Cover Art

Okay, here they are:
Jethro 2 First to Fight

This image has a mix of canned and my constructed models in it. Some you might recognize. Some of my models are based on designs from Chronicles of Man or STNG. The Destroyer in the background you may recognize from Renderosity. Jethro's armor is a redressed BKEO2K10 Version 2.0. The weapon is from the Mechgirl pack. Jetpack is from Cowboy Gumdrop. He had wings but well, they hurt the image so, I nixed them. :)

And, 13 Degrees of Separation:

Here is not only your first look at Trinity, but also some of the characters from the stories and books. You can see them better in the previous post.
Proteus was dead easy, after all, he/it is a mercury blob. But Defender and Sprite were a lot more challenging to do. I went through several mental iterations of them, and feedback from the Greek chorus saved me some headaches when I was set to buy Defender's armor. (it was going to be 2 or 3 others at different times, and even pieced together from all 3 at one point) Consider this their 1.0 appearance. Like Cortana, Fess, and other notable AI of Sci-fi, their image will evolve over time. (hopefully)

I had hoped to release Jethro 2 this month, but no dice. Maybe sometime soon. 13 Degrees will come out a month or so after. (even though it's been edited a lot more than Jethro 2...the reason is simple, it has spoilers)

In other news: I've dived back into PB and added 16 pages to it since Friday afternoon. (almost 1/2 again it's previous size) I've got some things to work out, but it's on track, even if I'm behind schedule. The great thing about being your own boss, you only have yourself behind if you fall behind in self imposed deadlines. :)
I don't know how much I will get done today, it's family day so... you know. Distractions... sigh. :) We'll see. I want to take my time with some parts, there are a lot of things going on, and some stuff coming to light is... oh boy! This is... no, can't telegraph it. GRR. Well, you'll just have to wait and see wont you? >:D

I also rendered (again) some pieces of Beachhead. But I did it uncompressed, so they are just a weee bit too big to upload. (try 1.93 gigs each) So, I'm going to play with converting them later.
Oh, and for anyone looking for that spinner on my youtube channel, I've got 3... or should I say HAD. Youtube deleted the one with it in it so I need to re-up it sometime in the future. Sorry about that.

Cover art done!

Well, I hope they are done anyway. I'm waiting on feedback on Jethro 2's cover.
In the meantime, how about I show you some of the images that went into the cover of 13 Degrees of Separation?
Each image represents elements or a scene of one of the stories. There are 13 in all (dur) and then the final image. Some have characters from the story. Some characters you've seen in the books.
Many used canned art from Daz3D and Renderosity. Credit goes to the creators of the meshes and art.
Let's start with something half way decent here:

The Last Round up:

Salvage:

Barkeep:

Cali and the wolves:

A matter of breeding:

Eternia:

Hauling Freight:

From the log of the Io 11:

Leonardo:

Message in a bottle:

Nohar Private Detective:

Special Delivery:

And finally, my personal favorite (and my new desktop!) Yard Dogs:

On the next post I'll give you a first look at Trinity 1.0, the covers of 13 Degrees and Jethro 2 (maybe) and hopefully more news.

In news:
Gord passed me 13 back, I passed it on to Jacob who passed it back this morning. I need to go over what he said in the notes, make some adjustments, then pass it on.
Brandon is plugging away, so is Jim or Jory. (sorry fellas, I don't remember who has what right this second)
Mechmaster is wrapping up his Dalek comic, for those of you reading it (and watching the videos on youtube) it should be epic. I dunno when he'll post it, (he has no set timetable) but it should be wild. :)

The weather is nice, so if everything plays out okay I'll do some catch up on chores and things and then either do a side project (maybe a quicky movie?) or I'll dive back into a book... either PB or Alive... though I've been urged to get into the Bootstrap sequel... lol

 

 

For Adam.... And those interested in Bootstrap refrence material

Okay, I've been up to my neck in various things, drama in the neighborhood, family, all the while trying to get the covers of Jethro 2 and 13 Degrees of Separation done. (more on that in another post)

But, I finally remembered that promise to Adam, so with a little free time, I dug through my archive and pulled the better ones out. They are crude, but you hopefully get the idea. Maybe someday I'll do some in 3D. :)
Here is the main base overview:

And now the close up of level 1 (ground)

Level 2:

Level 3:

An overview of the entire region:

I have other maps about the drone crash (on the other side of the river north west of copper town) plus the path of the Leviathan, but they are just basic remakes of the above map)

I also did images of the shark hound:

Plus some of the hardware for the cover. The Ed robot:

He is made up of bits from other projects. You can see the biceps and legs are bits from a Zoid Hellcat, the torso and head are from a tabled RTS robot character. You can see a spinner of this guy in my demo reel on my youtube channel.

Also:

I had a Hummer in my files. I ended up remaking it since it was extremely poly heavy. I think only the doors and hood hinges are from the original model. Everything else I redid.

That's it for now. Maybe someday I'll do an art book like Anne McCaffrey did. You know, toss stuff from this, PRI, the Federation, AD, Alive, all that into a book or 2. Maybe. Maybe someday. Maybe. :)

Princess Rescue Inc!

I received PRI, Princess Rescue Inc from Mechmaster a bit over an hour ago. I've made the corrections he suggested, caught a couple bugs, and I've added the scene and page breaks.
In other words, trucking along, full steam ahead!
You may see me publishing this book by tomorrow.

Look for that cover this weekend. (It takes a day for Amazon and B&N to process the manuscript before publishing it)

Write up:

   Eugene Ryans had it all. Money, fame, power. He had created a multibillion dollar company from almost nothing and turned Ryan's Future technology inc into one of the forefronts of technological innovation.
   He had it all, yet he gambled it all on a crackpot idea that Earth had it's own wormhole.
   He'd proven it too, and now he was in for the adventure of his life. No, he wasn't going to sit back and let others go in his stead, he was going to be on the forefront of this grand adventure.
    To move mankind one step further closer to the stars.
    He'd found adventure all right, all that and more as he found his team cut off, trapped in the middle of an invasion.
     Princess Deidra and her younger Sister Zara were having a series of bad days. When the neighboring kingdom of Duluth suddenly invaded they found themselves on the front lines and swiftly in danger. But will the dashing Gaijin save them? Save them from the wilds of their world, the invaders, and more importantly, themselves?
                        Princess Deidra isn't so sure she wants to be saved!


This book was written around the time of New Dawn and the others. I sat on it, then did a rewrite early last year. Gord, Jacob, and Mechmaster each had a go at it, so hopefully the editing isn't going to bother the haters too much. (wishful thinking I know)

This, btw is NOT a sequel to Bootstrap Colony. That is coming later. (Way later) This is a stand alone book... for now. Though I did leave some threads in it for future sequels and prequels. :)
Think of it as a reboot of the basic Bootstrap adventure concept. I wrote it as 1 part what if, and 1 part dream scene I needed to get out of my head. lol

Oh, and for Adam:

This is the map I created for the book. :) I was going to improve it, but I thought I'd leave it for now. It's mostly legible.

-And I just checked, yes I created a bunch of simple maps for Bootstrap Colony years ago. Very simple maps. No I didn't create any for First Steps, though I did create the 3D model of the scene for the cover art. :) I'll look into posting both sometime... unless I forget. (feel free to nag me if I do forget)

Edit 9-6-2013: and it's live on Amazon! B&N to follow soon. (Out of my hands)

Federation Aliens part 1

    Well, I was going to work on the 2.0 version of Jethro's armor, but I ran into a snag, Inspire 3D doesn't want to be fixed. I can't reinstall it either because it's ancient (32bit 1995-7) and I have Windows 7 64 bit... which refuses to let me do it! GRR

    So, I'm working on ideas for a work around. But since I didn't want to spend my day surfing and hemming and hawing about this or that, I decided to throw this together I modeled these over the past couple of years, plus a ton more I haven't gotten around to rendering yet. I've been rendering stuff for a while before summer hit, I thought I should put them together as a show and tell.

    There are a lot of aliens in the Federation (Wandering Engineer) Universe. Some you have seen, some I have mentioned, some I am going to mention in future works. Here is a look.
I based a lot of the models on concept art I found on the web. Credit for the design goes to the original artist, I just took the idea and ran with it, throwing my own ideas into the mix as I went along. All models were made in Sculptris. Most of the textures are placeholders I dropped onto the base mesh to keep me from going insane. (or more insane)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ-A4JIU494

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Firefly and RIP

Okay, finally an update on Firefly.
I've taken some 'artistic licenses' with the ship. In the book it has smart paint, it's base color is an inky black. Obviously I can't have that on the cover, you wouldn't be able to see it!
So, I went with a more traditional pallet. Shrug.

Getting all the pieces to fit was a pain. I finally called a halt on adding detail. The good news is, now I've got Firefly done for both covers. (Jethro 2 and another) Plus, these parts are now in my library so I can model other ships like the North Hampton class cruiser...

You have no idea how tempted I am to do a flyby movie of this ship. Just a quicky, but I know I'd want more. Stuff with the turrets moving, etc. lol No, no, not happening now. Maybe after the heat breaks and I'm in a good mood. I dunno.

EDIT: OOPS! I forgot to add the turret image I did. DUR!

I am looking ahead beyond modeling Jethro's armor to the cover of 13 Degrees of Separation. I am so not looking forward to it now. There are 14 scenes (1 for each story plus the scene with Trinity watching them) so there are a lot of models and scenes to do. UGH! I think I bit off more than I can chew with that one!

In other, sad news:
Rest In Peace Snowflake. 12 years ago I was there when my sister and nephew picked you out at Petsmart's adoption center. You were a bit hard to get to know for the first few years but after a while you warmed up to everyone and became a mellow, lovable cat. We will miss you.

On a roll...

    Just a quick note, I just finished roughing out the 6th short story of the week... the final one for 13 Degrees of Separation!

    Yup, I started Monday by passing Jethro 2 off to Gord, then went on to work on the cover art for the book. I roughed out the Skyhawk/Warhawk in Inspire 3D, worked on Pirates Bane a bit, but then I got sidetracked by taking dad and the family out to a steakhouse for dad's 63rd birthday, and then a short story got stuck in my head and just wouldn't go away.
    One thing led to another and I ended up first roughing it out... and then writing it out. It is in the Founding of the Federation timeline. (The First Steps series I have yet to get back to) When I had it roughed out I picked up on another story in that time period I had half finished and finished it. Then I jumped to the Gottenburg timeline and finished 2 stories there! Finally today, I finished the last 2 remaining stories in the Wandering Engineer timeline, (despite having to listen to dad snore through 9 hours of Barrette Jackson) thus finishing 13 Degrees of Separation! I even got all the stories in the manuscript, the front matter, and most of the back matter! It's all ready to go to Gord!

Wow! Cool! I am so on a roll! lol WOOT WOOT!

   So, I am so psyched! And no, not because it is my 13th book. (Yes I know, I have 8 published and now 4 in the pipeline. There is another....GRRR Go away Yoda!)

    Any who, I really am pretty jazzed. I'm going to go hit the Ice cream and kick back. Tomorrow is another day. Dad's actual Birthday. :)

EDIT: I forgot to mention, Mechmaster is down to 80 pages of Princess Rescue Inc. Since he's off for the next 10 days he (and I) are hoping he'll get the rest done... and get more of his climactic battle to his Dalek comic done. (I know, ambitious) Well, anyway, here's hoping!
Gord just told me he's half done Jethro 2! Cool!

Hopefully next post I'll have more to show regarding the cover of Jethro 2!

Woot Woot!

Finally! After a couple months of work I have just finished the first rough cut of Jethro 2 First to Fight! YES!
It wasn't easy writing about a cat with a certain feline "helper" of my very own.

(yes I know it's horrid picture, the lighting is low and what can I say? My camera phone is only 2meg)
Now I have a few things to tidy up before I can pass it on to Thomas, Gord, Jacob, and the other guys. :)

1: I need to finish adding my notes. I've got 2 and a half pages (front and back) of notes to add. Some of them are from Thomas who related to me stories of when he was in the corps. :)
Problem:

A certain furrball has a thing for paper and pens. He loves sitting on them and holding them hostage.
(Yes that's a roll of TP in the corner. Don't ask.)

2: I've got a bit of light reading ahead of me, I want to add a few more things to the book. A little um... more detail?

I've already been pecking at the NCO guide and the Light infantry guide. The Making starships and Stargates was a little disappointing. I've got some notes in the Energy weapons book. The alien book I skimmed twice but I have my own aliens really. :)

3: I've got a consistency edit to do. I need to make sure I've got the names of people, places, and things right, plus the names of weapons, tech, and what not within shouting distance of what I had before. Always fun.

4: I do a quick editing pass of my own, first with a spell check, then mostly with 'Find', looking for the usual culprits.

5: Add the Appendix, Author's Afterward, and clean up the other stuff. Oh, and add another sneak peek. :)

Then I can pass it on to the guys and turn my attention to the cover art....

That is if a certain someone will let me. lol

I am hoping I'll have this all done and off to Thomas by the first, but don't quote me! lol The family is out of school and making plans for the next week. I am playing things by ear. Then there are the birthdays... sigh

Still, I am a bit giddy and in an awesome mood. YEAH!

Grumpy, tired, sore...

No, I'm not renaming the 7 dwarfs. Tempting, but no. It is what I am right now after going to the dentist yesterday. It was my 5th visit in my entire life, 1st in 10 years. The doctor had fun, he did 1 filling, the nurse did a cleaning, and then the two of them ganged up on me to pull the roots of one shattered tooth (#32) and then they spent 15 minutes yanking out my upper molar. (cusbid, bicuspid, whatever) I bet a lot of you know the disconcerting sound and exquisite feeling of teeth cracking in your mouth as it is yanked around. I have that memory stuck in my head now. That and the fun of spitting blood for the past 24 hours. Ugh.

He offered Vicadin, I'm too stubborn (IE pig headed) I turned it down in favor of my Acetaminophen... which is barely working. GRR

Eating is fun. Sooo much fun. I am glad he insisted on just the one side. Though it might have helped me loose more weight...

The fun thing is I get to go back later to get another upper molar removed, and a filling, these on my left side. Joy. Happy go lucky, joy joy. I so can't wait. NOT.

So, you know I'm going to take revenge and make some poor sap of a character go through that too eventually. Hey, If I have to suffer, someone else might as well too. Learning experience. Hmm... one of the cats maybe... (oops! Telegraphing, sorry Rick)

It's hot (105) here the past week or so, it's currently cool. humid. and raining right now though. The heat has had the family come over almost daily to swim or play board games. That's sort of put a crimp in getting any writing done. I did get a few things done though.

News:
I had a doctor's visit 2 weeks ago, I have lost 17 pounds and I am trying to loose another 17 by my next visit. It's hard though, with the heat I just want to sleep or watch TV. My octocore PC likes to overheat when the afternoon hits, I usually have to abandon it. Since dad's home by that time and being a general pain in the posterior, I guess it's okay. (NOT)

I finished roughing out another short story for 13 Degrees of Separation. That's 11 down, 2 to go. Unfortunately I can't let the volunteers have it until after they see Jethro 2. lol (Ain't I a stinker?)

Speaking of the other 2 shorts, I have both blocked out, and I've pecked at Leo a little.

I also finished chapter 5 and parts of 6-9 of Jethro 2. I have received a ton of research material from Amazon over the past couple of weeks, I'm going to be reading a lot. I got stuff on Bootcamp, Military culture, NCO guide book, um... Oh, Effects of Direct Energy Weapons, an alien book, that make a planet book, and a bunch of others. :)
So, even though I may be vegging I will be doing something semi-productive. :)

I've pecked at book 6 of WE some more, generally cleaning up a few plot points. I'm going to have to do a bit of a rewrite on some things, I mean, I wrote the plot for that book long before I finished New Dawn. (yeah that long ago) So, things have evolved since then.

On the editing front:
Good news: (I think) Mechmaster reported that he's around the 200 page mark of Princess Rescue Inc. He has a 100 pages left. I don't know if he made progress or not. I'm too lazy to check my previous post. lol

Bad News: After 3 weeks my 'niece' has given up trying to edit Afraid of the Dark and passed it back to me. She hasn't passed on editing Plague Planet, but scifi isn't her cup of tea. She said it was too hard working for family, with everyone riding her about the project. She did say there were few grammar errors but only got about 100 pages into the 600 page book. I hope that's a good sign, since 3 people other than me have had a go at it.

But, that leads me to good news, I'm tired of waiting, and I've been patiently thumped over and over that 'gee, maybe 4 volunteers reading the book got most of the bugs out'. and "You can always update it with corrections later" (thanks guys) So, now that I have my own copy of MS word 2007, I will fix the TOC (again) and do one last read and then release Plague Planet, hopefully within the next 72 hours. (no promises, I may get invaded again)

So look for this cover:

EDIT: I just finished uploading it to Amazon and B&N. Nook users may have some issues, Nookpress looks funky and I haven't figured them out yet. But it's on it's way...

Coming in 12-48 hours!

Some more progress...

Okay, lets see... minor things really.
I've been free writing a lot, which isn't productive short term. It does however sometimes come in handy, after all, Bootstrap colony, New Dawn, Princess Rescue Inc, and Afraid of the Dark are all a product of my 'what if' free writing, so who knows what the future may bring?

I have also been working on book 6, I've cleaned up some of the raw notes (getting rid of present tense mistakes) and I've doubled, nay tripled (okay almost) it in size. I'm still having trouble with the structure, so I may need to bug someone about it. :)

I also did a bit of pecking in "Alive" another free write what if book. It's solidifying a bit.  Let's just say that.

I also blocked out one of the short stories for 13 Degrees of Separation, and I added a bit to Barkeep. :)

Edit: oops, forgot to mention, I went and started putting the pieces to 13 Degrees of Separation together into the final manuscript. I've added the 7 edited short stories, with 1 outstanding and the other 5 I'm still working on. So far the page count is 262... but I expect it to be close to 450 by the time the others are added.

My 'niece' took a hand at AD. She's been bugging me to have a go at my books for a while. I said okay. I pestered her for an update, she grumbled and growled at me. Then she said something about I have too many ellipses (...) and I ramble. She's fixing it. Um... Okay...

On the home front, dad and crew went to the memorial in New Hampshire. Dad called me at 5am this morning. (Gee, thanks dad. Fortunately for you Baby beat you by 20 minutes with my wake up call) Anyway, he said it was a quick ceremony, with about 100+ people there Saturday.
I'm not quite ready to strangle Baby for his 4am wake up calls... getting there, but not just yet. Soon though if he keeps it up for much longer. Luckily dad will be back on Thursday. Then he can stumble around like a bull in a china shop and wake me up too.
Baby is cute when he's begging for food. It's also funny to feel him trying to whack me with his tail to get me awake (he likes to tickle with it too... and don't get me started on the cold nose!) ... but it's really funny when I'm all sweaty. (hot night Friday) He got all pissy when his tail stuck (he had to tug it off) and then he has to go clean it. :D lol The disgusted look as he sat there cleaning it made my morning. :)
He's also a ball when he's hyper, he may be an old man, but that hasn't stopped him. He's been full of piss and vinegar all morning.

Usually you can set your clock by him, early in the morning, and around 8pm each night, the hyper train comes roaring through, all arched back, curled tail, eyes dilated and full of mischief, running all over the place... The sound FX he does are priceless. (think Chomps) lol

 

And then of course there is the duo together:

You gotta love that haughty expression. :)

 

Oh! I added scene transitions to all the books, those out, and those coming out. I also cleaned up some errors I found and some that Amazon's new Auto-spellcheck feature pointed out. That's a nifty thing.

If you see this:

...*...*...*...*...

That's my version of a scene transition.

I was going a bit squirrely near the end. (it's easy but tedious to do) Oh, if you notice the TOC (Table Of Contents) and links are messed up, that's because I did the fixes in Open Office since I don't have Word anymore. I need to deal with that later.

 

Also, I ordered a TV stick. Or box. The G-box midnight MX2.

http://liliputing.com/2013/05/g-box-midnight-mx2-tv-dual-core-tv-box-is-made-for-android-xbmc.html

This looks like a winner, but I'll know more when it comes in later today. I'm going to have fun playing with it. (I hope)
It's not just for fun, it's also so the family can finally Skype with family back east here on holidays and special occasions... and so I can do some research. (yes, I did say that) You'll know why when you read... um, telegraphing... sorry Rich. :)

Anyway, I'll have fun until Thursday when Edison shuts my power off all day for an upgrade to the system. ALL DAY. When it's supposed to be 96 out. Joy. It's going to be a hot week, more of the 100's for days and days.... ugh.

Seriously. I am so going to be climbing the walls right along side BABY! :P

 

 

Progress report

Over the past several weeks I've been a bit distracted with family issues. (see previous post) I'm finally getting back on track. This weekend was my birthday, I finished the first draft of a short story "A Matter of Breeding" on my birthday.
I also got to meet Thomas on Sunday for the party, one of the great guys who have given up their time to help me with my copy editing issues. Thanks Thomas. Hopefully your lovely latina lass lets you out of the doghouse soon! ;)
Anyway, Thomas got a bit of a sneak peek at some of my thought processes in my writing, as well as a quick look at the concept material I've gathered for several of the books I am working on, along with upcoming books. :)

He and I also talked a bit about Jethro's armor design. Here is his skinsuit WIP 4, textured. I still need to fix a few bugs, and I need to get the rigging sorted out.

This was going to be his full suit, but I think I went a little too far overboard with the Halo motif so I decided to start over with a more bulky StarCraft 2 look later. (You'll see it for the cover of Jethro 2 First to Fight, and most likely it's construction here and in my Deviantart gallery)
We also talked about the shipyard, 3D printing, TV sticks, and some things I'm not going to get into. >:D

Anyway, his trio had a ball playing with the trains and in the pool. I hope to have them (with his latina lass hopefully!) over again soon. Their kids are incredibly well behaved. I am looking forward to introducing them to the rockets the next time they come over. Seeing the kid's faces when they launch one should be fun. Thomas and I hit it off pretty well, he and I are alike in some ways and talking with him was fun. His talks with Jeff seemed... interesting. lol

I have also been testing Natural reader:
http://www.naturalreaders.com/
I wanted to see if it would help me with my editing. Many people suggest (or demand in some cases) that people read material out loud to themselves or have someone read it to them to see if it makes sense. Some writers are now using narrators. I've played with the idea before, but I gave up. I tried it again with "A Matter of Breeding" Sunday and yesterday.
It's an interesting program, the free version has it's faults though. It trips over some words, and it has an incredibly annoying pop up. The program halts every 3-4 paragraphs and it asks if you if you are ready to buy it yet. There is a 5 second countdown before you can hit the later button. That is aggravating.
I know Windows has a built in narrator that this program builds off of, but it's even worse. The voice is horrible. I've also used UltraHal in the past, but the site and software haven't been updated in years. It also has a virus on the site so BEWARE. I warned you.
I'm going to keep exploring I guess, though I'll try the reader one more time with the short story "The Last Round Up." I'll peck at that later tonight or tomorrow. (most likely tomorrow, it's getting too warm in my room)

With the kids out of school and the summer heat beginning, I am expecting more calls to play board games or go swimming. (or both) I am not sure how much that will impact my schedule. (No plan survives contact with the enemy!) Take yesterday for example, we got the call and spent the afternoon playing games with the kids at my sisters. (and everyone had a coughing fit and watery eyes from Jay's spicy pork concoction!)

I have also been working on spinners, rendering them during the morning when it is cool out. I've rendered about 3/4 of the aliens from the Federation universe. (those without fur or feathers) and I've been rendering my 3D Zoids. (those I've finished)
I'm debating retexturing my Blade Liger (or finishing it's textures) and rendering it again. Maybe even animating it.

I'm trying hard NOT to telegraph any story bits (spoilers) here and I am looking into expanding my exposure on the web as recommended by a few people including Rich. (It's hard, I hate having my picture taken! I may use a 3D image of Jethro as a place holder)

Oh! Almost forgot, Brandon finished AD over the weekend, and I'm waiting on Jim to finish PP before I make any more decisions on the editing front. :) I need to look into the mentioned POV shift issues too.

That's it for now!