Nose to the Grindstone...

I've been a bit behind on my blogging lately, mostly because I'm editing a novel to enter in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest.  To be honest, it's quite nerve-wracking, especially as I sit here reading pitches from previous winners and wondering if my story even compares!  But the whole point of entering all these contests is to push for excellence in my writing, so I suppose the nail-biting is worth it.

Submission begins January 14th.  Wish me luck!



A girl.  A quest.  An unexpected ending...

     Although Rain didn’t see him at first, one townsperson paid her a great deal of attention.  He had been told to watch for a girl traveling alone.  Well, traveling alone except for a large hunting dog-- but a dog hardly qualified as a useful escort for a young woman walking along these roads, no matter how large he was.  She might as well be traveling alone.  There was a shortage of any girls at all traveling between towns—and none of them would travel alone, not these days.  

     

     This was definitely her. 

     He smiled to himself and raised his voice.  Now there was a reason to say what he had been yelling all morning.  She wouldn’t be able to miss him.

   

      Crowds moved around her neatly, immersed in afternoon shopping and selling.  The general hum of conversation was muted here, prim and restrained, which made the voice rising above it even more noticeable.

     “Evil is here!  It has reached us even in this fair city!  What is its root, you ask?  No one knows where evil comes from, but we all feel it when it strikes!”

     “Crackpot,” Rain muttered to Hunter as they passed the youth standing in the middle of the path.  

“If we continue to ignore it, we’ll never know what’s behind the eyes watching us from the shadows.”

     Rain turned on the spot, mid-step.

     “What did you say?” she asked.

     He looked surprised that someone had actually been listening.

     “I’m sorry,” he said politely, “I wasn’t aware that people usually paid much attention to crackpots.”

     “Only if they’ve got something interesting to say,” Rain replied, undaunted.  She patted Hunter and he sat down beside her.  “What do you mean about the eyes?”

     “You’ve seen them, haven’t you.”

     “What makes you think so?”

     “No one else has listened to me, let alone come up to me to talk about what I’m saying.”

     “Someone pointed them out to me,” Rain explained grimly.  “I left home to get away from whatever was watching me there.”

     “Where are you headed?”

     “To find my father.  He's traveling, and I have to warn him before he starts to head for home.”

The Art of Connections

I used to abhor science--even more than nature abhors a vacuum!  I defined myself as an artist, and at least during my high school years that definition did not include science.

"Creativity" by Nina Boyd

Looking back on that time now, I'm almost sure I hated science so much because it didn't come as naturally to me as the worlds of drawing and writing did.  I probably could have cleaned up if I had been the type to charge classmates for essay-writing services, but balancing equations or memorizing the parts of a cell?  No one could have paid me to do that!

Nowadays, I'm buying the National Geographic magazine, browsing the Hubble Telescope site for fun, and checking out library books by Michio Kaku--and reading them!  I suppose just like my high school interests, my long-dormant appetite for science is still very one-sided...



Well, at least it's there.

Photo: Joe McNally

The photo to the left is a stunning shot of the monitors at NASA's Advanced Supercomputing facility in California--but it's also so much more than that.  The silhouette of an anonymous scientist points at images of the heavens, which are so far away and yet so close.  They literally glow with possibility.  The photograph is truly awe-inspiring, and in National Geographic is aptly captioned "Window on the Universe."  The seemingly endless nebulae that were once unreachable now virtually reside in our backyard.


Space has a way of simultaneously commanding respect and inviting exploration.  Looking at this photograph, how can we not stand in awe of humankind's never-ending quest for knowledge?  How far we came, once we found our way.

The image makes me think of cavemen, and which of them might have been the first to try to illustrate nature.  Which one of them stood in front of a cold, stone wall and reached up to make that first mark, enriching humanity's purpose forever?  Doesn't art, in its ever-expanding nature, provide a platform for exploring new worlds?  A single mark can take us so far, whether in the name of art or in the name of science.  It's all connected.  If you want to draw inspiration, all you need to do is look up.

News from the Writing Front!

I have finally, finally found a website to use for my writing.  This site is great: easy to use, accessible everywhere, and has a very organized look to it.  The best part is the virtual lack of formatting involved in posting stories.  Other sites I've used are intended as print on demand services, and the writer/poster has to do quite a bit to conform documents to various printing requirements. While the end result can turn out shiny and impressive, I haven't found lots of readers willing to buy an expensive product from an unknown writer.  This leaves the writer with a great looking book that may never be opened.

Wattpad.com is really targeted more at online readers.  An uploaded story can be shared as a complete work or posted in serialized form, and can gain readership instantly.  Thank you, SCBWI newsletter!

I'm proud to share a novel on my page that many of my friends are familiar with.  Please visit my wattpad page to read The Lady and the Minstrel, or check out my short stories.

What's next?  Immersing myself in new book cover designs....oh, Christmas, when you're over I won't be leaving my art table for weeks!

Another Thank You...

Another big "Thank You" to the second person to purchase Train.  What a lovely early Christmas present!  There is nothing more encouraging than affirmation that your work is appreciated. 

I, for one, would miss the Post Office...

"The Post Office is really good at what it does, we just don’t need it.  No more than we need a good horse shoe, or small offset printing press (or newspaper, magazine or CRT monitor.)

See card

"The boomer generation will wax nostalgic about the post office.  We’ll weave in “mail” stories with others about days before ubiquitous air conditioning, when all we had was AM radio in the car and 3 stations of black & white television at home.  It will be fun to reminisce.
But our children, and certainly grandchildren, simply won’t care.  Not at all.  And we better remember to keep the stories short, so they can be related in 140 characters or less if we want them saved for posterity!"
~Forbes Magazine, "Why the Postal Service is Going Out of Business"

There's something to be said for receiving Christmas cards in the mail.  During most of the year, my mail box is filled with unwanted ads, even more unwanted bills, and the occasional notice from a vet or dentist office that's designed to look like a personal letter.  While I communicate constantly with friends and family through texting, email, and phone calls, none of this compares to the magic of holiday cards in the mail box once December hits.

See card

I love getting Christmas mail, and I love sending it.  Aside from the fun of actually designing and drawing my Christmas cards, I also look forward to dressing them in envelopes, sealing the flap with a Victorian Santa sticker, and completing the package with a Christmas stamp before I leave it in the care of one of those vanishing blue mail drop boxes--all very old-fashioned, I'm sure, but as much a part of the season to me as hot chocolate and wrapping presents.

See card

So say what you will about the irrelevancy of the post office, Forbes Magazine--I'll continue mailing Christmas greetings out of Sacramento to family and friends, whether they live in Lodi or Los Angeles--and unlike a fast easy text, although instantaneous, a personalized, individually created message that takes two days or more to reach its recipient is a true cup of cheer.

See card

 View all my winter greeting cards

Our Fellow Artists: R. Christopher Vest

"Sunrise on the Marsh 2: Sandhill Cranes" by R. Christopher Vest

Artist R. Christopher Vest creates painted photo montages of all things nature: whether his subject is landscapes, wildlife, or domestic animals, his camera and tablet bring that subject to life and celebrate its natural beauty.


Something that makes Vest's work so eye-catching is the nuanced degrees of realism.  As the viewer looks at a piece, he or she might reflect on how beautiful the lighting is, how perfectly an animal is posed, how delicately a leaf is turned in the wind--and as the viewer continues to look, more and more of the piece's painted aspects emerge, showing just how fine the line can be between a photograph and a painting.

Vest lives on a farm in Colorado, and is working with his partner Cathy to restore the land while also operating a small animal shelter.  Like so many artists, his life outside of his art still seems to inspire his pieces.

"African Starlings" by R Christopher Vest

I asked Vest about his creative process and life as an artist:

Describe your technique of painted photo montage.
 
I coined the phrase 'painted photo montage' to describe my process of building images with both digital painting and photography. It seems there is a bit of bias against this evolving medium from pure photographers and painters. While photo-manipulation is accepted in computer gaming and in the movies, in the fine arts realm we still have some respect to be earned to get beyond the notion of trickery accomplished by the pushing of a button in Photoshop. I like to remind folks that many of these techniques were pioneered around the turn of the century (that would be 1900, not 2000) by a group of photographers called the "photo secessionists" organized by Alfred Stieglitz. The movement strove to bridge the perceived chasm between photography-- which was thought of as merely a documentary medium-- and fine art.

'Ein Sommertag' by Kuehn

Our Fellow Artists: Erin Ashley

"DAY DREAMS" by Erin Ashley

"I begin my work without any preconceived ideas at all what the finished work is going to look like.  I like the idea of each painting being a journey, ending at a beautiful destination.  My paintings are made with lots of color and textures, bringing out the old with the new."
~ erinashleyart.com


Artist Erin Ashley has a hand (or brush) in everything, it seems, with a resume that includes designing a logo for Cartoon Network, selling work to Dream Works Studios, displaying art at a castle in Italy, and having art shown behind the scenes on the Rosie O'Donnell show--to highlight a few items!  Her work is full of texture, boldly proclaiming itself to the viewer with thick lines surrounding layers of mixed media.  Once Ashley's portraits have the viewer's attention, they invite further exploration of all the unseen layers: both on canvas and in meaning.

"Lost Love" by Erin Ashley

Ashley's art is at once contemplative and joyful, celebrating the composition of line and color, form and shadow.  Each stroke appears to have fallen on the canvas exactly where it was meant to fall, but is actually the result of several strokes covered by several more, building towards a final painting that would have as deep a history as the earth's layers, were we able to peer down to the core.





I asked Ashley about her process, both in the studio and in self-promotion:





Where do you draw inspiration? 

I see abstracts in so many things, it could be anything from an old dumpster to the way a shadow forms on an object. I don't really search for inspiration, it just comes to me in a natural kinda raw way; I don't think you can force inspiration, you have to feel it first and believe in what you see and create like you want, never questioning yourself or your talent.
 

"ENVY" by Erin Ashley

How do you promote your work?
I promote my work on a few art sites but mainly my art publishers do a lot of my promoting through selling my art prints in major stores, catalogs, magazines etc..

Describe your workspace.

My workspace is in a 3 car garage.  It's clean at this moment but that's because I worked on it yesterday. Normally it is a disaster! I am a very messy painter, when I get into a piece there is no stopping me and paint goes everywhere, I use the floor sometimes as my palette tray.. you get the idea.

How do you decide when a painting is "finished?"
A painting is finished when I stand back stare at it, leave and then look at it 15 minutes later. If something is bugging me and just doesn't feel right, it's not done.