WordPlay

…Monday

You’re my only hope!

So here’s the thing. I’m putting these backlist works up for electronic availability, right? Short stories and then we’ll see.

On the one hand, it’s a blast.

On the other hand…Dammit, Jim, I’m a writer, not a marketing department! I’m a moonlighting graphic twiddler, not a design team! And I’m mixing up my nostalgic media references!

The spooky river. Ooooh...

And so I find myself faced with…

Decisions.

So guess what! Yes! I want you to make them FOR me! Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Sometimes I don’t have much choice with cover concepts or ideas–I’m working with stock photos, yes I am, even when I sometimes, er, twiddle with them.   So when I started looking for a Deep River Reckoning cover–the short story from the Reckoners universe just now available on Kindle, and which I’ll actually talk more about on Wednesday–I went hunting a really spooky river.

And hunting. And hunting…

Well, I was really happy with the end result, but now that I’ve had a chance to ponder it–and get a bit of feedback…I wonder if it’s not just plain too…

Serene.

You know. Pretty, but not grabby. Maybe not quite the right balance for a fiction world that’s contemporary, smart-ass, full of ghosties, full of magical action, and yah…has quite the little romance thing going for it, too?

So I played with a couple of other things, and then I realized…wow. I have no idea what to do.

Which cover would make YOU think about “picking up the book”?

AKA, “Hellllp MEEEEEE!”

(PS yes, there are watermarks on the bottom two. These are comp versions of the images for now…)

Ahh, the haunted woman. Evocative!

Scary stuff happening here! Run away! No, pick me up!

posted on Friday

I Want it All.

Yes. ALL of it.

The muse expands in all directions, and she likes it that way.

The writing? Who knows where that comes from. Started early, never stopped. EARLY, I mean. I’d finished my first book at twelve years old and then…onward. Ever onward!

The art? I come by that honestly. My grandmother, endlessly class under all circumstances (too bad I didn’t get those genes, eh?) and endlessly artsie, too. My mom, whose handiwork quietly decorates special corners in my home and in my sister’s. And then me, trying for many years to incorporate it into a career, never quite finding my niche. And since I haven’t had the space to work with my oils for way, way too long now, I also miss it terribly…and hope changing that will be part of this recent move.

The web sites? Blue Hound Visions, with its web design and grooming for authors and dog/horse people, among others?

Well. It’s a combination of the two, really. It gives me a chance to stay in touch with the art when otherwise I might lose contact entirely. The tools are much different; the learning process is ongoing.

It allows me to be anal retentive (er, not that I am or anything) about the code, while finding ways to explore the art. There are the ads (boy do I really get to play with ConneryBeagle’s performance ads, which I do as an excuse to show off the BHV palette to that demographic), and there are the various graphics, and there’s putting it all together in a design that highlights the content without breaking browsers or confusing visitors.

Since winter, I’ve had fun with several new sites–complete redesigns, brand new sites–and I’ve got a couple more on the schedule.

The muse is replete.

Hilari Bell's fresh new look

Lesley Diehl's spankin' new site

Keeper of the Kaleer Web!

Show Beagle Quarterly Magazine -- TOTALLY AWESOME

The Wednesday Post

So…it happens. Dogs go deaf. Some sooner than others. So it is with Jean-Luc Picardigan, nearly twelve years old but otherwise robust.

Well…if you don’t count the brain injury.

But it turns out that the brain injury might just matter.

My first gone-deaf dog was Strider the Wonderhound, dog of my heart. (You know my Blue Hound Visions web service? Yes, that dog.) Gone twelve years now, but no less beloved–loyal, smart, protective. And who knows how long he’d been going deaf before I realized he’d gone deaf.

Why? Because he functioned so well, I never had reason to question whether he could hear or not. He used his young Cardigan companion (Kacey, if anyone’s counting) as a Hearing Ear dog; he was attuned to my body language and my activity, and always responsive to both.

Things got even easier once I (duh) finally clued in. Within weeks he was responding to vibrations and hand signals. Soon enough he even did some contextual lip reading–there were still words I had to spell!

My wonderhound.

Enter Jean-Luc Picardigan, these years later. Autistic since a birthing injuring, heavily rehabbed, highly dependent on specialized daily management. Completely “tone deaf” to other doggy body language–and to human gestures.

Let’s just say there’s no question about Jean-Luc’s hearing loss.

Absent aural cues, he loses us in the house–and doesn’t have the tools to find us, or to leave where he is to find a new where he might want to be. He simply is where he is until he gets enough of a visual cue to act on.

(Not that he doesn’t still have his playful moments–when all his contexts are in place, he grabs up his favorite toy and parades it around with pride. And boy, let one of the other dogs dash by and his movement-triggered herding responses go off full-swing! Atavistic, he is.)

On a hard day, he wears a trailing leash–it makes things so much easier for him when he’s struggling to understand. I pick up the leash and his body relaxes. Oh, he says. I can do THIS.

Study in contrasts: Strider the lip-reading Wonderhound verus Jean-Luc Picardigan, lost in his own life.

Though really, he’s always been a wonder in his own way. Cheysuli Jean-Luc Picardigan OJP NAP OJC NAC CGC started his agility training as therapy–awkward, spatially challenged, and easy to overwhelm–and was never expected to enter an agility ring, never mind earn Open-level titles and his CGC (canine good citizen). He even won a startling handful of red and blue placement ribbons along the way–he not only ran agility, he ended up loving it and doing it well! So I try not to count him out of the game…and I guess we’ll see how it goes!