Author Archives: dianawilderjottings

Crocodile Rockin’ – Two book covers


I have said before that I sometimes do graphic work, usually for myself.  I find it enjoyable, and it allows me to pretend that I am an artist like the rest of my family.  If you check my books, you will see my work, since I design my book covers, myself.  …Although the Crocodile story needs a cover that I can’t design.  I think.  I’ll try it shortly… or maybe I’ll listen to my family: 

The Sea Witch by Frank Frazetta

Keep working on that and you’ll mess it up and you’ll never be be able to fix it!

Ordinarily I’d snort derisively, but Frank Frazetta tells a story about ‘losing’ the mean expression on the face of the central figure in his painting ‘Sea Witch’:

Of course, I could say that since my idea of a good time is not to stand in a gale with my clothes being pulled to pieces by the wind, with a giant iguana sneaking up behind me and a Kraken staring me in the eye between foaming waves, it isn’t a big deal for me.Picture

At any rate, I’ve been working on covers, most recently for a friend whose book, A Kiss For Moet, magical realism and beautifully written, needed a cover  overhaul. 

She approached me, asked in the most flattering way, and of course I agreed.  It was a nice challenge, and I was pleased with the result.

She provided the images, specifically the island in the center.  She had picked the font for the story, and it was all right.    But then, out of the blue, she contacted me. with an offer: a beta-read of anything if I’d fiddle with her cover.

I have a terrible shyness when it comes to beta-reads.  I have a fear that someone will read something of mine and give the beta-reader’s equivalent of ‘PEE-You!’ 


So I took a look at her cover, concluded that it didn’t need much work, and went to town.  It had a semi-magical alligator in it (it’s a nifty story) and I thought he needed a place on the cover.  She had a photograph of the island that is featured in it, and it’s a very pretty shot.  The rest involved adjusting things, tightening the composition, deepening colors, arranging texts, and I was finally finished:

She was flatteringly complimentary, reiterated her offer of a beta-read, and went off to post the cover.

She does write well, and works with Magical Realism, among other genres.  I’d recommend reading it.  The cover isn’t up yet (I just sent it to her this evening), but the book is very good.  You can get a copy on any Amazon store through this link.  She’s also available through various stores including Barnes & Noble, and anywhere else that Smashwords services.


Picture
    I keep a record of my projects, and I uploaded the cover to my website, on the same page as another story (mine) involving a large crocodilian and what happens when he comes to the earth and seeks to return to the sky (if you read it, it’ll make sense).  This one (the crocodilian, I mean) is more gentlemanly than her ‘gator (but that will make sense if you read the story).  Still, there are similarities.

Maybe I’ll send her the Crocodile for a beta-read?

…or maybe not.

It isn’t finished yet, in any event.

*Sigh.  And I must start uploading my other books, all six of them, to the various other bookselling sites.

It should be a busy end of summer…






                                                                   ‘Night, all!




Celebrations, August 14, 2015


Time to celebrate the small things with Lexa Cain‘s blog hop.  Do visit our fearless leader and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits.

So, what am I celebrating? 

Let me see…
It has been a difficult week for various reasons.  It is, thank goodness, drawing to a close, which I can celebrate.  It has made me realize that sometimes the things that you celebrate are things that did not happen. 
I am not stuck in California where the drought is becoming dangerous. 

I am not dealing with a terminally ill loved one.

Not sure why Solzhenitsyn has a litter box in front of him…

I am not forced to consider having my 19 year old cat, BJ, euthanized.  (Although, he is so hale, hearty and healthy, he may be celebrating having me euthanized one of these days since I am willing to swear that he may outlive me.  …though he did give me a scare a few months back.) 
I did not give in to my baser instincts and order a pie-o-gram to be sent to various people who have, this week, made life difficult or annoying for me.  No, BJ and Solzhenitsyn were not contemplated as recipients. 



Houses in Picardy…


I am looking forward to the weekend and the (remote) possibility of winning the lottery, if I can remember to purchase a ticket.  This will enable me to sell my house, purchase one in Picardy, and move to France, where I will be able to visit Paris  (which is always a good idea) when it suits me..  One of the units on the left would be satisfactory to me.  …though there are some palaces there that might be nice but for the issue of heating. 
Always a good idea…




I am looking forward to incorporating the corrections outlined by my scribbles (see last week’s post), and I had a bit of a breakthrough regarding a character arc I had been fiddling with.  This involves actual honest-to-goodness writing and is always worth celebrating.

…and now, having indulged some daydreams, I’m off to read the others.

What are you celebrating?  

Friday Celebrations August 7, 2015


It’s Celebration time with Lexa Cain‘s blog hop celebrating the small things.  The blog itself, started by VikLit, is something to celebrate.  Visit our fearless leader and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Katie @ TheCyborgMom.


 I am celebrating the end of the week, which should have started Tuesday afternoon, when I acquired the niggling notion that the next day was Friday, and each succeeding day I woke up to learn that it was nothing of the sort, and I had more days to go.  At least I did not run mad waiting and the weekend is (almost) finally here.


That is not to say that my place of employment is a nasty place to be.  Far from it.  But there’s something about  Saturday…


I will, once again, pack up and head out, this time to the lovely state of Vermont, traversed by the Green Mountains, a branch of the Appalachians, if I recall correctly.

The Green Mountains of Vermont

I grew up all over the United States, including Hawaii, but Vermont, my maternal grandparents’ home, was a sort of ‘home base’ for me and my siblings.  Grandparents, great-aunts and -uncles are gone now, but the mountains are still there, and I’ll be packing my camera.

I’ll be bringing a manuscript with me, involving  huge crocodile (see upper right of my blog page), that is in First Final Edit mode.  It’s a fable, and enjoyable.  Long enough at ~50,000 words to have complexity, but short enough to be relaxing.  And at the moment I’m doing what I love: taking a red pencil and making corrections and such.  Somehow, digital manuscripts are nice enough, but there’s nothing like  marking up paper.  And I have two colors of markers along with a ball point pen.  What more can you ask for?



Free champagne!  Well, that ain’t gonna happen, but one can dream!


What are you celebrating?  

August 5, 2015 – The Bonehead Blog Hop!


THE BONEHEAD BLOG HOP!


Welcome to the Bonehead Blog Hop!

This is the idea of Cherdo, who tells stories that make you laugh like a fool, the point of which are that she meanders through life being a bonehead, and it never crosses your mind (while you are laughing) that she’s about as boneheaded as a fox.



Your hosts are Cherdo, of Cherdo on the Flipside.
And me (Diana Wilder)

Our motto:
“Confession is good for the soul…it may not
be your soul, but trust me – it’s good for someone’s soul.”

I have spent the past week plus battling a dying computer that has stumped the good folks at my local computer store, crossed swords with Windows 8, which I am convinced is a plot by Microsoft to destroy civilization and drive it mad in the process. I wish I could think of something I did during all this time to show what a dope I have been, with this whole episode, but I honestly can’t. Unless it is that I have been stupid enough to underestimate the tendency of computer-type folks to keep fiddling even after they have come out with a product that is splendid in its simplicity, easy to use, and magnificent in its capability.

…This from the person who has tweaked a book cover for the umpteenth time until my nearest and dearest have inquired, sweetly, whether I am thinking of putting my hero in a dress for the cover and spring a surprise ending on everyone a la Bruce/Caitlin Jenner.

But, truly, I have had my share of truly dopey moments.  Let me tell you of one.

Picture a lovely lake by moonlight (on the border between South Carolina and North Carolina. Lake Gaston:



…Imagine me, tanned and fit, wearing my Camp Counselor getup. Imagine the boy who filled my dreams, cute grin…

We were walking together in the moonlight, talking of things. Of what? Well… things. I don’t remember. He was so cute, and the moonlight was so lovely and I was walking with him. I mean, really, how rare is it that the object of your crush gives you even the time of day?

So, we walked along, the breeze rose and teased my hair (I had long hair back then), I could smell the pines somewhere around there, and Debussy’s Moonlight Sonata was playing in my mind along with ‘Kiss de Girl’ from The Little Mermaid.
Yeah, definitely kissable…

I knew – just knew! – that he would kiss me as we went into the shoreside curve, heading back toward the cabins. A little footbridge was before me, we moved onto it, walking slowly, I looked up at him –

The world went forty directions, the earth came up and smacked me in the stomach, something seized my leg, and my face hit the dirt. I couldn’t move my one leg, and the other, making the motions of running, seemed to be doing it in a vacuum.

I levered myself to a half-raised position, wondering why my right leg was being caught and held while my left leg scrabbled in the dust and scree that covered the bridge. A pair of sneakers in front of me indicated that my escort was still there, though I found myself wondering if he, like Lot’s wife, had been turned into a pillar of salt.

Behold, the Snapping Turtle
In those moments of wondering what had happened and why Doofus wasn’t trying to help me when he weighed, probably, fifty pounds more than me, most of it muscle (between his ears, I was beginning to think) I realized that I had somehow managed to put my leg straight into a hole in the paving and was flat on my stomach, essentially trying to push-up myself to a sitting position with my leg waving in the air over the water (which, I did know, contained the occasional snapping turtle).

The Hunk as he truly was
I managed to extricate myself and get to my feet. Handsome, before me, said, “Why did you do that?”

Have you seen Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, the scene where Belle watches the Beast morph into a handsome prince? Well that happened to me, but in my case the Handsome Hunk morphed into Mortimer Snerd.

I gave him The Look and walked back to my cabin alone.



The Look
I told this story to my sister and she said, “You weren’t a bonehead. He was.”

 “Yeah,” said I, “But I was a dope to have a crush on him.”



Go visit Cherdo’s site and grab the links (I am still trying to figure out my new computer, including how to make the images smaller now) and then look around. You’ll laugh, think, and generally have a great time!

Losing it – Really! (IWSG Post for August 5, 2015)


This is my monthly post for

IWSG started and continued beautifully by Alex and his friends and cohorts. It is a wonderful group, and the insights, reassurance and laughter have been priceless. Why don’t you try reading it?


Destruction…



Little stinker
This post illustrates a very important insecurity that I have about my writing. What if it is (shuddering at the thought) lost, destroyed, sent off into the ether, blown to bits, burned up or just plain fouled up? What then? I’ve been writing for years. I have manuscripts that are older than my family, started when I was still a little stinker of a child. I’ve saved them. Every word.

So… So what if it is all Lost?

The easy thing is to remind myself of why I write in the first place (see this blog post ) That’s why I’m doing it. And, if all I wrote was destroyed, I’d have to soldier on. Moby Dick was lost (pity Melville found it)and he wasn’t destroyed. I know of a lot of manuscripts that were lost, starting with Gibbons’ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, accidentally burned by a friend’s illiterate servant who mistook the written word on paper for paper to be used to light a fire. Gibbons was charming about it, no one was hurt, and the book was rewritten.

Kerflooey!

Well, something like that sort of happened to me. Did you notice how the post looks a tad clumsy? Text and color not as usual? Photos wonky? Not up to my usual mediocre style? Well, there’s a reason for that, and a lesson.

My computer went kerflooey (conked out, blew up, took a long walk off a short pier, committed seppuku) – pick one; the effect is the same.

 



The Geek Squad!
I tried to get it fixed but with no luck. It is gone, unless The Geek Squad (copyrighted name for BestBuy Tech division) is able to repair it.

The computer had everything on its capacious hard drive, and losing it is (or should have been) a real blow. Except that a few safety features were in place: 
  1. I had backed everything up on flash drives. Several of them. Duplicates.
  2. Microsoft gives everyone one Terabyte (how much? never mind. It’s BIG!) of free memory up in the ether. All my work is saved there. And a few other places. 
Someone said you have to ‘keep on keeping on’ (sounds like Yogi Berra), and that’s what I’m doing I’ve seen the worst that can happen (sort of) and I survived it. When my Cloud finishes uploading my storage, I’ll be fine. I survived.  It happened. and I am okay, though frowning at the learning curve.


I guess I’ll need to find something else about which to be insecure. After I accustom myself to the changes on this new system of mine. It should be fun.
 
Dang! Now to find something else to worry about.

Celebrations, July 31, 2015



Today’s post is part of Lexa Cain‘s blog hop celebrating the small things.  Visit our fearless leader and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Katie @ TheCyborgMom.


Today I am celebrating nothing in particular (the best kind of celebration) that ended up as an exercise in creativity (the best kind of exercise, since you aren’t likely to fall and break an ankle as you are if you are doing strenuous physical exercise).


I am doing a beta-read for a friend from a writing board.  She has a collection of short stories with a Sci-Fi bent that will be coming out in the next few months.  I’ll ask her if I can feature it here.  I haven’t done more than skim, since I just got it yesterday, but one of the stories, featuring a cat, got me thinking about designs, cats, night, the stars, and the moon.

I started thinking how I might express a ‘Night Cat’ (not her term), and spent a happy hour or two doing it.

First you need a cat.  There’s this beautiful photo that I’ve loved for a long time:


This is a Maine Coon cat, arguably America’s original longhair.  DNA tends to show that they came over with the Vikings.  They are formidable mousers, very laid back, smart and almost dog-like.  Mine, now dead at a grand age and sorely missed, certainly loved the dog, but tended to thwack him with a paw.
I needed a night sky, which was a fairly easy assignment.  There are plenty of images available.  In my case, I wanted darkness and stars as a nice background.  I went to an old favorite:

I generally like a sky with a very dark blue tint, but in this case, I thought, black would be fine.  So I used it.

The cat would be a shadow against the sky, invisible unless you knew where to look, the embodiment of midnight (very amusing, if you happen to be acquainted with Maine Coons, but still…

I fiddled with things, adjusted shadows and highlights, frowned, tweaked, and came up with an image that isn’t a bad first effort.  I’ll fiddle more later:

I’m off to visit family this weekend.  One of them has learned that she will need a hip replacement operation.  This is not a bad development: the rest of the family has known it for a long time.  Now I must get her to understand that it will ultimately help her.  The fact that she is in my life (she’s my mother) is a very good reason to celebrate.

What are you celebrating?  

A Silent Soliloquy Blog Tour -July 11


I am delighted to be hosting L. G, Keltner for the blog tour for her new release, A Silent Soliloquy. 

 I’d like to start by thanking Diana for allowing me to stop by her blog today.  I’m happy to be here!  While I’m here, I’d like to talk about how I see my main characters, and what I envisioned for the cover and how it came about. 
 

Words can paint a stunning picture, but it’s up to the reader to make that picture come to life through their reading.  The physical description of a character on a page, no matter how detailed, is simply an outline for the reader’s imagination to fill in.  How much they make use of your descriptions in their visualization is entirely up to them, and as a result, every reader is bound to have a different idea about what your characters look like.  That being said, as I was writing, I did have a specific idea of what my characters looked like.  I visualized TIPPIE as being built like River from Firefly, except with natural dirty blond hair.  Of course, she frequently changes her hair color for various missions, so that is not a terribly important aspect of her character.  David is in his mid-twenties and has black hair and green eyes.  I didn’t necessarily want to picture him as any one actor while I was writing him, because I wanted him to look like any guy you might normally see.  When he was in high school, he would have been one of the guys his classmates considered cute, even handsome, but still relatively normal.  Some muscle tone, but not overly done.  You know what I’m talking about.  During the time our story actually takes place, he’s scrawny.  Almost skeletal.  Just looking at him, you can tell he’s had it rough.

Writing descriptions may be something I can somewhat pull off, but I knew from the beginning I couldn’t do the cover art on my own.  I needed someone else to help me in that department.  When I first envisioned the cover, the bloody flower was there.  However, I envisioned it in many locations.  One idea involved it lying crushed on the pavement beside someone’s boot.  Another had it lying in the palm of someone’s hand.  I also envisioned it in the garden where it grows in the story.  The only truly important thing to me, however, was that the flower be there.  To me, it’s an important symbol in the story.  This fact was passed on to the artist, who sent an initial sketch of the flower.  I was in love.  The following week, I had the completed image, and I loved it.  The most important thing I wanted from the cover came through beautifully. 

Title: A Silent Soliloquy

Author: L.G. Keltner
Genre: Science Fiction/Dystopian
Length: 28,000 words
Cover Art: Devross
Release Date: July 6th, 2015
Blurb:
TIPPIE was created to be a weapon.  By all appearances, she’s an ordinary girl of 18, and she uses that to her advantage in her work for The Facility.  What no one sees is that there’s another girl buried deep inside.  She can’t speak or control the movements of the body she inhabits.  As TIPPIE’s silent passenger, she can only observe.  She uses the details she learns from TIPPIE’s work to reconstruct the stories of other people’s lives.  It helps her feel a little more connected to the world she can only watch. 
When TIPPIE’s work leads her to David, a young man with a haunted past and information that The Facility wants, TIPPIE uses her skills to earn his trust.  The silent girl beneath the surface knows that TIPPIE is only going to hurt him, but she can’t help but feel for him.  Those feelings only grow, but she knows all too well that TIPPIE’s work will soon come to an end. 
Bio: 
L.G. Keltner spends most of her time trying to write while also cleaning up after her crazy but wonderful kids and hanging out with her husband.  Her favorite genre of all time is science fiction, and she’s been trying to write novels since the age of six.  Needless to say, those earliest attempts weren’t all that good.  
Her non-writing hobbies include astronomy and playing Trivial Pursuit. 
You can typically find L.G. lurking around her blog, on Twitter, or on her Facebook page.
Purchase Links: 
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Smashwords
Barnes & Noble
Kobo 
You can also add it on Goodreads.
 
 

Celebrating the Small Things – July 10, 2015


Welcome to ‘Celebrating the Small Things’, started by VikLit (bless her!) and now run by Lexa Cain, our fearless leader and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Tonya Drecker at Kidbits.  Go visit them!  

Today I am celebrating surviving a hectic week at work and the weekend that will include an overnight trip to Maine, the land of craggy coasts, charming towns, some nifty cities and some really good food!  My charming old Labrador Retriever, white face and all, is at what he seems to think of as ‘summer camp’ where he gets to snooze, romp, stuff his face, get fussed over, bark, slobber, and generally act like a happy old doofus of a dog.





Where I’ll be

My car is packed and ready, I’ll be topping the gas, and tomorrow morning, early, I’ll be heading north (pronounced ‘nowath’ by the natives).  Why not leave tonight?  Errr…  Well, only a fool heads toward Main and the Mountains on a Friday night in July. 

Lovely place to lunch or dine…

I will be snatching lunch on Saturday at a little place called Azure Cafe in Freeport.  I stumbled upon this my last visit, when I was hungry and asked the local folks for a lunch recommendation.  This was one of them, and I liked the patio.  The food was simple but with a little spark that indicated to me that the chef had a real understanding of taste, flavor and presentation, and had imagination and a sense of humor.  Surprise!  I learned later that it had won quite a few awards.  The food was great and the people were just lovely.  So I will be lunching there tomorrow.

Incidentally, there’s a website called ‘Tripadvisor’ (www.tripadvisor.com) that is by and for travelers who give feedback on their experiences.  I have a few reviews there, and I have not been steered wrong when I looked things up.

Lots to celebrate!  How about you?  

Small Celebrations, June 19, 2015



Today I am ‘Celebrating the Small Things’ in this delightful blog hop, started by VikLit and now run by Lexa Cain, our fearless leader and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Katie @ TheCyborgMom.

Today (Friday, June 19) I am celebrating surviving a hectic week at work, the advent of the weekend, and the feeling of renewal that has come to me in the past few weeks.  It has been a time of hurry, bother, harassment (as in crazy busy), and wondering why on earth I’m doing this nonsense when I would so much rather be somewhere else doing something else.

John Denver was associated too much with ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy’ to be taken seriously by many.  He had a lot of depth to him, and he died too young.  His song “Looking for Space” expresses how I sometimes feel:

What’s the point of puzzling over things?  the lyrics express it well:

              On the road of experience, join in the living day.
              If there’s an answer it’s just that it’s just that way,

That’s good enough for me.  I just keep on keeping on, chipping away at projects, savoring the good moments, and trying to convey the peace.

What are you celebrating?  

That’s Why I’m Here…


I was taking a break from some intense (not writing-related) work, and decided “I’ve got a minute, I’ll check my email.”

So I did.  There was a message with the title:

New Form Entry: Contact Form


The message starts:

You’ve just received a new submission to your Contact Form.

There is a name and an email, which I will not retain after I respond to the contact. (I promised)

And a message:

I have read the 1st two books in the Memphis cycle and enjoyed the story lines. My daughter loves studying about ancient Egypt so will pass along to her.

I looked up with the start of a smile.  How lovely to receive this!  It is funny how these seem to come when they’re needed.  I’m going flat out to finish the crocodile story (see upper right of the screen), have little time to do much else, even posting and commenting.  This is like a sip of cool water.  Or perhaps a glass of red wine.

That’s why I’m here.  That’s what I live for, in part, knowing that someone enjoyed what I offered.

James Taylor says it beautifully. The fortune and fame will probably never find me, but still:

     Fortune and fame’s such a curious game.
     Perfect strangers can call you by name.
     Pay good money to hear fire and rain
        again and again and again.
     Some are like summer coming back every year,
     got your baby got your blanket got your bucket of beer.
     I break into a grin from ear to ear
     and suddenly it’s perfectly clear.
     That’s why I’m here.