The Field Free Download
The Field is on promotion on Amazon.com and will be a free download ending on Friday, December 19th.
Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Field-John-Silver-ebook/dp/B00QVYW91W/ref=zg_bs_158592011_f_37
The Field
The Field was released on Amazon.com as a Kindle book last night. I hardly ever reveal what a character in the book actually looks like or what my mental image of a character is, but this is an exception. A little dog named Everett is a big supporting character in the book and I modeled him after our rescue dog, Hank. Not to give much away, he has it pretty rough in the book.
Check out The Field here: http://www.amazon.com/Field-John-Silver-ebook/dp/B00QVYW91W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418422168&sr=8-1&keywords=the+field+john+silver
Graphic Novel First Steps Part II
As stated in the last post, I’m experimenting with photographic backgrounds with hand drawn characters to produce a graphic novel. For practice and fun I’m putting a recurring strip up on this blog entitled JUSTICE – DETROIT STYLE. I’ll show the tools I use, the process to produce the panels and I will also post the script so you can see how that works.
Here’s the first panel I’m playing with:
I took the photo earlier this week and used Pixelmator for everything. If you have a Mac, Pixelmator is the way to go. Here’s a post about it here: http://stefanstudios84.wordpress.com/blog/ If you don’t have a Mac, you can use GIMP which is open source and free. GIMP is a great tool for creating graphics and manipulating images. If you have Photoshop then you’re all set.
The main character is Rick Justice who appears like a normal guy but takes extreme justice into his own hands. The first story is worked out which will result in about eleven or twelve panels. After that I’m going to make it up as I go along. I’m working on the characters (bad guys, Rick’s girlfriend, victims, etc.) now for the first story and for future installments.
Graphic Novel First Steps
I started some preliminary work on a graphic novel tonight. I plan on making it little different than the normal graphic novel fare where the backgrounds will be photographs with the characters layered on top. I’m not sure how well this is going to work, but I’ll document the steps here. I’ve been wandering around Detroit taking background shots and started character sketches tonight. Here’s the first one:
The drawing is a candidate male character. Above are a couple of street shots in Detroit. Next to the drawing is a Royal Langnickel pencils set that I came to appreciate in about two minutes. If you want to do any reasonably serious pencil sketches, this is the set to get. I got it for $28.75 on Amazon.
My next post will be the first attempt at scanning a character drawing and layering it into a photograph, probably using Pixelmator.
The Field Update
t’s been a long time since I’ve posted on this blog. I’ve been working on The Field for about a year now, a lot longer than any other book I’ve written. This is a tough one. It’s at about 85,000 words and a working draft is heading to the beta readers next month with the word count of around 90,000.
This is one of those books that could go on and on like a Stephen King tome but that goes against the way I like to write. I like to write short novels a person can finish reading in a matter of hours, but I get consistent complaints that my books are too short. This time I’m going to take the advice of my beta readers and expand it to around 120,000 words if they believe it should be longer. Please let me know if you would consider being a beta reader on this or future books.
Regardless of length, the book will be out by December 2014 at the latest.
Goodreads Giveaway
A giveaway is running on Goodreads for The System – A Detroit Story. Five paperbacks will be given away which retail for $8.17 on Amazon.com. The giveaway runs until February 11th. All you have to do is click the giveaway button on the side of this page or go here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13611266-the-system—a-detroit-story–
Free Download: The Day Detroit Went Dark
To celebrate and help promote The Day Detroit Went Dark audiobook, the Kindle version of The Day Detroit Went Dark will be a free download on Amazon.com starting December 24th through December 28th.
Here’s a few reviews:
As an ex-Detroiter I can assure you that if what happened in the book really did happen, this is about as close to what would happen without use of a crystal ball. Sadly the city of Detroit has been little more than a war zone for the last fifty years and it only gets worse with each passing decade. Mr.Silver has crafted a great and terrifying read. At once gut-wrenching and in some very small ways hopeful. I finished this in less than twenty four hours. Haven’t done that in a long time. Great book.
So nice to be pleasantly surprised when giving a book a chance! Not to say that this was a pleasant book! No. In fact, both the implications AND feasibility of the story is frightening to say the least! The storyline was smooth and non stop. Not lots of flowery filler. Every word necessary to moving the story along. The short length of the story was enough time to get to know and care about thanks to the author’s style.
The audiobook is here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-Detroit-Went-Dark/dp/B00HEFDJCK/ref=tmm_aud_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1361485307&sr=8-1
The Day Detroit Went Dark is also available on iTunes.
Thanks, everyone for making this book a success and Happy Holidays!
New Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR Cover
I’ve refreshed the cover for Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR since I felt it needed a change. Here it is:
I took the photograph inside Edison’s Menlo Park lab at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.
Also just got word that The System- A Detroit Story and The Day Detroit Went Dark are ‘headed for retail’ on Audible.com. They should appear on Audible any time now. The covers had to change, since Audible requires square covers (just like CDs) instead of rectangles.
Audiobook Production: Help Your Narrator
Here’s something I learned fast working on audiobooks for audible dot com. Help your narrator.
The audible dot com process works like this. You upload a section of your book, and unless you’re a professional voice talent and plan to narrate the book yourself, narrators audition for you. You provide a small segment of your book and the voice talent narrates it. If you are the rights owner (either the author or publisher) you choose the narrator. Once you’ve selected a narrator, you or your publisher negotiate a royalty agreement.
There is no guarantee that anyone will audition for you. Narrators gamble their time and talent on your book and its anticipated sales. If you find a narrator that you click with, latch onto them, for now and in the future. A big thing to consider is brand consistency, especially if your books are a series. Having the same person narrate your books presents a consistency to your work, literary voice, and brand.
What’s the first thing you can do to help your narrator, which helps your final product? Provide them with a detailed character summary. When listening to the auditions you might be surprised that the characters DO NOT sound the way you envisioned, in tone, attitude and rhythm. Put yourself in the narrator’s place. All they have to go on is the short segment of text you or your publisher provided. They make their best guess and interpretation. If it’s wrong, it’s not their fault. It’s yours.
This is where the character summary comes into play. Having a cheat-sheet of sorts prepped for your narrator helps immensely. They know who the protagonists and antagonists are and they know who persists throughout the story and who doesn’t. They know who must be liked and who needs to be loathed. This helps them invest their time and talent in the characters that require it.
You, the author, will learn a lot about your book listening to the auditions. I learned an old trick from another author a long time ago. You’ve probably heard of it. To accurately proofread your book, say it out loud. That way it’s almost impossible to let a grammatical errors slip by and is a means for correcting awkward passages. You’re listening to your own voice. When you hear a professional narrator recite your book. It’s cool and puts a new, unique light on your work. To get to where you want your book to be, do all that you can to help your narrator get it right. A solid character summary will go a long way.
-
Archives
- March 2015 (1)
- January 2015 (1)
- December 2014 (6)
- November 2014 (2)
- October 2014 (4)
- September 2014 (2)
- August 2014 (1)
- April 2014 (1)
- March 2014 (1)
- February 2014 (4)
- January 2014 (6)
- December 2013 (7)
-
Categories
- Art
- audiobooks
- black friday violence
- Book Reviews
- Books
- bourbon
- cinematography
- Comics
- Creative Process
- Detroit
- Detroit crime
- Detroit Poverty
- digital photography
- education
- electronic music
- Film making
- Graphic Novels
- HDR photography
- horror
- Internet Radio
- jukebox musicals
- media
- Modern Culture
- Movie Reviews
- Movie Trailers
- Movies
- music
- News
- oil painting
- On Writing
- pencil drawing
- Performances
- photography
- Radio
- Rescue Dogs
- retro
- Reviews
- Science
- stage plays
- Tech
- Tech thrillers
- Technology
- The System Podcast
- Thomas Edison
- Thrillers
- Titanic
- Titanic exhibition
- TV
- TV Reviews
- TV Series
- Uncategorized
- Winter 2014
- World War II
- Writing
- Writing Fiction
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS