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WILDFIRE is Done

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The first draft of WILDFIRE is done and sent to the editor.  It clocked at a respectable 98,000 words.  🙂 Super happy with that.

Now the nothing begins.  😛  This morning we are flooded and I’m learning how to draw space in photoshop.  Spaaaaaace!  I quite like my first attempt to follow the tutorial.  It’s a bit empty, but it has many purty colors.

If I owe you a mailing, we’ll get to it once the rain water recedes.

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Comments

  1. Whee! Have a ton of fun.

    FWIW, at least consider the merits of a vector graphics program for drawing/illustration needs (Illustrator would be the Adobe offering, I believe – as a FOSS girl, I use Inkscape.) I use both types of tools, and they do different things, but it’s good to be aware of their various strength and weakness 🙂

    • I’d stick with Photoshop, unless you’re having to design logos or artwork that needs to be able to cleanly scale to size, in which case, you would want Illustrator. That said, I’m about 3 or 4 versions behind on both programs, so perhaps there have been significant changes in how the two work.

      • …and I’m entirely in FOSS world, so it’s GIMP and Inkscape for me, so it’s only rough equivalence. I’ve been using GIMP longer, but I pretty strongly pretty Inkscape for most freehand work – though it depends on what I’m doing, and I’ll off switch back and forth between them for different kinds of needs.

        Of course, at least half of what I do is scientific illustration or figures, and a lot of the rest is weird little comics or graphics (or “I need something that looks more or less like this for a lecture I’m giving an hour from now!”) …and I do a lot of 3d modeling and animation in Blender, but I get to call that research.

        • It’s interesting what people are used to, because I’ve never heard of Inkspace or Blender. GIMP sounds vaguely familiar.

          • I spend most of my time in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and academic software worlds. (I grew up around a computer science department, though I didn’t do my degree work there. Then I spent most of my twenties as a software engineer at Microsoft… and then they funded my research for the first couple of years after I fled back into academia, so when I had a chance to kick that Windows dust off my shoes, oh, I was *so* ready. Mind you, some good memories, too.)

            Going full time Linux on the desktop, etc. etc. isn’t for everyone, but there are a number of very mature projects that are available on all platforms and are free. (As it is said, free as in beer, but also free as in freedom.)

            GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It’s more or less open source photoshop. I’ve been using it for, oh, a dozen years now?

            Inkscape is one of a few open source Vector Graphics Programs. So, photoshop and GIMP are manipulating bitmaps (bitmaps defined broadly – there are various different file formats). The underlying primitive is pixels, which is why if you blow up your image enough it pixelates and gets all blocky. In vector graphics, the underlying representation is math. (I can just hear my favorite lab partner in crime laughing his head off and saying “Of course you prefer to paint with math!” – though he totally does too. I taught him.) It sounds kind of weird, but you don’t have to deal with the math directly, and the interface isn’t hard to learn… I’m trying to think of a way of describing the beauty of manipulating Bézier curves 🙂
            Here’s a gallergy of some stuff people have done in Inkscape:
            https://inkscape.org/en/gallery/?page=1

            Blender is more or open source Maya – so a 3d animation and rendering program. Though, since open source software is open source, there’s a tendency for people to integrate cool stuff in, so there’s a bunch of stuff for game prototyping, and there’s a soft and hard body physics engine (which is why I use it for my research)… and, of course, you can just use it as a modelling environment for making 3d printable stuff, or whatever. It’s definitely the most difficult to learn – well, at least, for the kind of stuff I use it for (I will never take another undergrad summer modelling student who doesn’t come in with a lot of experience – it’s just too much, even with having them train during the Spring) but it’s a crazy rich environment, too.

          • (This has been a PSA from the Society for Free and Open Source Software 😛 – Long lab meeting, and I still have a somewhat questionable voice.)

              • I hadn’t even seen that one yet!

                There really are a ton of different modeling tools. I use Blender so heavily mostly because I’d already played with it a bit and it supported the Bullet engine – and the ability to make pretty movies has been a huge bonus for my presentations. (I also use OpenSCAD when I’m doing something more mathematically precise, like making a new bracket for the inside of a refrigerator door handle.)

  3. Yay! Enjoy the downtime. I haven’t “drawn” graphics since Microsoft Paint, lol. Photoshop can do some amazing things!

  4. Huge congrats on finishing! I hope you are able to relax and enjoy the next few months. Maybe a nice beach somewhere…..it is summer in New Zealand and Australia….just saying 🙂

    • I visited the South island (Christchurch, Kaikoura, Nelson, Greymouth, Wanaka, Queenstown, Dunedin, Oamaru) for 15 days while living in Bangkok… fell in love and went back next Christmas season and visited the North Island (Aukland, Waitomo, New Plymouth, Wellington, Napier, Rotorua….) . What a beautiful, beautiful country. I hope Kaikoura is recovering from the latest earthquake and hope to visit again… my husband wants to move there! Best wishes!

  11. Congratulations! Enjoy the downtime. Although if you think Adobe tutorials are downtime, then I feel a Princess Bride quote coming on. 🙂

  12. Enjoy having that stress off your back. Best wishes on a fast turn around and being able to just relax and have some downtime.

  13. I thought I tasted a strong sense of Relief in the air this morning. Ditto on the beginning of the Nothingness. Lots of Nothingness makes the Somethingness even better and vice versa.

  15. Congratulations on finishing (must feel sooo good) and enjoy the well earned nothing (filled with all things fun)!!

  16. Congrats on finishing. Enjoy a brief respite before the rewrites begin. 😛

    So how does 98,000 words compare to other books you’ve published? Comparable, more, less?

  17. Oh, and on a side note, it’s funny how the context of the blog post changes my impression of your avatar. In this post, it looks like your avatar is cheering. In the previous post, it looks like your avatar is shaking its hands in exasperation. It’s the same avatar! It’s all about the context, baby.

  19. 🙂 Hopefully the ‘daily dealings’ will become less stressful.

    *cheers* Here is to things going your way and to your happiness!

  21. Lots of water here as well. I knew it was coming and prepared to be able to stay home. Loving it. Trying a new recipe. I hope you can lose yourself in whatever you’re doing. Reach deep and find the calm.

  22. Time to find new shows to watch – any thought to giving TABOO, with the very handsome Tom Hardy, a view. Congrats on finishing our drug aka the book. We are addicted and any news that we are getting closer to having the book in our hands is good news. Best of luck with the flooding!

  25. Enjoy your time off. I unhooked from my work cell phone for 10 days at Christmas and it was marvelous. Enjoy what makes you happy and I hope you have no damage from the floods.

  27. Flooding (assuming it’s not inside the house) =opportunity to stay inside and veg . . . or draw space ?. Enjoy!!!!

  30. Have a WONDERFUL break!! You’ve more than earned it.

    Let me take this opportunity to say Thank You for sharing your amazing story-telling with us. I just finished re-reading the Innkeeper series, and am now re-reading the Edge series. You’re one of the few authors that still makes me *not* want to put my book down. Work and sleep notwithstanding. 🙂

  34. Congratulations on finishing Wildfire, I do hope you enjoy your well-deserved down time. I’m sorry to hear about the flooding though and hope it doesn’t get too severe first you and your community.

  36. YAY!!! Congratulations on finishing the first draft. I hope you have a lovely, restful, fun time off–and that the flooding goes down soon.

    Thank you for creating such awesome things for us!

  39. Contgratulations! And I hope you both enjoy a refreshing respite from all the work-demands on your time. Do whatever you feel like, even if it’s sitting on the couch reading or playing video games or knitting, or …. it’s nice to have that open-ended.

  41. Yay! Thank you for all your hard work and I hope you enjoy your respite. Drawing ‘space’ sounds awesome! Have fun!

  42. I hope you really enjoy your nothing! I also wanted to send out a shame on you to all the folks emailing you about the next innkeeper. We should count ourselves blessed that we hear from you as often as we do. None of the other author’s I keep up with post even a quarter as much as you do and I for one will quietly stalk your website and rejoice when an update gets posted. On a side note, I’m going to be back in Texas in April for a conference in Austin. I have been in Atlanta for four years since getting married and am really looking forward to some quality time in the Lone Star State.

    Enjoy your time off for as long as it can last!

  43. Cheers on finishing the first round. Hopefully the flooding isn’t too bad. When it recedes make sure there is plenty of airing out since you don’t want mold to spread.

    Have fun doing nothing.

  44. Yoohoo!!! (my first thought when I read your post)

    I want to throw confettis at you for this great occasion: the beginning of doing NOTHING for a while, but you live too far away ;op

    Have fun, enjoy, I’ll be coloring my colorbook agenda in the meantime (where are my crayons?)

    Laurence

  45. Relax and release!! ? ? ? ? ? Be selfish without guilt. Have some fun, enjoy family and make memorable moments.

  46. As someone who retired this past year you will be successful in your downtime when everyday seems like a Saturday. Then one day you will be at Costco and wonder why there are so many there and you suddenly realize, it really is Saturday.

    • As someone who is retired … isn’t it weird William, losing track of days in the week? I used to pray for Saturday and love months with Monday holidays to extend the weekend. Now its all same day. WONDERFUL!

  47. Yay! Congrats! Which tutorial?? if you want a few more (no that there aren’t plenty, but i know of a couple good ones for planets if you want) 🙂

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