Notebook

Vocabulary Exercise: Radiolaria

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Today I’m browsing through Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel again – this is an excellent collection of 100 of his plates illustrating everything from marine protozoa to antelopes. I’m looking for inspiration for fantastic marine monsters for a novel – and equally important, vocabulary!

This is one of my favorite vocabulary-building techniques for writing fantasy – find visual reference of something real and generate as many descriptive words and metaphors as possible. I’ve also done this recently with Miller’s Antiques Handbook & Price Guide by Judith Miller for objects ranging from porcelain plates to oak chests-of-drawers and Foraged Flora: A Year of Gathering and Arranging Wild Plants and Flowers by Louesa Roebuck and Sarah Lonsdale for flowers and foliage.

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Out of Season

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Walking home on this post-Christmas pre-New Year’s December day, I saw:

in the bare branches of a shrub –  a tiny scarecrow made of twine and fabric on a slender wooden stick, something you might use as a whimsical accent in a fall container garden

crushed in the road – a neon purple plastic spider ring like children buy for a quarter from the toy vending machines in the department store lobby around Halloween

Why did these creatures choose this day of all days to come creeping out of whatever under-baseboard secret kingdom obsolete holiday decorations dwell in? Perhaps some myopic felt Easter bunny stuck its head out of a hidden burrow, mistook the glitter of Christmas lights for the twinkling of stars, and sounded the all-clear – “Christmas is over! Come out! Come out!”

I felt sorry for the poor things, the way I feel when I see the crocuses pushing up their heads during those rare warm spells in February. “Shhhh, go back to sleep. Winter isn’t over yet.”

The Dragon of Iletupa

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Is it wrong to start designing the cover art before you write the book? I hope not. These are pen-and-ink studies for the cover art of The Dragon of Iletupa, the next novel I’m working on. The first one began as studies of dragon scales and then turned into an odd little street scene with characters taking their colorful balloons for a walk. This in turn inspired a limerick entitled ‘The Droll Encounter.’

The other two managed to come out looking like dragons. Progress!

While taking his balloons for a stroll / Professor Lanyard encountered a troll / A White-Crested Rail and a belligerent snail / Under circumstances unusually droll.
cover art study 2
cover art study 3

Color by Number #3: Wizard

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This is the latest in my series of Excel color-by-number worksheets. This one is aimed at introducing students to some of the ‘magical’ properties of multiplication. Multiplication by 1, 10, 11, 9, and squares are all touched on here. For those who aren’t rabid fans of 80’s Nintendo video games, the character is the Black Mage from the game Final Fantasy, unleashing a QUAKE spell.

Because math is earth-shaking.

My next challenge is to figure out how to let the player choose which spell the Black Mage casts. I sense some heavy IF/THEN in my future . . .

The Butcher’s Bill, Installment One

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One of the principal joys of being an author is killing your characters in imaginative ways. Don’t believe me? Try it.

For your amusement (and my own) I have assembled a table of the various gruesome ways characters have met their deaths in the work I have published so far. I’ll build new tables as I work on other projects, and publish them here from time to time, perhaps with a running total.

You will notice Perilous Jack’s name many times. The Perilous Adventures of Jack the Dragonslayer are Choose Your Own Adventure®-style stories, in which there are numerous ways for him to meet a bitter ending. Since all the action is directed by the reader, the squeamish or guilt-prone are advised to proceed with caution!

Enjoy!

Continue reading “The Butcher’s Bill, Installment One” →

Keeping it all Straight in My Head (Part 4)

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When I tell people how many projects I’m working on, their usual first response is “How do you keep all that straight in your head?”

Simple: I don’t. That’s what technology is for! I use Word, Access, Excel, Visio, OneNote, Notepad, and the Snipping Tool constantly to keep myself organized.

The gallery below has screenshots of a few of my organizational techniques. How about you? How do you keep your writing and artwork organized?

Database Navigation
Access Reports
Embedded Notes
File Titling (Part Two)
Folder Names
Word Counts
Digital Palettes

Keeping it all Straight in My Head (Part 3)

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When I tell people how many projects I’m working on, their usual first response is “How do you keep all that straight in your head?”

Simple: I don’t. That’s what technology is for! I use Word, Access, Excel, Visio, OneNote, Notepad, and the Snipping Tool constantly to keep myself organized.

The gallery below has screenshots of a few of my organizational techniques. How about you? How do you keep your writing and artwork organized?

Timeline of Events
Troubleshooting Notes
Previous Versions
Fonts & Templates
Image References
Flowcharts
Data Entry Forms

Keeping it all Straight in My Head (Part 2)

ChroniclerLeave a comment

When I tell people how many projects I’m working on, their usual first response is “How do you keep all that straight in your head?”

Simple: I don’t. That’s what technology is for! I use Word, Access, Excel, Visio, OneNote, Notepad, and the Snipping Tool constantly to keep myself organized.

The gallery below has screenshots of a few of my organizational techniques. How about you? How do you keep your writing and artwork organized?

Spreadsheets
More Spreadsheets
And More Spreadsheets
Maps (Fancy)
Chapter Synopses
Maps (Simple)
D&D Character Stats