Book two
News and stuff
Sun May 09 2010
Lo, I have been busy. I have lots of good excuses why Chapter 20 isn’t done yet. Honest.
First, I’m putting my talk together for Hugo House’s first writing conference, Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century. I’ll speaking on Saturday, May 22nd on “Publishing on the Web” with Rebecca Agiewich. For those of you who don’t know, Rebecca Agiewich had a fantastic blog called the Breakup Babe that she successfully turned into a novel. I got to meet her the other week to plan our session and her tale was quite interesting. Ironically, she was one of the bloggers I used to read back in 2002 when I was first creating the Heidi character.
Second, I just re-drew the first scene of Heidi book one. I got tired of my worst art being the first thing people saw when they were introduced to Heidi. In time, I think I will slowly re-illustrate most of book one, polishing some of the words along the way. Shoutout to @hypatiadotca for spotting my typo. I manually redid the text instead of copying it from the originals, so at least one mistake was made. As always, if you spot typos, drop me an email or a tweet and let me know.
Lastly, I am actually working on Chapter 20. It’s about half illustrated in roughs and should be done soon.
First, I’m putting my talk together for Hugo House’s first writing conference, Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century. I’ll speaking on Saturday, May 22nd on “Publishing on the Web” with Rebecca Agiewich. For those of you who don’t know, Rebecca Agiewich had a fantastic blog called the Breakup Babe that she successfully turned into a novel. I got to meet her the other week to plan our session and her tale was quite interesting. Ironically, she was one of the bloggers I used to read back in 2002 when I was first creating the Heidi character.
Second, I just re-drew the first scene of Heidi book one. I got tired of my worst art being the first thing people saw when they were introduced to Heidi. In time, I think I will slowly re-illustrate most of book one, polishing some of the words along the way. Shoutout to @hypatiadotca for spotting my typo. I manually redid the text instead of copying it from the originals, so at least one mistake was made. As always, if you spot typos, drop me an email or a tweet and let me know.
Lastly, I am actually working on Chapter 20. It’s about half illustrated in roughs and should be done soon.
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Hiatus until spring 2010
Sun Nov 01 2009
With the end of Act Three, I'm going to give my drawing arm a break for a while. There's been a lot going on in my life lately, including some health issues and a major household move, so I need a little respite from drawing 12 hours a week. I can assure you, the whole story is written from start to finish. It's the illustration and coloring that is so time-consuming.
In any case, it doesn't mean that things will be totally dead here. I plan to do a few Author's posts on the writerly process of creating Heidi and flesh out some of her inspirational material.
Stay tuned.
In any case, it doesn't mean that things will be totally dead here. I plan to do a few Author's posts on the writerly process of creating Heidi and flesh out some of her inspirational material.
Stay tuned.
Worms
Sun Feb 01 2009
Yep, back from my little break. And what a special chapter this one is. In case you didn't read these notes before, maybe you didn't realize that I write out the entire story before drawing a single panel. So when I put together the concept of the Cxor worm, it was way back in early 2004. Strangely enough, I thought I had come up with a new kind of killer exploit that would be revolutionary and scary - an exploit that was delivered via image files. Well, a few months later, reality caught up with me.
Then I had to come up with a worm that was going to cripple the Internet... a massive bot-net. The FBI would be baffled as to how to stop it and who to blame. Sadly, this has already come true... a couple times already. This story was written before Storm and certainly before Conficker. At the time, over a million infected computers in a botnet was terrifying. Now we're up to what... 15 million?
There's one more crazy concept I came up with for this worm, which you'll see play out in chapter 12. But it too has already become reality since I wrote this.
Sigh, life in the Internet age really is murder. We just need a few more real world Heidis.
Desktop art
Sun Jul 13 2008
No update this week. Busy with family and summer and stuff.
But here's a splash screen from your desktop.
For those of you who are curious... yes, this scene is in the current book. Somewhere around Chapter 23. And that's all I'm saying.
But here's a splash screen from your desktop.
For those of you who are curious... yes, this scene is in the current book. Somewhere around Chapter 23. And that's all I'm saying.
Word cloud of book two
Fri Jun 27 2008
In-jokes
Sun Apr 20 2008
This chapter was an old school spree for me to write.
To wit, Arduin + Cerebus the Aardvark = Ardvark realms.
Bonus points if you can spot the Zork joke in there.
If you don't get it, then you're not geeky enough.
To wit, Arduin + Cerebus the Aardvark = Ardvark realms.
Bonus points if you can spot the Zork joke in there.
If you don't get it, then you're not geeky enough.
Gary
Sun Mar 09 2008
So much being written about Gary Gygax's death. I'd blogged a bit elsewhere, but I feel the need to write a little more. D&D was a big part of my life early on as well. I started way back in 1979 on the first edition, which I still have. I quickly progressed to the addictive job of dungeon-mastering. No doubt, those DM-skills are directly responsible for much of my writing hungers. Why do you think it's called Planet Heidi? It's an alternate world and every book, Heidi faces a deadly new dungeon.
And speaking of Heidi, here's an ironic preview from chapter 6.
Ironic because I wrote what is now called book 2 and chapter 6 a couple of years ago. Yes, Heidi will be facing off against D&D players soon. But it's release will appear to be timely. I didn't mean it that way, but it's inclusion is there because as all the news articles you're reading say, D&D and Internet geeks go hand and hand.
Where have I been
Sun Jun 24 2007
Where have I been? Where's book two? What's going on?
Alright, here's the deal.
The outline for book two is done. The manuscript is 80% done. The basic character sketches are done. Some of the background art is done. And scene one is 10% illustrated. So, I'm 30 to 40 hours away from finishing the first chapter.
Y'know me, I want to make sure when I release, I do it in a way that doesn't leave you hanging. Well, no more hanging than a week between scenes. So, I prefer to have things all organized and ready to go. And I'm not anywhere near that. Especially since book two is a long, long, cliff-hanger of a story. I am committed to finishing it. Heck, the story is burning to be told.
But...
My real life has been rather busy. One, I've changed job. Two, my disabled father moved in with us until he gets settled in Seattle. And three, my wife is 10 weeks away from giving birth to our first child.
Before you ask, it's a girl and I wasn't allowed to name her Heidi.
Anyway, I'm a little busy so it might be until early fall before you see book two.
In the meantime, you can always encourage me to work faster by buying copies of book one.