Department can just as easily drop in a Buzzing sound as it does a ring tone. Other than receiving important information about the B Plot, the use of the phone in the house had no purpose. A woman nearly catches our lead in the house, but not because of the ring tone.
So my question is a serious one, and is research for my novel. How many people actually have audible ring tones? How many have simple ringers, and how many have longer songs?
I’m probably going to ask my teenage niece about this. She is a Young Adult after all.
My next question to her will probably be: Do you actually use your phone, or is it mostly used for texting and facebook? I don’t want to write cliché teenagers in my story, but the phones have become an integral part of their lives.
I may have been rambling here, but in doing so I find that this is all very important to my novel. Not only are cell phones important to the story, but also so is being annoyed by the ring tones.
This has been great talking, thank you for all the help. I appreciate – RING RING – Excuse me, gotta go answer that.
(Oh, like you didn’t see that joke coming from the start of this blog.)
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity.
Well, my novel CLOCKWORK GENIE has been available online as an ebook for purchase for nearly a week now (you can click on the link to the right to purchase it at Amazon.)
So far I’ve had two sales. I’m still smiling.
This week I’ve decided to blog about the cover art of the book, which I can talk about since I drew and painted it, myself.
If you’ve been reading my blogs, or following me on twitter and facebook, you know that I am a comic book artist and draw the online comic book FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY. I wanted to be in comics from an early age and started off as an artist, but soon realized I was a storyteller first. The art has kept up with the writing, and here’s an example.
The hardest part of art that I’ve found, even back in my illustration course in college, was the thumbnail stage. I usually draw something once and like that I have trouble trying to draw it in other designs. It was no different for this cover.
My original idea was to show an image of a golden pocket watch in the center of the art. Perhaps even superimposing a woman’s face with in it. But that didn’t quite work. The two panels of my thumbnails here represent that. Have the watch laying on a cobblestone path, or hanging from the title. Discussion this with Shannon, who has been a great help as my editor on this book, she suggested that the watch should hang from the text to one side as the woman walks off into the distance, yet looking back over her shoulder. I liked that idea; especially having the woman approximately placed helped it fit in with the Paranormal Romance of the book’s genre and market.
I liked that but thought that there might be a better way of tying the woman to the watch all the more. Read the book, the watch is very important to her.
So I brought her closer into the foreground holding the watch on her shoulder.
Either of these were still good ideas, so I decided to take them both to the next stage.
Using the 3D program POSER I set up a female figure into the poses I though best fit the images I had in mind.
I don’t usually use Poser in my artwork, but do use it to set up poses to find the right angle and position of the body for the shot. By the time this was done, I knew I’d be using the close up image.
Using the Poser images as a starting point I sketched up and then penciled the pose. I would then add the hair and the pocket watch into the image on separate layers.
Using these detailed pencils, the painting began. Both the pencils and painting were done in Corel Painter.
The way I paint is not what I would suggest for others, do what works best for you. Coming out of my comic book coloring experience, I laid in flat colors first, her flesh tones on one layer, her hair on another, then the watch, and her dress.
Putting the flats against a grey background, I began to paint in the shadows and shades on each of the layers. I like to use a Gouach, Broad Cover Brush for putting in the colors. Then I blend it all in using a Blender tool, different ones create different effects in the paint, and currently I’m using the Grainy Water Blender. Change the size of the point for different areas and purposes.
The same is done with light side of the figure, blending in a lighter color and finish with highlights. Sometimes the brush doesn’t create a thin enough line so I use my Variable Tip Pen, or even the pencil; again adjust the size for what’s needed.
As you’ll see I did the watch on a different layer, but dropped in the shadows on her flesh tones here.
The next part of the job, done in a separate file, was to create a background. Coming up with the right colors for the background had to be just right for the foreground figure to stand right out and not just be flat. I adjusted this several times as my original colors blended too much into her dress.
I then had to design the house for the background. This house is extremely important to the story, so it had to stand out yet not distract from the figure. I did researching and looked at a dozen or more big houses in Bel Air owned by Hollywood stars back in the 1920s and 1930s. Not wanting to copy any one of them, I found something I like and in several and blended into something new. I drew it and painted it at a large size but on a separate layer that I would be able to shrink down and adjust the shade and tone as need be.
Once pleased with the background, I dropped in my figure in front of it. Here you can see how the watch finally was incorporated.
The background would be adjusted a few more times until I was really happy.
The next assignment was to figure out what font would work best for the title on the cover. I liked several fonts, both in what came with the computer, and some that I purchased. Here is a selection of them that I was considering.
I decided to go with Baskerville SemiBold, but without the Italics.
In Photoshop I started off with the title in the same color as her hair, but it didn’t stand out well enough, so changed it to a brighter yellow. Which I then used the Layer Styles to create an appropriate bevel effect on the letters.
The only problem I had now was my ‘four names of profession creativity’… my name was almost too small to visible. I had to adjust the size slightly, and then dropped a black bar underneath the text so it didn’t vanish into the flesh tones of her arm.
So the Clockwork Genie finally had a face and a cover. I hope you like my art, and I hope you really like the novel.
Thanks.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
Last time I celebrated all the great authors who are fighting with blood, sweat, and tears to produce a complete novel in a month as part of National Novel Writing Month. I also told you about what came out of my experience NaNoWriMo.
With hard work since that November of two years ago, I am now able to announce the release of my contemporary fantasy novel:
CLOCKWORK GENIE.
Cecilia Orchard lives alone.
She writes fantasy and mystery stories to escape a humdrum data entry job that barely pays for her apartment, food, and bus fare. Then a handsome police detective arrives with news that she is the prime suspect in the murder of her grandfather whom she never knew existed. If inheriting a fortune from a man she doesn’t know isn’t madness enough, Cecilia finds herself the owner of a powerful genie that could make all her dreams come true, but what are her dreams and is she willing to make the wish?
There’s a real great thrill to know that an idea I had years ago, and all the hard work it took to turn the idea into a story and then into a novel, now exists for others to read.
In the weeks to follow I’m sure to write more about this book, including on how I designed and painted the cover art.
The book currently can be found on Smashwords, and soon will be through distributors including Kindle. I’ll let you know.
Thank you all for the support.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity.
That might not mean anything to you, but it came to me finishing the latest draft of my contemporary fantasy novel.
When I first conceived this story I was in the midst of writing another so quickly dashed off a few pages and set it aside. Those pages became the outline from which I worked.
What I had at the start was the magical McGuffin, which our heroes and villain quested for, and the name of my main characters. So I put myself upon that same quest to see where they lead me.
Well for one reason or another, several of those names changed between the first and second draft of the novel. Some were too close in sound (try not to have characters names that start with the same letter). Soon other characters showed up they made themselves important and needed names as well.
However, the name of my main character never changed, and would become a very important key part of the story. No matter how unintentional when I started.
As I wrote further into the novel I discovered that her father had changed his family name (for reasons you’ll find out when you buy the book when its released). Near the end of the book my lead character has the opportunity to ask why. I knew nothing about this before I wrote it. Yet the very name I chose answered the question itself. Not only did it give me the explanation of why he had changed the name, but it also told me about a childhood trauma which I hadn’t planned and yet was now the story’s singularity which set in motion all the events which took us through the novel.
It was a little thing, and unplanned, but was an amazing thing to suddenly find I had laid the groundwork for key elements of my story without even knowing it.
The devil as they say is in the details, and if you focus too hard on them you lose sight of the whole. The vastness of world you create for your story doesn’t hold together on the details, but on the unplanned spaces in between them. Don’t listen to hard, but as you type away you just might hear angels wings providing you the creative answers you didn’t know you needed along your quest to compete the story.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity