Inspiration - The London Aquarium.

Sea anemones. Just love the colours on these!

My youngest turned four on Saturday, so the whole family took a trip to the London Aquarium as his treat (although I can't deny we were all excited about it). Frankly I dislike London - it's too loud, too crowded and too expensive. But the children enjoyed the train journey up (apart from a long wait for the right Circle line train) and we arrived just before the aquarium opened to hear Big Ben strike ten o'clock (which impressed them). We've been to a couple of Sealife centres before and I didn't expect a huge amount different at the aquarium, but somehow we spent just over two hours inside.

The Houses of Parliment.

The London Eye

Most of my friends know I'm a fan of the weird and the wonderful, and this was too good an opportunity to miss for finding some odd inspiration among the tanks of rays, crabs and guppies (of all things! I can see those in my local pet shop any time). The first surprise when we went in was a glass floor looking down into a huge tank below. Sadly there isn't space to stop and enjoy the view as it's a narrow corridor and the only way in, which was a bit of a disappointment.

Brittlestars

I wish I'd recorded some video of these - their waving arms seemed rather sinister. However I DID record the pretty anemones doing their dance, and some baby fish wriggling inside their egg sacs - did I mention I'm a bit weird? :)

 

The biggest hit for my children was the shark tank and the big, open pool full of rays, flat fish and a mixture of other fish.

Ray tank.

Easter Island shark tank

We got to touch a starfish - for those interested, it feels rather soft and squidgy but the skin itself is kind of scaly/spiny. The underside with all the feet - well, I couldn't feel anything of the feet but the edges of the arms feel quite rough. Youngest got to hold a crab - which was very well behaved and didn't nip - but after weekends spent crabbing at Mersea he wasn't that impressed!

replica(?)whale bones

I do not have a thing for skeletons. Seriously! Although I'm finding it hard to deny considering the number I'm posting in various places. However, having a scifi story out called The Bones of the Sea, it seemed only fitting that I post this, from the largest tank at the aquarium.

Turtle

Cleaner shrimps

Bat stars. Seriously creepy-looking!

I could post pictures from the trip all day long, but that might turn this into a rather long post. So I'll leave you with one final video from the aquarium of Upside Down Jellyfish - yes, they really are called that and it isn't just a description. Enjoy!

Weird Wednesday #1

A few days ago, my good friend posted this to my Facebook profile, with the note 'this made me think of you. It is the you-est you that ever youed. And you will undoubtedly think it's devastatingly beautiful.'

That told me two things. One, that my friend knows me extremely well. Two, that I am indeed a fan of the weird and wonderful - not a bad thing for a writer. The weird and the wonderful are great inspiration, although the mundane works just as well for me as often.
I have no idea what this is - a type of praying mantis at a guess. But it reminded me of a post on Google+ (yes, I'm there as well) also posted by an author as a piece of inspiration.






So, over the next couple of weeks I'm going to post some of the weird and wonderful things that I've come across, and maybe you'll find some inspiration in them too. Or maybe, you'll just realize what a total weirdo I am and never come back. :-P

I have a thing for Weird Plants ...

... or so it seems. A friend of mine has commented on various plant photos that I've posted and told me that they creep her out. I don't know whether it's a perception on her part or a twist in my psyche. In my defence, I will say that my mother was a professional florist and obsessive gardener, so maybe it's a part of my heritage. Rather than being disturbed by it, said friend's astute comments have led to story inspirations, so I thought I'd share some of the pictures with you. Then maybe you can tell me whether I have a freaky thing for plants!

 Bergamot

Passionflower

Aquilegia

Cone Flower

Clematis

This last one inspired one of my favourite pieces, and an unusually gruesome one for me.

As he stared down at her, Jinx gazed wide-eyed over his shoulder with bemusement written over her face as something velvet-soft draped itself across his shoulders in a gentle caress. Irritated, his focus on his captive, Keir shrugged it off, but soon more feather-light touches stroked over his torso. He sat up abruptly, releasing Jinx's arms and glancing behind him. Long, langorous petals petals like wide ribbons of deep rose satin with delicately feathered edges were drifting over him in slow, graceful sweeps. One wrapped itself lovingly around his injured arm and he flinched at the sudden sting as though acid had been dripped into his wounds, a hissed breath of pain forced from him at the shock of it as he tried to jerk his arm free. The petal merely coiled tighter with unexpected steel in its grip, prickling wherever it touched in sharp contrast to the initial softness of its caresses. More had entwined themselves unnoticed around his legs and waist in silken coils that had an impossible strength, and burned as he tugged against them.

So am I weird? Or did you find some inspiration among the petals too? :-P

Self-publishing - The Mechanics #2

Last time I shared my experience with two POD companies and the options they offered on cover design and formatting. This time I'm going to look at the artwork and software I've used to create covers.

There are numerous companies that sell images and photographs - type it into a search engine and you'll find them. The one I've used is dreamstime.com although I've also been looking at fotolia.com recently. Again, dreamstime was recommended to me by a friend, and has been an invaluable source of images and inspiration for me. They even have a section of free images for use on blogs, and for those of us who don't have the budget for commissioned artwork, they are a reasonable alternative. Virtually every image on this blog is from there, aside from the odd personal photograph or those donated by friends.

But a great image isn't necessarily enough. I originally bought two beautiful images to use as potential book covers for a good price with the right to print 500,000 copies (maybe a bit ambitious in terms of actual books, but I can aim high! And there's always bookmarks, business cards etc.)




Both of these images work well as book covers in their own right. But I wanted the ability to do something more, something more creative or ambitious. As a teenager I would often draw images to accompany my stories, but my artistic abilities haven't grown with me, and I find it frustrating that I can't visually display my stories in the same way that I sketch them in literary terms.



Which meant finding software that could do the job. And it had to be free.



So a friend suggested GIMP. It's free to download, but I found it very hard to use. I made one piece of artwork and created the heading for my blog, but that was as far as I could go.





Then I was given a link for a free software trial for creating book covers. Click the link to see my review of Book Cover Pro, but the upshot was that I struggled with it; I found it a little limited and complicated without achieving the results that I was hoping for. Perhaps if I'd been able to devote more time to it during the trial I might have done better, but you can try it out for yourself here.





With the trial expired and the software expensive to buy, I was back to square one.





Then, on a whim, I posted a request via Twitter. I had two responses. One suggested GIMP, which I'd already tried, and the other suggested Aviary Phoenix.Whereas GIMP is a free download, Aviary is based on the website. On first investigation it looked horribly complicated, more so than GIMP, but it did provide some very helpful step-by-step tutorials. So I gave it a try - and failed abysmally. Again, my technical abilities let me down. Even though I followed the steps and re-read carefully, what came up on my screen was nothing like the example given, and I gave up. A more technically-minded friend offered to go back to GIMP and refresh her memory on its use and then take me through it, so I kept my fingers crossed.

But I'm stubborn. Oh, very much so! Being defeated by a piece of software wasn't something I was happy about, so I went back and tried Aviary again. And discovered that on my original attempt I'd messed up the very first step which meant that any others would fail no matter how closely I obeyed the instructions of the tutorial. D'oh!

So now, I can turn these:













into this:













And then with a little work on blurb.com, into this:

OK, it might not look like the cover of the next blockbuster, but the difference is that 'I' made it myself. :)

The down side is that all of this takes time and experimentation, and a little cash to buy the images. However, for someone on a small budget with a few hours to spend on it, it's a more realistic option than commissioning artwork where, even with a stunning and capable artist, their final effort may still not be the image you had in your head.

Have you tried designing your own covers? What did you use and how happy were you with the results? Or did you commission something? I'd love to know, but I hope some of this helps you. :)

Creativity in Colour

First I have to confess that this post is a little bit of a cheat because this was a task set by our tutor to help start off the creative process in our writing. I wanted to share it though, because it was a lot of fun to do, and I can see it as a useful tool when inspiration doesn't come easily.





The task - choose a colour, either one you love or that you never wear. Choose a piece of music that matches the colour in your mind. Sit in isolation with your eyes closed and the music playing. Picture the colour in your head. Then free write, without correcting, without grammar, whatever comes into your mind, as fast as you can.


I choose green - emerald green to be specific, though I don't think the exact shade was required! And my piece of music was the theme from Harry's Game by Clannad - the reasoning behind that may become apparent later on.



I felt a little silly sitting there and thinking green thoughts, but then I picked up my pen and scribbled furiously for the requisite minimum of five minutes, and a little beyond. This is what I came up with.

Emerald green makes me think of velvet, soft and warm. The medieval tunic I bought with a long pixie hood, laced up the front with black cord and through little brass rings, like something out of a book by Tolkien - elves and magic.

Walking through deep, dark pine woods. Needles all glossy green, the dead brown ones crunching slightly under my feet. Soothing silence and the smell of resin. The smell of damp. Black soil beneath the needles as I dig them up with the toe of my boot.

Thick grass shaking in the wind on the hillside in Ireland. (Here the association to Clannad leapt to mind - Irish!) A long green slope down the the cliff's edge before it falls into the sea. Even the water looks green - beautiful blue-grey-green under a cloudy sky.

A circle of stones on the Isle of Arran.Three huge stark slabs of slate or something, 10, 12 feet tall with long brown streaks down them like rust. Grassy slopes leading up to them and then down the other side, open moorland.

Tiny emeralds in a ring my mum wore, one of them missing, replaced by another paler stone.

Pistachio icecream.

Lime cordial, so hard to find now. Am I the only person in the world who drinks it?

Peppermint cordial. Tastes like toothpaste, ug! But looks so pretty in the bottle, clear emerald green.

The task itself is not that far from the methods I use when I get stuck - music and images - but having it set as a specific exercise with rules seemed to work far better, and is something that I will use again. I also found myself writing the outline to my fourth book shortly afterwards - although there's nothing 'green' about it, clearly my muse had found the task inspiring!

So do you have any special methods for inspiring your muse? Would you share them, or are they your secret? :)

For those interested, I'm currently studying 'A174 - Start Writing Fiction' with the Open University. Please click on the links to find out more.

Divine Inspiration

Where do you find your inspiration? Is it already boiling away inside your head? A bolt from the blue? Or a slow and steady brewing as you absorb things from your surroundings?

This is another topic that has come up in my student cafe. Many sources were quoted. Films, books, TV. Radio, conversation, people met and known. Music. Art. Dreams and nightmares. Nature and artifice. Life itself. All perfect ingredients to add to the recipe.

But what about when the inspiration fails? Then what?








Sometimes I'll sit and continue to write, even if it's all gibberish flowing onto the screen or scrawling across the page. Sometimes I know what needs to be written, but simply don't have the enthusiasm to pursue it. Sometimes I have to do it regardless, to force the words to come.





If all else fails, I have three key things that can tempt the inspiration back. A long walk or drive. Listening to music. Searching through images.


A friend recommended Dreamstime to me when I was hunting for a possible book cover as an option for self-publishing. It's a site that specialises in images - photographic and digitally created. (Again, there are other sites that offer the same service and I'm not endorsing this one in any way - it's simply the one I like to use.) Not only has it provided me with a couple of superb images to use for my book, but several others for my blog and Facebook page.




Usually I'm looking for an image that ties in with something already written. Sometimes I'll just type in a random word and then flick through the images until something grabs my attention. Something I like. Something I can use. A few of my favourite pieces have come from a single image that has inspired a train of thought and led me onwards. And the best thing is, even if I don't find something that fires my muse today, who knows what might be on there tomorrow?



So where do you find your inspiration? Do you actively seek it or wait for it to come? Hopefully you might even have found a smidgeon of inspiration here..... :-)

Killer Cover?

Do covers sell books? I'd be lying if I said I've never picked up a book simply because the cover caught my eye. Beautiful and intriguing images tend to do that for me. Whether the blurb on the back and the first page then hold my attention after I've picked it up is the next factor in deciding if I take it to the till and actually pay for it or replace it with a regretful sigh.

I'm not an expert on marketing, but it seemed to me that you need something to catch a potential reader's attention in the first place. Although I tend to go by recommendations from friends or review sites on-line, I'll still wander round my local book shop (given the chance!) and pick something up for the sake of the cover. So when I started considering the possibility of self-publishing, a major goal in my mind was a killer cover. Or, at the very least, an eye-catching image for the cover.

A friend recommended dreamstime to me, and I had a lot of fun looking around on there. If you're interested, there are also free images available although most aren't expensive depending on the size - I use a lot on the blog and occasionally as inspiration for my writing. I found my 'killer' image. It wasn't a true depiction of my main character, not the way I saw him in my mind, but there were elements of the image that were just perfect - the colour, the expression of innocence and a kind of yearning. I bought the rights to use the image 50,000 times in print, with the option for more (yeah, ok, 50,000 copies sold may be wishful thinking, but there's always book marks, postcards etc to consider - I can dream!) I had a blog, website and a Facebook page that I could use it on too.

The same friend directed me to lulu. It's a printing company where you can upload, edit and publish your own book, from as little as one copy for your personal satisfaction(and believe me, there are a bucket-load of good vibes at holding one in your hand!) to self-publishing on a grand scale. I'm not recommending it as such - go take a look for yourself if you're interested. I don't know how they rate against similar companies, but they're the one I've used and am currently sticking with. You can even get an ISBN from them, and having tried to get one of those for myself, I know it isn't the easiest thing in the world to acquire!

But I had one problem with lulu. I wasn't overly thrilled by the way my book covers turned out, and I'd tried a few variations as and when my book has been revised. So when a friend posted a link for some new software that reckons you can produce a professional cover for yourself in an hour, I jumped at the chance. The trial version is viable for 5 days but you can't save a PDF version - this means you can't just use it to create your one perfect cover that you need now and use it(yeah, that's what I had planned - d'oh!) But I thought I'd share my opinion of the trial with you, in case you're looking to design that perfect book cover.



The first image is the current version I have on lulu. I'm sorry it hasn't come out any bigger - I don't know how to adjust it (warning - techno-idiot on the loose!). The image is pixellated despite being a high-resolution one. The title and author's name can't be superimposed over the image - you have to have it on a blank border above the image. I've only gotten away with it on mine because the black hair of the image merges into the black border above. I also can't get the text as large as I would like it, especially on the spine, and I tend to get a lot of error messages when I'm trying to refine the cover - lulu cover design and I do not have a good working relationship!


The second image is my attempt with the trial software, and even as I've started this post I've realised that I've left off key elements like a back of book blurb and the lettering on the spine! I had a bit of trouble downloading; simply because I'm not especially computer literate, not because of the software itself. The start up is a little daunting but (big tip!) click 'help' and download the guide - it's written very clearly and takes you through it all. You need to have an idea of your book size - this is where having used lulu gave me an advantage and a copy of my own book to hand! Uploading your book on lulu is free so you can use that to get an idea of your final book size.



I can't say that I found this especially easy to use, but I did only spend 90 minutes playing with it - sadly the real world requires my attention! I found it annoying that, in order to see the full cover, I couldn't have the tool box up on the screen at the same time and had to keep swapping from one to the other. I wanted my text to overlay the image which I managed to do eventually, but more by luck than judgement - I'm still not sure how that part of it works. The text and fonts are limited to those already set on your computer. When you create a new element, like a text box for example, these appear incredibly small and up in the far left hand corner of your cover. This meant that at first I couldn't even find the damn things! Moving, resizing and placing each element is also difficult - for some reason, only one corner of the box out of the four can be used to adjust the size of the text box, which then requires you to change its position to expand it again! Even with a high resolution image, my chosen picture was still pixillated so I used another for the experiment, but even on that one the quality still looks a little poor. Not having the full version, I can't print off a PDF to see it 'proper' size, something I can do on lulu.

However, on the plus side..... I loved the fact that I was able to wrap the whole image around the book and superimpose the text on it, both things I can't do on lulu. The guide helpfully has a list of useful websites for images, free fonts and their own cover design services. I think a bit more time spent familiarizing myself with all the controls and settings would mean I could produce a better quality book cover than I currently have available. I'd probably have to pester my more technically-minded friends for help though!

Whether that justifies the price of the software, I can't tell you. I would strongly recommend downloading the trial version for yourself and giving it a go. You can find it here.

And please let me know how it goes. I'm going to play with it some more and try to put a better version of my 'new' cover on the blog at the end of the trial. But I'd love to see yours!