My 2012 Creative Schedule

I'm a busy bee, or at least I INTEND to be a busy bee a lot. Here's to my compulsive listing complex for helping me organize the remainder of my creative year. Seems to be the only way I ever finish anything, when a deadline is looming. But wonder how much I coulda finished if I did some of those creative things INSTEAD of making this chart. Oh, well... :D

Here's part of my creative chart for the rest of the year. I'll be updating it frequently on my website, hopefully with plenty of ahead-schedule notifications and checkmarks of completion, but possibly with sad notes of deadline extensions.

MONTH	NOVELS	MYTH-BABIES	ART	RAGDOLLS
May	Silver Empress Rough Draft	1. Functional Sculpt, BJD 2. MB-Reborn 1-3: Cutesies for sale	1. Begin novel illustrations and cover designs, drafting 2. Illustration Collages, for sale (Finished: 1 of 10)	1. Complete Heritage Collection, for sale 2. All clothes
June	1. Silver Empress Revised Draft, Story Adjustments 2. Full Second Draft, Incorporate Changes	1. Refine MB-BJD sculpt appearance 2. Cast joints, hands and feet in resin 3. Prep major body sections for molding. Test-string for balance.	1. Decide on list of novel illustrations and finalize compositions 2. Draft Silver Empress covers and lettering 3. Sketches for Unatan and Azelan World Profile THS website content	On hold until Heritage Collection is sold and 2nd novel is published

Full Creative Schedule:
http://www.tamarahensonstudios.com/schedule.htm

Cuddles,
Tamara

Volume 2 Cover Progress

I think I've mentioned that my favorite part of self-publishing is total creative control. The Pathos of Rowan Jun was a real challenge. I had to draft, revise, edit, proofread, format, illustrate, make the cover, write blurbs, and everything else for the book, plus make adjustments for a total of three versions (Paperback, Kindle, Smashwords). And that's not even mentioning the marketing process, which I'm still fine-tuning.

I posted progression artwork for The Pathos of Rowan Jun here, so I figured it would be a good idea to do the same for Silver Empress. It's interesting to see how the concept grew from scribble to final concept. (I'll work this final concept into the finished cover. It's nowhere near ready yet!)

The Scribble:

Art informing writing content... Cluttered composition. Changed my mind at this time about releasing a short story collection. Instead, the two background characters will get their own short story book, and Silver and Briescha (foreground) headline volume 2. Smoother design possibilities, smoother story flow.

From the time when Silver Empress was going to be a short story collection.  Not anymore!

The Re-Scribble:

The decision to narrow the focus of the book to this MAJOR plot swivel made my cover characters obvious. Fiddled in Manga Studio with existing sketches and my trusty tablet to produce a new composition. Focused on the faces and worked out some loose angles and things. Very rough design...

Silver, left. Briescha, right. Foreground: Scribble hand  and sword! :)

The Final Drawing and Base Colors:

I realize that I forgot to save a JPEG of just the basic finished black and white drawing. Oh, well. Here's the finished drawing with some base colors, a texture on Briescha's skin, and no background. Silver is all base-gray and solid black at this point. She'll have mirrored skin, God-willing, when I get finished with her. (Still not happy with her mouth shape...) I've overlaid another texture on Briescha's skin to soften the shadows, but there's sooo much left to do...

Final V2 line art with base colors, some shading

As always, the images contained in this blog post are copyright Tamara Henson, Tamara Henson Studios and may not be used without my express written consent.  I welcome any feedback and constructive criticism you can provide on this design, either via comments below or direct messaging on FB or dA. 

Cuddles,

Tamara

Now doing art for my next novel...

Thanks to loads of input from two friends and my mother, I've finalized the release order and composition for my next two books. I originally decided on releasing some short stories while I edit Volume 2. Now, I've decided it's in the best interest of the story to release Volume 2 instead. The book will be titled Silver Empress  and follow the story arc of the Azelan named Briescha and her twin sister... Silver. :D (When a bereft child character insists on naming a newborn, someone should step in. Just sayin'...)

Which brings me to my next digital art challenge:

Julie Bell is the master of making very organic people and things look like shiny silver. With oil paint! And here I am, aspiring to do the same with highly advanced imaging software. I could expound on the fact that Julie and Boris have been making fantasy and sci-fi art since before I was born with amazing success, and that I'm just starting out by comparison. But that would be an excuse, and I don't like those. Regardless, I'm still feeling incredibly inferior. Will have to break out the Julie and Boris book for color reference. But this kind of challenge gets the blood pumping! Also... What kind of idiot creates a character with mirrored skin and then places that title character on the cover??? This kind of idiot. :)

Cuddles,
Tamara

News, and SMASHWORDS!

Things happen... 

1. My paperback order arrived with unforeseen print errors that had nothing to do with my uploaded files. The print company is correcting the issue and reprinting my order now. That means a delay for anyone who pre-ordered the book. I will supplement your pretend-despair with digital hugs. *hugs* They're working as quickly as they can to remedy the situation. Two more weeks, maybe...

2. I won an award for my cover design! This warrants re-mentioning to improve my mood after hauling a big box full of patented Rowan Jun doorstops and table-levelers into my house. (Can't in good conscience sell a defective copy...) 

3. After some tedious re-formatting and uploading, I've made The Pathos of Rowan Jun available on Smashwords! There should be tons of new formats to select beyond just Kindle. The book won't have full distribution to online retailers until it goes through review, but you can view and buy it directly here:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/141710 

(Formats include EPUB, PDF, and tons more...)

Cuddles and even more hugs!

Tamara

I WON AN AWARD!

I won the eBook cover design contest for fiction! How very exciting! The Pathos of Rowan Jun was one of 67 eBook covers submitted to the Fiction category for February, 2012. 


Here's what Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer, posted about my submission:

"Tamara Henson Coffey submitted The Pathos of Rowan Jun designed by Tamara Henson Coffey. “I wanted to express a graphic novel feel for a very action/adventure type of story, so I made a close-up of a fully inked comics-style character and hand lettered the title and author name.”

JF: An astonishingly strong and harmonious blend of art and lettering. The energy in this cover is palpable, it almost leaps off the screen. Getting this kind of internal consistency and focus, here for a “warrior sci-fi” story, is unusual. Great stuff."

See the original post, as well as the stiff competition, here: http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/03/e-book-cover-design-awards-february-2012/

This just raised the art-bar for me! :D Bring on the next book!

Cuddles and "Squeees", 

Tamara

The "Arghs" of Self-Publishing: How-To

At around 4:06 PM, Wednesday, February 15, 2012-ish... I may have successfully finished submission of my paperback novel files for The Pathos of Rowan Jun. I have illustrated, re-illustrated, tweaked and poked and prodded and screamed and kicked and stared stupidly at a screen for weeks. I have watched slow progress bars and eaten junk food and ignored family and friends. Did I mention I screamed? Yeah, I did that. I'm not saying that the following survival tips will keep you from doing the same. But awareness is key!

By comparison, the un-illustrated Kindle version was easy. (When I figure out how to accurately illustrate a Kindle book, I'll let you know! SEE BELOW!) I may have begun a pattern of un-illustrated Kindle version for a low price and illustrated paperback for a regular price.Which is fine by me at this point! Plus, later on, I'll expand distribution to B&N and Smashwords, etc., so that'll be a fun learning curve, too!

UPDATE:
The super-top-secret secret of making images show up in your Kindle book? Save your file as an HTML, Filtered Document, and THEN ZIP TOGETHER THE IMAGES FOLDER AND THE HTML FILE!!! Then upload the zipped folder. I felt so digitally dumb, since it's the obvious thing to do. But that happens...

Here are the general steps of self-publishing I have undertaken so far...

HOW TO SELF PUBLISH:

1. Write book.
2. Edit/Revise/Polish manuscript.
3. Follow formatting instructions for manuscript using Kindle and Createspace walkthroughs and templates.
4. Simultaneously create book cover art using templates, new art, and some fly by the seat of your pants Photoshop learnin'.
5. Co-Simultaneously create art for website, merchandising, and logo/branding THEN order said materials. I have a huge, awesome banner, full-color postcards, and T-shirts featuring the book cover. (www.vistaprint.com = easy and cheap)
6. Purchase ISBNs for your book. Otherwise, Amazon will control your distribution options. (Official gov't contractor for ISBNs: https://www.myidentifiers.com/) Buy 10 or more. It's cheaper that way.
7. Upload files to Kindle's direct publishing website, follow steps, fill out forms and publish. (https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin)
8. Upload files to Createspace, fill out forms, approve files, and submit for review. (https://www.createspace.com/)
9. HAVEN'T DONE THIS YET: Order paperback proof, approve final product and submit for distribution.
10. HAVEN'T DONE THIS YET: Promote and reap the benefits of your hard work! (Eventually, if it reaches your target audience, and if people actually like it...)

THE ARGHS! OF SELF-PUBLISHING:

1. You will notice glaring, silly proofreading mistakes almost as soon as your Kindle book goes live.
2. You will anxiously fix the file, upload again, and wait hours for it to publish and go live again. The version with the errors will remain available for purchase during this time (I'm pretty sure).
3. You may have to repeat!
4. Each time you have to re-upload your Kindle eBook, your ranking will drop dramatically. I think. Maybe. I'm #132,944 Paid in the Kindle Store as of now! (Hey! Give me some time, all right?)
5. As you make corrections, rename (with version number, or something) and backup the different document or art file names. There WILL be different versions... Keeps file confusion at bay.
6. I think Createspace servers update between 3 and 4 am. The upload would constantly stop, restart and then time out. No red-eyed jubilation and sound sleep for me! But when I gave up, slept, then uploaded later in the morning or afternoon, the upload went smoothly, if a little slowly. (My .doc file was over 26MB, though...)
7. I also tried to upload from my jump drive, and that seemed to cause a time-out. Probably something related to the file's location or compression or whatever, I assume. (Though I'm no tech, I did some customer service related to file uploads.) I saved the file to my desktop backup folder and uploaded from there. No timeouts related to location.
8. You will stare stupidly at the progress bar, drawing shapes around it with your in-process-cursor until the huge interior-content file uploads. This will not speed up the progress bar! :D
9. You will have to upload several times at this slow rate of speed to make file corrections.
10. The Interior Reviewer on Createspace is your friend. Y'know... the friend who loves you enough to tell you that shirt makes you look fat. For me, things cropped up like low-image resolution (oops!), formatting (*cringe*) and margin issues (*double cringe*), and active Table of Contents issues. The conversion from Word to PDF that happens in Createspace bumped some of my chapter titles to another page, so the TOC page number and actual page number were wrong. A manual fix and yet another upload later, and the FINAL final file is in review.

There you go! An evaluation that is by no means comprehensive, but represents my personal experience with the process. Let me know if you have any questions, or if you have anything to add to these lists. I'd love to hear from you!

Here is the finished Kindle book as it appears on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Pathos-Rowan-Jun-ebook/dp/B0078L898E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329342078&sr=8-1

Love and Cuddles,

Tamara

NOVEL AND LOGO UPDATES!

I'm in the final stages of publication, but these may be the most crucial. I've completed a lot of graphic work these past two days-- I finished and uploaded both versions of the book covers and redesigned my business logo.

Did I mention a shiny new Tamara Henson Studios logo! There's a graytone version with no shading, a simpler "shiny" one like below with no background, and the full retinal assault of the final logo design as you see it here:

Having completed, uploaded, accurately formatted paperback AND eBook covers is almost worth this headache. Almst... Now, onward to Tylenol, and the world map! At this rate, I hesitate to boldly state that I'm on schedule... (*whispers* But I am...)

Whelp... announcements aren't gettin' this thing finished. Off I go!

Cuddles,

Tamara

NOVEL DEADLINE!

Creative things are dragging along. I'm not sleeping enough, or eating right, or working on my book enough. All three may be related, I realized. Trying to fix that this week with a new deadline: By mid-February, I plan on having volume one revised, polished and uploaded to Kindle, at least. Here's my to-do list to make that happen:

1. Revise and Polish manuscript. (15 chapters left!)
2. Finish, refine cover for both eBook and regular book.
3. Format for Kindle and regular book.
4. Order ISBN and UPC codes.
5. Upload, submit and approve final prints!
6. Repeat for every other platform... (after initial deadline!)
7. Dive into next book and short story edit. (after initial deadline!)

It seems like a lot, but once I'm past number one, it should be mostly technical instead of creative-technical. That means, in my mind, it'll be simply time-consuming, not soul-consuming! :D Operation Get-Finished-So-I-Can-Sleep-Again begins tonight!

Cuddles,
Tamara

NOVEL: In-Progress Cover

In my "let it rest" period before doing a third draft of the novel, I've started the cover art. I still have a lot of work to do on Rowan's portrait before I'm finished, but this is a good in-progress shot! I thank my friends for all the feedback they graciously provided. I'm no digital draftsman, but it's not as bad as it could be. :)

For a sketch-to-current picture progression, and to follow more frequent Tamara Henson Studios updates, see my THS Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tamara-Henson-Studios/151917568249729

Cuddles,

Tamara