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: novel
The other evening I received a review of my novel.
It was my second review, and it was the worst so far. It gave the novel a two star rating. As you would expect, I was hurt and disappointed by such a review. Yet, over the next hour I was able to read through and digest everything the reviewer said, and quickly came to the conclusion that it really wasn’t a bad thing.
Yes, I know it’s hard to take when someone tells you they don’t like your work and then goes on tell you everything that you did wrong. It hurts. Yet, it’s a pain like growing pains.
It’s like getting a big red F (okay, D) on a test in school after staying up all night studying for it. It hurts, but its not that they want to give you a bad grade. What the teacher and the reviewer want is to get you to do a good job. They want you to succeed.
The reviewer is looking for a really good read and hopes your book is the one.
Remember that the reviewer took his or her precious time to read the book. The reviewer took more time to write a review and explain what they think is wrong with it, what you can do better. They did it because they really want to like the book.
The next day I wrote the reviewer a thank you letter. Yes, you heard me right, I wrote to thank them for giving me a 2 star review. I told them that it was greatly appreciated, and that I would take what they wrote to heart. I would learn from it and use their review to improve the writing of my next novel.
They wrote back, wishing me success on my next novel.
If that wasn’t enough, only hours after receiving the review, I was informed that another website liked my novel enough to post it on their page to help in the promotion. Then a day later another review was posted, and this one gave me 4 stars.
That is another lesson; everyone has their own likes and dislikes, their own opinions of your work. Don’t take the poor ones too harshly, and don’t get too thrilled about the good ones.
Do your absolute best. Those that like what you do will find you and those that don’t it will help you get better.
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.
Am very proud of my fiancée Shannon Muir as she begins working on her latest novel as part of NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). As she types away at her keyboard, I know several of my online friends are doing the same thing.
I was contemplating starting one as well, but have too much to do this month.
You see, just days ago, I types the two most glorious words to an author, and I typed them twice.
“The End”
I typed it first on a short story, which I submitted to a publisher for consideration as part of an anthology.
Then I typed them again on my first novel.
Two years ago I did participated in NanoWriMo, and completed the novel I worked on that November, but it was far from perfect and had so much in it that there is no way I could truly consider it finished. Even now I know it needs a page one rewrite.
However, about two weeks into that NanoWriMo, I had an idea for a new story. The concept came to me whole, and while not wanting to interrupt the book I was working on; I jotted down a full page of notes of this new tale and put it aside.
But the more I worked on the story for Nano, the more my thoughts lingered to the new one. So when December rolled around, I jumped head first into the new novel.
The first draft of the story flew from my finger over the next few weeks, though I had to admit that the climax stunk. So in the rewrite I discovered other characters that lived with in my novel’s world and had their own parts of the story to tell.
As I asked more questions about the characters and the world they lived in the story expanded and became much better.
With Shannon acting as my editor, I went through several rewrites and the story kept getting better. Much more so than what I had originally jotted down in a flash.
Now the novel is finished and I am currently painting the cover art and formatting it properly to be release as an ebook, by the end of November.
All this resulted from NanoWriMo. My original book sits in a virtual sock drawer, and one day will come back to life.
This has been a great experience for me, and I wish an equally great experience to all my friends that are writing their novels this November.
Keep Writing.
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
Of all the writing I do, why is blogging and journaling the hardest? Don’t have an answer; I promised myself to do more of this but end up only doing it two or three times a year.
But what I can say is that I’m really happy with my writing at the present.
Last November I participated in a novel writing contest called NANOWRIMO or National Novel Writing Month. Along with thousands of other writers, I had to produce a 50,000 word novel in the one month time.
There had been an idea bubbling in the back of my head for sometime, a science fiction story that I though would be perfect. So I wrote and wrote and wrote for those thirty days, and was able to not only complete 50,000 words, but also type The End to the entire story.
I put the novel aside until January when I gave it a read through and the first rewrite to clean things up, but what I discovered was that this story was far larger then I had anticipated. In truth, maybe I knew it would be too massive because I had first conceived the original idea as a TV series. I’m not going to give up on this story, but am going to sit on it for while and see if there is something more focused that can come out of the greater whole to tell.
That said, I am still a successful writer.
About half way through my Nanowrimo project an idea came out of nowhere. An idea completely different from the grand experiment I was in the midst of. I jotted down a “working title” for this new idea, and one line of the concept and put it aside. This new idea sat in the back of my head as I dealt with the first one.
With December and the Nanowrimo novel finish and sitting a virtual drawer, I pulled out the new idea and began to write a second novel completely from scratch.
I immediately began to love the characters that were growing in this novel; they weren’t restrained by the “high concept” of the first novel, and began to do what they wanted. It was fun to watch them and a great ride to experience their lives with them.
However as I approached the 50,000 words on this novel I realize there was no ending as I currently had it. These characters just wanted to go on past the original story.
So I knew what had to happen next. I put it away for a while.
In January and February of this year I did a rewrite on my earlier novel and gave it to a friend to read. The story was still too expansive so I worked on it some more, but knew I was going to have to rip the whole thing apart. Find what the heart of the story really was and fix some major continuity problems. So my science fiction story has once more gone back into the drawer. It’s not dead yet, but needs to sit for a while.
Pulling the second novel out once more I dove right in and pulled apart the ending that wasn’t working and began to ask my characters what they really wanted to tell me. And they told me. I found a whole new part of the story for a new character, and discovered secrets about several other characters I didn’t know anything about. The novel began to finish a whole lost smoother.
After letting my friend read this novel, and dreading similar notes as the first, I went back in for more rewrites and from the start to the finish and back again I fine-tuned it.
At the start of this month (June), and 80,000 words, I declare the novel finished! Because if I didn’t I’d never stop, or ever do anything with it.
Then after weeks of research I send the novel off to publisher. To make it all the more exciting; the postal tracking I used let me know the publisher received my manuscript on my own birthday. So I take that as a blessing.
I don’t know what will happen with this novel, or the one sitting in the drawer, or the new one that began to fall from my fingertips today, but I remain faithful and declare myself a successful writer no matter what.
Will let you know when I hear from the publisher and what happens with the rest of my writing. Maybe this blog will be filled with something worthwhile yet.
Best,
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity