Update - Art and Flash Fiction and ROW80

Oh!  The next ROW80 starts Monday.  (ROW80 = A Round of Words in 80 Days. A quarterly, on going writing challenge/dare.) And when I do ROW80, I like to start it a day early, so it ends in time to actually report on the last check-in day.

So I guess that will be today.

The Goals will be my general goals for the year as mentioned on New Years:  Four 10-minute writing sprints minimum every day.  This is a very low goal -- only accounting for about 1000 words -- but I only count work on the "current project."  I have a lot of other projects on my plate, so it's challenging enough.

The current project right now is In Flight -- a romantic suspense novella generated by The Story Game.  (The cover you see here is still in progress, and the pen name is not set in stone yet either.)

Flash Fiction

One of the distractions is that the folks on Kboards are putting together a huge group project involving Flash Fiction.  I'm not going to say much other than that it's getting my muses all stirred up and I'm going to use it to ramp up my short fiction efforts.  I feel like writing a bunch of flash and microfiction stories.

Some time, way off in the future, I may bring in some smaller story games -- more like prompts -- for generating quick short fiction ideas.  I'll probably post a few when I get done with Plot on the Friday Story Game posts.

Cover Work

The other big distraction is that I am getting more cover work, especially from Self-Pub Book Covers. (You can see my portfolio page here.  It doesn't show covers which have already sold, though.)  Nothing like a little cash to inspire you to concentrate on something you find fun.

And although I realize I should be doing more nonfiction covers (non-fiction writers -- especially business writers -- are more likely to want a full paper cover), I keep getting inspired to with these dramatic fiction cover ideas.

The images you see here I just did tonight.  They haven't been approved yet. (Though they might be by the time you see it.)

With these graphic silhouettes and abstract designs, I could probably do them faster in Illustrator (at least some of them -- not the more organic shapes like people), but I enjoy doing these in Photoshop so much I keep putting it off.

And I want to do more drawing, sketching and painting styles, and that I need to do in Photoshop or Painter.

In the meantime....

Coming up on the Blog

Everybody's posting predictions for publishing in 2014.  So I'll post a little something in the Artisan Writer column on Monday -- not so much a prediction as mentioning trends I see and reacting to the predictions of others.  (In particular Joe Konrath and Bob Mayer.)

Wednesday, my ROW80 update

Friday, we'll talk about ACT 1 and seek out the fun and cool stuff that might go there, that could inspire more of the Story Game.

See you in the funny papers.