How to publish an illustrated novel

How to publish an illustrated novel — the insanely condensed version.

1. Write the manuscript, then edit. 
2. Sweat. 
3. Design the storyboard. 
4. Sweat. 
5. Research then draw the illustrations. 
6. Sweat. 
7. More story editing. 
8. Redraw things as needed. 
9. Design the page and chapter decorations. 
10. Sweat. 
11. Design the actual book. 
12. Sweat. 
13. More editing. 
14. More drawing adjustments. 
15. Panic while book is being read by Beta readers.
16. Design the book cover. 
17. Get up from the desk and walk around. 
18. Write the book blurb. 
19. More editing. 
20. Paint the book cover. 
21. Consider what’s wrong with the painting then correct it. 
22. Photograph the large illustrations and retouch photos as needed. 
23. Set the book, then create PDFs. 
24. Send it …in my case, to Amazon for review. 
25. Pass out.

 The book is now at Amazon for review. Next step is getting it properly formatted for electronic formats. Here are some screen cap previews to wet your appetite. 

It's coming!!

Fairy Tale for a Modern Woman

Today I was inspired by a blog post in the Hairpin to write my own "Fairy Tale for a Modern Woman." Here it is...

Once upon a time there was a woman who liked to learn. By middle age she was good at many, many things but none of these brought her the satisfaction she craved. The woman realized that a change was in order — her point-of-view was sitting cock-eyed in her head. So she shoved and twisted and man-handled that stubborn point-of-view until it was in a new and brave-faced shape. Then she saw the truth…happiness was inside her, it always had been, she just hadn’t noticed. After that, she lived happily…for the most part anyway.

The End.

For those who don't know me I'm an artist who writes, paints, and illustrates real and no-so-real things. One day, I hope to paint a picture of the ugly Queen and show the world that her heart is really quite lovely, she's just been stuck with an ugly mug.

You can follow me on Facebook at Flying Pony Studios or on Twitter at @saralightwaller.

Mini-Stories

 Misadventure # 315

Ginger juice gives me the ability to Time Slip. The last incident went badly. I now have a penny-farthing stuck in my kitchen. Arrgh!

A Little Bit About Drabbles

I warned you that I might have more to say…and here goes! Today's video is about why I like to write Drabbles  — 100 word short stories. I hope you enjoy it.

Flying Pony Studios Leaps into the Blue!

My life has recently changed in many profound ways. And when I say changed…I mean CHANGED!

My marriage of twenty-four years is over, my house sold…and I'm renting a little farmette for the Winter in the same town in Washington where I've lived for the past three years. This is a temporary place as I’m planning on traveling in the Spring.

Summation of my life right now...BIG, hard changes have rolled through.

I process change best by doing art so…it’s time to make a mark creatively…which means publishing, printing, selling art and letters (stories.)

It’s a tall order, I know. But I have no doubt that I can "get 'er done" like I want to.

As of this moment, I’m opening up my studio blog to more than just the visual arts. From now on I’ll be posting videos, stories, whatever seems appropriate for this new creative journey.

To inaugurate this new route, I’m posting my first speaking video here today (all the others have been slideshows.)  In it, I'm reading my own six-word microfiction on the topic of science fiction. I hope you like the video…and even if you don’t, please be kind…it’s my first.

Cheers to all!

Sara

Desk Repair

I recently inherited a lovely mid-century modern secretary desk from my father. I grew up with this piece and after so many years of use it's now a bit the worse for wear. When it arrived here a few weeks ago I decided to do a few minor repairs on it myself before calling in a professional to address some of the bigger issues like rewiring the inside light and perhaps making a new door for the right hand section.

Today’s project was putting down new vinyl for the writing surface. The old naugahyde had been pulled up at some time in the past. (I think I remember why too, it was covered with blue pen marks.) I thought about re-doing the inside piece too but decided that for now just re-doing the writing area would be enough. Even with mixed colors, it really doesn’t look too bad. ;-)

My desk needed some minor repair

A few lingering pieces of old naugahyde
needed to be removed first.

Repair completed

Daily report: On new printers and other things

My new printer/scanner/etc.

I realize it’s been a few days since my last update here and, as usual, there’s been a lot going on.

A few days ago my HP all-in-one printer died, leaving me without a scanner too. Horrors! After a few hours on-line reading reviews I decided on a new one, the Cannon Pixma MG5420. So far the new printer seems much less persnickety than my old HP, which had been something of a prima donna since day one. Here’s hoping that Pixma fulfills its role well.

I’ve been doing some clean-up editing on Book I for the past few days and over the weekend ran into a rough patch that needed some rewriting. My notes to self about rewrites are questions in the text added in orange italics. Whenever I run across these notes now, I whisper, “uh-oh” and grit my teeth. Fortunately, the chapter I was editing this morning didn’t have any orange marks, so I got a bit of a break there.

I’ve started work on the next book illustration. This one was a bit tricky to lay out as the style of illustration I’m doing has a rather flattened use of perspective and my initial sketches were all showing fairly deep one-point perspective. This was also playing havoc with my composition for the piece. I think I’ve got it all sorted out now and later today I’ll start laying out the final drawing.

P.S. Here's the first scan done with the new printer/scanner. It's a sketch I did the other night at a poetry slam in Everett. I really need to read the printer manual, clearly this thing can do a lot more than my old one. :-P

Watching the poetry slam

Daily report: following your highest passion

I admit to being a “new-agey” type. Why bother mentioning this in my daily report? Because my  forthcoming illustrated novels represent my highest passion and I believe that following your highest passion can lead you to enlightenment. Each day as I work on the book(s) and get them that much closer to being ready to send to press, I also feel that much further along the road of my joy. It's pretty profound if you think about it and also quite fun.

Now back to today's report…I put Book I into proper manuscript formatting today. (This would have taken much less time had I remembered the correct the search and replace commands – oh well!) I really didn’t mind doing it the long way, I just listened to some jazz and got it done. It was very peaceful.

This evening, I put in a good bit of work on the next book illustration. It’s looking quite good at this point. The illustration shows the heroine and her best girlfriend, who’s quite beautiful. While my heroine is boyish and cute her friend is a real “dish.” She’s really looking that way in the drawing too. ;-)

Managing lights and darks in pen and ink drawing is a total feel thing. Everything in the drawing is about contrast. In this piece I've started using an ink brush to add a bit more punch to the darks. I'm pleased the results thus far.

Daily Report

The rewrite on Book II is now finished. I’ve added 24 pages to the manuscript, including several new scenes.

My next task will be to revisit Book I for one more quick spelling and grammar check before moving on to professional editorial corrections.

In the meantime, I’ll be continuing to work on the Book I illustrations.  

Daily Report

I am delighted to report that I have finished the rewrite of Book II's Chapter 28. This was the last major rewrite problem in the book. The rest will just be editing, I think. Not too bad at all. I wasn't sure how I was going to handle this particular change, but it had to be done, the chapter included too many direct references to things copyright-protected by large, nasty corporations. I knew that when I wrote it initially, but all the same it was kind of sad losing the reinterpretation of the "Help Me Obi Wan Kenobi," speech from Star Wars. *shrug* Oh well. Using that speech would have been way too much of a copyright risk for my new book. The new scene is much better anyway, more internally consistent to the world and a better lead in for something to come in Books III and IV.

So there you have it.

I'm planning on doing some inking later on tonight, but for now, a short rest before dinner.

Daily Report

I’ve decided to start using this blog more like a journal and begin reporting smaller and less “impressive” events going on here at the studio.

So here goes – The Daily Report for February 22, 2013.

I'm closing in on the end of the Book II rewrite. Yeah! Just five chapters left to go. That sounds like a lot but as the book has thirty-one chapters and an epilogue, I’m actually pretty close to the end now. I’ve done a massive amount of rewriting in this draft, already having added more than twenty pages to the text, including several entirely new scenes. I have one more of these new scenes left to write for the book, this one coming in the next chapter I’ll be editing, Chapter 28.

The pencil drawing for the next Book I illustration is nearly completed. I expect to start inking it later on today. This will be the first of the illustrations showing “modern things” drawn in this old-timey style. I think it’ll be fun to see modern cars and such drawn as if they were part of a fairy tale book from the early 20^th century. Don't you? ;-)

That’s the report for now. Ciao.

Editing versus Rewriting

I realized this morning that I've been mis-communicating lately about the editing I've been doing in Book II. It's not so much an editing pass that I've up to as much as a full rewrite. Obviously, rewrites are more time-consuming and complex then edits. I've already added about twenty pages to the book, filling in details I saw in my head when I first wrote it but left out for the sake of initial ease of writing flow. Yes, it is a lot of work, but worth it. The book is much better now for the changes. :-)

I'm in the home stretch at this point with just a few chapters left to go. It's been interesting making illustration notes as I progress through the text, trying to remember that changes to the text they well might affect the illustrations too. Logically, I wouldn't even start the pictures until the text was absolutely completed, but I'm not that smart and am working on them concurrently. *lol* Still, all is proceeding rather smoothly, especially considering the size of the project (more than one actually as so far there are two books.)

Well, that was my writing break for the afternoon...now back to Chapter 26. :-)

Kindle and Creativity

Kindle book cover in the style of
the pulp covers of the 1930's.

I am a fiction writer! There I’ve said it. I’m out of the closet at long last. *phew* Now we can move on to other things…

I have been writing and publishing non-fiction for many years. I have been writing fiction for easily as long. But to me, fiction is very personal and written as part of my own process of play. I have been asked many times to share my stories (sometimes for group critique) but I rarely agree to do so. There are some pieces you do just for yourself.

My sister gave me a Kindle for my birthday this year. I had been wanting one to skinny down my book collection (especially future purchases) as I am an avid reader. Once I got it I realized that I could upload my own stories to read whenever and wherever I wanted. *Squeee!* So that first night I couldn’t resist enlisting Matt’s assistance in reformatting my stories into Kindle-friendly documents and uploading them. The first one was one I had recently finished called, “The Witch Queen of Algiers.” It takes place in the world of our web comic “Privateer Princess” and even has cameos by several of the PP cast. I uploaded it and then thought…it doesn’t have a cover!

At that moment I decided to put together covers for the four volumes I have added thus far. All are different genre covers and Matt and I had a great time designing them. We laughed and laughed and laughed! It was great! We have two more to do, another shared story collection and a novel of Matt’s. Great fun!

All of the covers have been created to be best viewed in black and white, as the color Kindle isn't out yet. Good black and white design presents it's own delights, like black and white photography. One of the tricks is to make the viewer see the fullness of the "color" in the black and white contrast alone.

In the style of a "University Press" book cover.

In the genre of humorous history a la
the "Uppity Women" series by Vicky Leon.

The least genre specific cover, I just
thought the design fit the book.

On Amazon I have seen some of the slapdash and poorly designed Kindle covers that are available for some very noble books. That makes me sad. A good book should have a good cover. That’s just right and proper!