Playing with Book Covers in Photoshop

So a few days ago, I was the zombie from work. You know…the “leave for work at 4:30 on Sunday, come home to sleep, wake up, slop food into dogs bowls, go back to work, come home at 7:30 Monday” zombie. And I decided to spend the hazy, food-sleep-water-deprived state staring at my computer and playing with Photoshop and my cell phone camera.

The results? Well, I’m sort of tickled by them, but I need to research my font choices. Odds are, I’ll have to make new selections along similar lines so I don’t step on any copyright toes, but what the hey. And I need to take a better picture of the flower. Need better resolution.  And The King’s Mutt isn’t changed from the old one, as the lineup was originally a comparison to show progress. And I need to rob TKM files off of my old hard drive so I can work on the typography. But anywho. These work for now as concept ideas. Thoughts?

Also, I’m debating if I want to do Swift Magic or Into the Fog as a NaNoWriMo novella. I really want to get Swift Magic done, so I’m leaning towards that. I’ve got a scattershot of ideas, and it’s hard to glump them in a working book. Into the Fog is just for kicks.

So, till later!

Your Dearest Nicolette.

The Stages of Change

I’ve always done my research off the hip and based on gut instinct about what happens and why. But, I’ve taken into account the variations individual characters use to react. An introvert and an extrovert react to the same stimuli differently, both during and after the event has occurred. However, this Amelia Baker has me wondering what the clinical expectations are for an average person who undergoes a real shock.

It ought to be the same process that would happen for a simple mishap, correct? Only the feelings and thoughts are more profound and cause more worry? So, since she loves baking so much, let’s give her a classic mini-baking fail: the muffin tops collapse in the oven. The reaction? Heartache and butt-kicking. Wonder what went wrong. Thinking of possible reasons, and sifting through them until she finds the most likely cause. She opened the oven too soon, and the heat escaped the muffins and the tops collapsed. That was dumb. They should have been done. Maybe the oven wasn’t quite hot enough. Maybe her timer was a little too fast. Maybe she should consider adding more leavening to the batter next time. Meanwhile, the muffins are edible, but not sell-able, because who would want to buy an imperfect muffin? She would try again, but make changes and see what the result is. And hope she doesn’t waste too many ingredients. Maybe she can give the misshapen muffins to someone who doesn’t care, like the neighbor dog, or the raggedy children…

So, that’s my pre-research thoughts. Let’s google around a few times and see how or if this is accurate.

….

Change has several barriers to it, and first and foremost is the desire to change. In my example, the desire was inherent, but what if she didn’t want to change how she made muffins, and someone complains? Next in line is barriers to change. These can be anything from attitude (desire) to physical handicaps (what if her oven simply won’t get hot enough?). Now, this one is more for behavioral changes than simple problems, but can still apply if she’s been making lots of flat-topped muffins: Relapse.

The very first step in changing (since I plan on making Amelia Baker more open-minded through the course of the story) is getting her to realize that her way isn’t cutting it anymore. In the muffin example, she sees her problem quickly and sets about to remedy it. But, if she were a more ignorant baker, she might not have any scruples about subpar products until someone–or several someones–make enough of a fuss that she realizes her error. Or maybe she sees that a more successful baker has perfect muffin tops. Maybe at first she is in denial, or just doesn’t realize the problem.

Now, since this is Amelia Baker and she is just-so about her baking, she is far from in denial and sails right on to the next step: Contemplation.

During contemplation, the costs of change are laid out. The benefits of change are also thrown into the equation. She will have to invest time and more ingredients to fix a minor problem. It might take several attempts, and for all she knows she might not be able to make the fix herself and might need to hire someone to work on her oven. Is that worth a problem that is only a little unsightly?

To be fair, Miss Baker hardly gives this any notice because any cost is worth baking perfection. But, if it is something more like buying a new dress? That would cause much contemplation for her. Is her current one in tatters? Will a new one cause men to notice her? Cause them to make advances, and if so, can she resist? But she must resist, if she is to keep her freedom, because marriage is a shackle and she’ll have none of it. No, she won’t buy a dress. Except, she really kind of needs one…She decides, in this case, she will buy the cheapest, most unflattering thing she can find. Solution decided.

 

This is an example of one small change that will–or could–lead to much larger changes in the future. Once she dons her new dress, she goes about and asks for opinions, or simply she notices people’s behavior towards her. This is clinically thought of as research. The baking example is perfect for research. She tries a few things, makes notes of what does and does not work better, and does what works well.

This segues into action. Perhaps she decides she will always make this tweak that allows her muffins have the appealing curve at the top. Perhaps she decides that her new dress looks sort of funny with the cap that holds her hair in, and decides that since no one has harassed her about her new dress, she can let her hair out of the cap. Maybe make it into a bun so it isn’t that  noticeable, but still looks better (another small change). Her behavior (looking better than a street bum) prompts positive reinforcement from her friends and encourages the continuation of current behavior, and the idea that she can experiment with new boots, too.

The problem is maintaining this new behavior. What if the cost of heating the oven so high makes her second-think the perfect muffins? (It wouldn’t, but it’s worth stating)  But greater than that, what if she has an encounter with a flirt who humiliates her and makes her want to go back to the ratty dress? Will she? Is it her confidence or her friend’s intervention that brings her out of her old habits?

Or does the story end here, with a relapse of behavior? Relapses bring feelings of frustration, disappointment, and failure. Perhaps even embarrassment at having failed–or rather, at having tried at all. What would make her think that she could get away with looking pretty? Looking pretty had made her dumb. She’d always known it would. Intelligent girls had no need to look pretty. Therefore, if she felt the need to be pretty, she must not be intelligent. Pretty girls got husbands and lived like a cow milling from pasture to pasture, being told what to do and how to do it. She would not be pretty. She would be that old nag of an ass that worked hard, listened to no one, and got the job done. She wouldn’t be milked for her assets. …except that the ass does do what the master wants, in the end…

And so, the solution to a relapse is to start the whole thing over again, but this time, she knows what to do. And if she really wants to do it.

See, folks? Research can be fun! Especially when you have an outlandish problem, like muffin tops and new dresses.

Anywho. Gotta get to work. Software licenses will have expired this morning, and I gotta get the POSs (that’s “point of sale”, not “piece of sh!t”, though they can be that, too) working so we can sell popcorn and tickets today. And I have a date with server tech support. The fun of being in multiple places at once.

Enjoy your day,

Your Dearest  Nicolette

 

 

The Strangest Thing I’ve Written Yet…

I had a challenge: Write about a boring character. Someone with pretty much no backstory. Someone who was born, raised in a well-enough family without any real hardships or the money to do whatever, someone who has bland features and you would overlook upon surveying the crowd. She had to be someone without much extraordinary about her.

And this morning, I woke up and had a little narrative voice sighing as it told a tale while I went about making cookie brownies first thing. (Yes I made a pan of chocolatey goodness with salted chocolate chip cookies dropped into the pan, dessert for breakfast basically, and I loved every second of the five servings I had. Might as well live up the childless years while I can, right??) And her story just kind of came out, as though I had walked in on her manning the oven and grumbling about a pretty and therefore unintelligent face pestering her with questions.

What was exceptionally odd about this whole experience was not only that it was highly narrative, but I was surprised at the way the narration slipped into telling the story. It’s not utterly seamless, but it’s far from bad for a first draft. As I want to keep this blog more about the experience of writing, and not so heavy on the stories themselves, I started up a blog to serve as a catch-all of the stories I’m doing. Part of the reasoning is that it is a nice way to keep organized. Another reason is that I don’t have complete confidence that my computer will always start, or in my good sense to remember to back-up the important files.

Another odd thing about Into the Fog is that the main character appointed herself a name. Usually I have to think about it, beat my head, and scour the baby names websites for ideas, accepting then rejecting, then modifying names until it fits just right.  I would say I’m not really sure where this story is going, but as Amelia states the ending right up front, I would more accurately say I don’t know how the story is going to get there. Anywho, here’s a segment of it.

My name is Amelia Baker (I prefer to be called Mel; my given name suggests a pretty woman, or even a woman of adventure, and I am neither) and while I am not much for telling stories, I am tired of people asking how I, the most boring baker on the planet, came to be kneadng seven-grain dough in the bowels of the airship Into the Fog while silently cursing myself falling in love with its captain. I suppose I am not supposed to tell you the ending, but we all know that you would have predicted this turn of events the second Mr. Dreamboat orders me onto his ship. And since I value intelligence–I will assume that since you can read, you are of the intelligent lot, not the beautiful–I see no point in pretending to be ignorant of this fact. So, there. You know the ending. I wind up stuck on a pirate ship, in love with a man who could not possibly return the affection, and I’m doomed to live this way until we all get thrown into a jail cell. But, isn’t that how all stories are? We know the basic ending, but what keeps us coming back is how it happens.

So, here is the tale.  Pirates have largely ignored my bakery because I established a reputation of being the most dull shop in Clocktower Plaza to raid. When they take all of my goods and leer at me, I would just tell them, “It’s only flour. Take all you’d like.”

When one shot crossbow bolts into my ceiling, I said, “At least this place will have a story to tell.”

And when one, the very first pirate, blew open my door with a small charge of dynamite, I only said, “It was unlocked.” And then I continued my kneading.

So, eventually, I was only interrupted from my day by the pirates who stopped by for some bread on their way out of town. And, no, I never worried about being raped or molested. While I was not ugly, I had no time to dress myself up in anything but as was practical. While the fine ladies wore bustles and corsets, I bound my breasts to keep them from hitting on the shelves, and I wore only the cheapest woolen dresses that the elderly ladies had tired of. My hair and body I washed often to get rid of the sweat from the ovens, but I wrapped my locks up and tucked them under a cap so no one would know how they reflected the sunlight with a coppery glint, like red wheat kernels before the mill. It was my one claim to beauty, and I would have no one see it. Beauty was for the girls without intelligence. Beauty would attract boors and the boors would demand control, and I was not going to give up my bakery for any man. I considered cutting my hair off many times. Going down to the barber and selling my locks. They would fetch a good price, I was certain, but there was some part of me that loved my hair, and I loathed that part of me more than I loathed my locks.

In the end, it wasn’t my hair that made me loose my bakery. It was my pride. See, for as plain as I could make myself, I could not make my baked goods any less decadent than those set before the King.

—read more—

 

Can I say that I love her character? It comes across so strongly, and there’s no doubting who she is from the very start. She’s practical. She’s stingy. She is shortsighted, opinionated, as we will find out, a bit of a daydreamer, but she knows she is a daydreamer, and dismisses those daydreams before they can take root. She is also, at the heart of the matter, afraid of relationships and uses every means that she can to avoid facing her fears. She is easy to envision, and the power of her character comes in the contrast. She strives to be boring, but she desires adventure. Adventure is frightening, desires are frightening, and to avoid fear she must avoid desire, which means she has to be as dull as possible and only partake those pleasures which are safe. We all have things that we want to do, but don’t, because we’re afraid of the costs, afraid of the risks, or just afraid of doing it. Of course, we don’t strive for boringness in our life, but Amelia does because she is the essence of that aspect all poured into one character.

Now, might I say that the pirate captain is the yin to her yang. He lives adventurously, does what he pleases, has no fear, and secretly desires the stability that boring provides. I did not think I would enjoy this so much, but the contrasts in the characters is  so fun.  If you have not tried to do this, please do give a try at my assignment. It’s a good romp.

Till later,

Your Dearest Nicolette