So I've been poking in various Scrivener projects lately, one being where I keep the AMaC short stories—finished, in progress, and planned. Which reminded me that I never did update the covers for "Driven by the Deadline" and "Associated Accidents", and I had a sequel to the latter that was around 2/3 written. I realized how the climactic scene was going to play out (…politics? really?…) and jotted a note…
Well, yesterday morning, I thought, Yanno, let's just open this and see how far I get into drafting it.
By lunchtime that day, I had the rest of the story drafted—that's over 1.4k words—new covers for the aforementioned stories, and cover for the new story, which was drafted and titled, waiting for some time to pass for the edit read-through. (And did I mention that the cover-making included finding the images for two of the three, which came out of royalty-free stock images I've downloaded to my computer. Here's to hoping that I don't discover any oddities in the licensure once Sxc.hu comes out from maintenance, because I don't want to have to find new images…)
Because, see, I really like what I came up with for the new story. I found an image that, well, fit okay. But it would work better with some gang paint on one of the walls… so I painted it. And used the perspective tool (probably incorrectly). Then put it all through the "painting" filter in the G'MIC plug-in in Gimp, which ultimately makes it all look as if it belongs together, to my admittedly amateur eye.
*If anyone's noticing that I'm a bit…hyper, I'm typing this up Wednesday evening. I had a chocolate hazelnut smoothie this evening (my first attempt to sweeten something with dates) and taste-tested some sugar-containing chia pudding (which I'm attempting to make with some white chia flour rather than the seeds I usually use).
Anyway, this† is the kind of thing that makes more sense if you actually, you know, see what I'm talking about. (†The story cover, not the smoothie or pudding. Though pictures would be nice for those foods, too, when I share my recipes. Someday, I'll have a camera…)
So… Here's the image I started with (which will be updated with due credit to the photographer once the stock site's back up and I can actually find out who the photographer is):
[update 8/9/13: The photographer is Roger Kirby (theswedish) on Sxc.hu.]
And here's what I produced from it:
See what I added? ^_^ *does happy dance*
Is it perfect? No. But it's progress. I may never be a professional cover designer, but making my own is educational and relaxing. (For me, I admit; maybe not for you.)
It's a lot better than my first cover for "Driven by the Deadline" or "Romeo & Jillian", that's for sure.
Another fun happening yesterday: my order came in from nuts.com, a website my mother and I found that sells all sorts of flours, nuts, (dried) fruit, candies…by the pound. At better prices than you find a lot of places. (Things like chia are still pricy, but it's more like $12 per pound rather than $30 per pound.)
We've each placed our first orders—she got several gluten-free flours, while I got a bunch of dried fruit and nuts for smoothies. All their products have ingredient lists and "made in a facility with" warnings, and items are clearly marked when gluten-free (and when kosher and I think there's something else that gets marked, but I don't remember now). And a cool thing? My mother and I each got a sample bag of something else with our orders, and the sample bag? Was of something gluten-free, so we're assuming they actually paid attention and noticed that everything we ordered came from the site "gluten-free" section.
I made coconut milk for the first time, (I made the aforementioned chocolate-hazelnut smoothie), and I soaked some hazelnuts in readiness to make some hazelnut milk. (And I might have all the ingredients I need to make a protein bar recipe I've been wanting to try for months… I have to double-check how much hemp hearts I have. I probably need more of those, but I get those from Mountain Rose Herb.)
Have you done anything fun lately that you'd like to share?
—Misti
