I Mist, You Mist, We All Mist for Skull Mist

Friends, have I got some terrifying glowing mist-skulls for you.

It's the second of the two cover designs you voted on! Back in… let me check…

hmmm. January. January? Yes, it was January. :\ (I really thought it was more recent than that.)

I think it turned out well; certainly to specification. I like that the skull works: it's not too obvious but it's not impossible to see, either. I was worried about balancing between "does this look like mist" and "does this look like a skull" and it definitely is doing things that mist does not do, but I'm fine with that, I think it works as dramatic imagery.

I wish it felt as intense as I think it should feel. I suspect it might help if I knocked the background to black (or something) and put the foreground in silhouette. We'll see. I'm still planning to use the first cover (below) more generally, with the intention that I would use this (above) if I really needed something landscape-oriented — I'll extend the left side and move the logotype over there.

[ ^ The first "cover" design, just for comparison. ]

- - - - -

Over the past week or so I've been putting together some material for a side project. Why, you may ask, am I working on a side project?

Well, if I'm honest with you, I'm a liittttttllle worried about my whole entire financial picture for next year, so if I were able to sell a book project, that would be really helpful. It would ease my mind. In a perfect world, "money" is a bad reason to be head out on a creative project, but here we are. And besides, there are certain aspects of this project I've been wanting to try for years and years and years, so it has been genuinely thrilling to finally start working with and on them.

This little dumb-dumb is all I'll show you for now. Next week I'll have more. It's still pretty fresh; it needs some time to settle in and reveal what it's really about.

- - - - -

Elsewhere on the horizon, I have to try to write grant proposals again. I don't like my odds for next year — I've been unlucky with the BC Arts Council the past two years, and I'm not sure I can win a third from the Canada Arts Council. This is the source of my worry about next year's finances. Still, gotta give it a try.

Before that, though, I am going to give DD4/PDAP a complete read-through… right now. I will update this space with my conclusions:

UPDATE: I LOVE IT.

Maybe I am too Canadian to feel comfortable liking The Thing I Made, but I really did. I was so worried and now I'm so relieved. My significant criticisms are that there's too much recapping at the start of Chapters Two and Three, and that I still want more variation in pace. More "breathing room." Parts of Chapters Two and Three were too jam-packed. And I  need to revise Alexandra's vision of England to be more fantastical.

I also found a lot of scenes I really liked, some scenes that I thought might need to be cut ended up holding their own, and I snort-laughed in two spots.

I think Chapter Four is going to join up very nicely, and I am heartened for the chapters thereafter. I should do this more often.

- - - - -

Until next week,
I remain,
a working skull,

TC