Read an Ebook Week and other news

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Hey folks!

A few things worth mentioning.

First, Read An Ebook Week starts tomorrow! This is a multi-site promotion devised to inspire people to, you guessed it, read an ebook. What does this mean for you? Loads of ebooks at low, low prices! For my part, I am discounting everything in my library on Smashwords that I possibly can. Book 1 of the trilogy, book 1 of the sci-fi series, and Jade will all be free as a part of the promotion, and the rest of my catalog will be half price. That means you can pick up a Smashwords edition of everything I sell for $4.50 total! Order now! Operators are standing by! For those of you who already own all of my books, there are plenty of other authors participating in the promotion, so if you’re looking for some indie books and you are on a budget, March 4th-March 10th is a great time to head over to Smashwords and see what looks good.

There, now that the marketing part of the post is out of the way, let’s see what else I’ve got to talk about.

Last week I posted on the Facebook Fan Page for the book a question about who would play each character if The Book of Deacon were to be made into a film. As usual, I got a lot of great answers. New suggestions are still coming in now and then, but here’s a summary of what we’ve heard so far. I’ve linked the IMDB page of each of the actors who I could find a page for, and the list for each character is roughly in the order of popularity from the Facebook thread.

Myranda

Deacon

Ether

Lain

Ivy

Desmeres

Arden (The beefy partner/competition to Trigorah)

Ayna (Infuriating fairy wind mage)

Oriech

  • That old guy from that Are You Afraid of the Dark.

Calypso

Any one of the Generals

Some really good suggestions. Now, I was also asked who I had in mind. Honestly, I didn’t think about it, with a few exceptions. So I brainstormed a bit and looked through the suggestions, and here’s what I’m thinking, for a few. This is assuming live action for all but the least human characters, though to be honest, I see this more as a CGI or traditionally animated feature.

Myranda: I’m really liking Christa B. Allen or Rachel Hurd-Wood for this one. I’d have to watch a few of their performances to get a decent idea of which wins, though.

Deacon: I could definitely see Zac Efron in this role. Joseph Gordon Levitt is good, too.

Ether: I like Angelina Jolie for this one. I think she could pull off the “chiseled out of marble face of a Greek goddess” look with a baked in sense of smug superiority and disdain pretty well.

Lain: I see both malthropes being done by CGI, so this is a voice casting. Liam Neeson might be the winner here. Hugh Jackman good too.

Ivy: Again, voice casting. I like Zooey Deschanel for this one. For some reason Gwen Stephani popped into my head, too.

Desmeres:  My friend Cary. He was semi-loosely the basis for the character when I was writing it. For his own privacy I’ll forgo a link to a picture.

Wolloff: Billy Connolly. Failing that, anyone who can pull off a good irate Scottish person. Craig Ferguson perhaps?

That’s all I can think of at the moment.

There, now that there is enough content to force this WAY down to the bottom where it is likely to be missed, here’s what I’ve been up to for a while. I’d indicated that writing the Lain book was likely to get me down, thanks to the fact that Lain’s back story isn’t the most pleasant thing in the world. I’ve got a lot of good notes, and few pages written, but to take my mind off of things I’ve been plying my hand at art. I’ve had lots of requests for a picture of Myn, so I figured I’d throw my hat into the ring. As is so frequently the case, it was only after gentle prodding from my friends that I grudgingly agreed to share these with the world, since I’m very self-conscious about… everything. But, hey, if I’m going to show off my efforts, I might as well go all the way. It started out like this:

Note the built in self-criticism.

Look at those little bitty wings. After some serious messing around in GIMP, I ended up with this:

She stood up!

Better. The size of that wing was the result too much research for any sane man to do. For those of my level of geekiness or higher, that wing is technically still too small. A bat-type flier needs a wingspan to body length ratio of about 4 or 5 to 1. That wing is only about 2.5. You should see the boat sails she ends up with if she’s realistically equipped. Anyway, after producing that, color was in order:

Red and gold. Just like Iron Man.

I realize there’s no size reference, so just picture her head just about reaching mid-thigh on an average adult. At this point I got a little whacky, and fired up Blender, and put this together:

See? CGI!

And then I thought, “Hey, I’ve got a 3D printer, why not give THAT a try?”

Uh oh! She had an accident!

It turns out her dainty little tootsies were too little to survive the removal of the support material. In theory I could deal with that by printing it much bigger (or giving her bigger feet, or having her stand on a pedestal or something), but at this point I’m through the darkest part of the prep-work for the Lain book. For now, anyway. If I hit another chunk I don’t like thinking about, you might see more dopey stuff like this.

Thanks for reading!