I have to run down and post the rent check before I forget again and it gets too late, and then I have to do housework that I have been putting off for far too long, and then I will try to answer comments before buckling down to slog through the rest of my writing duties.

Meanwhile, a smattering of more whimsical observations, for leaven:

1. ( Read more... )

I am happy to announce the creation of a new online service for book people - particularly geared towards science fiction and fantasy readers, though fans of other genres will surely find it helpful as well, I am sure ( Read more... )

and unable to concentrate on the things I wanted to be working on, so in perfect logic I worked on something completely different and unrelated. Have some free art, based on a song--
"Artistic (?) Nudity" as they say, under the cut--

( The Cut - context to follow via YouTube )

Two cool things which were linked over at girlgenius_lab recently, and I'm not sure which is cooler:

3-D rendering with (mostly) common household materials, (reminding me of the computer-generated full-size model of the famous statue of Marcus Aurelius which I saw as a ghostly WIP in Rome in the '90s)

and

video of a working reconstruction of the Antikythera ( Read more... )

An enormous thank-you to all donors: even if it weren't as bad an economic time as it is your generosity would be wonderful. In the absence of a social safety net with less hole than mesh, it's overwhelming ( Read more... )

I may end up redoing this and re-posting it, after I have a chance to try it on some more monitors and printers this week, and if it's too dark/too light, but here is a link to a hi-res PDF (400 dpi) of the Rusalka cover, in a more-or-less finalized state as far as the artwork goes. This one is scaled to fit the US paperback trim size, which is ( Read more... )

Here is a case-study attempting to show what I mean about how a bad promotion can drive away your target audience. The subject is a book that I most definitely am the target audience for - I have given multiple copies of it away, I like it so much - but I always tell the recipients to "just ignore the cover, it totally misrepresents it, it makes it ( Read more... )

Pretty much apropos of nothing, in an attempt to cheer myself up after a particularly bad yesterday by sketching for a bit - a piece of C.J. Cherryh fanart-- ( yes, I know this was wrong to commit )

targeting female scientists, no less--

(via Feminist SF)

Oh, and fans of historic children's book illustration, here's a newly-discovered site with some two dozen large scans of Ivan Bilibin's turn of the century graphics. It's Czech (I think) but that shouldn't be a problem.

One of the biggest problems working in prepress is trying to convince customers not to pack a book's worth of type into a business card or a quarter-page - or eighth, or sixteenth-page ad. "More is not always more effective," we try to tell them, but all they can see is X$ divided by Y inches, and dammit they're going to get their money's worth! ( Read more... )