We made it through the dark days at the end of the year and at long last it’s 2022. (Or the bright days at the end of the year if you live in the Southern Hemisphere.) We can all hope that we start to put the world on a better footing this year.
I spent some time recently reworking the cover of Knots. I’ve added a cloaked figure and a misty light to better convey the atmosphere of the book. It also suggests that the main character is a loner who struggles to discover who he can trust in the strange world into which he’s stumbled.
Haiku are concise
Science can be elegant
Understanding blooms
Sellenria now has a hardcover edition! Amazon finally added the ability to print hardcover books on demand, and at an affordable price. After some stretching and tweaking to make the cover image fit the slightly larger area, it’s now live. I know it’s not for everyone, since most of the sales are for the Kindle edition, but it’s nice to have the offering for people who really like a hardcover on the bookshelf. All editions have been updated with the new cover design and the revised first chapter. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, now’s a good time.
Got to keep things fresh. In the next week or two, we’ll be re-releasing Sellenria with some improvements. First is a new cover in brighter colors, with larger fonts and a zoomed-in graphic. It will be easier to see in the postage-stamp-sized previews that you often get — especially in the mobile devices that people increasingly use. There’s a preview below, though it’s not live on Amazon yet.
I’ve now watched the first three episodes of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation on Apple TV. I’m starting from a place of having read the original trilogy multiple times over the years but not in the last ten years…
Last week we took a mini vacation. We rented a cabin on a private in the Catskills near Lake George, did some kayaking, sightseeing, and just relaxing. It was good for story ideas in more ways than one.
Following up on my webcomic list last month, here’s another few that I find worth reading.
What is a clockmaker doing in a spaceport? This particular clockmaker is unassuming but innovative, crafting ornate atomic timepieces of exquisite quality. He has become aware of a conspiracy to steal an ancient prototype of a small nuclear reactor of immense power. He is part of a daring plan to prevent the theft of this artifact but the result will disrupt the flow of time on the station and make it impossible for him to ever make reliable clocks here again.
There’s a wealth of independently-produced comics on the web. I’m speaking not of ‘funny pages’ comics, but of illustrated stories with a strong narrative. Many of these are the equal of the commercially-produced ones, although it takes some sifting to find the gems among a large pile of good efforts. Then there’s the ones that start out so promisingly, and then suddenly go silent as the author discovers there’s not enough hours in the day to follow through on everything. Here are a few of my favorite ones that are either consistently updating or are completed.