Violence: A Writer's Guide (Second Edition)

Violence: A Writer's Guide (Second Edition) by Rory Miller is now available in print! The ebook version should be coming out soon. The first edition, which is in ebook form only, is still up. The second edition is much more comprehensive, over 35% longer than the original. Both are extremely good texts not just for writers but anyone interested in violence dynamics.

Table of Contents:

Establishing a Baseline
Context
Mechanics of a Physical 'Fight'
Survival Stress Response
Bad Guys and Violence
Good Guys and Violence
Gender Differences
Unarmed
Why People Carry Weapons
Weapon Use
Impact Weapons
Edged Weapons
Firearms
Less-Lethal Weapons
Concealed Carry
Mass Combat
Violence in Other Places and Times
Being Hurt
Being Wounded
How You Die
Random Details
A Final Rant

Full of Books

I need a new bookshelf to hold proof copies, graphic design and typography books.

That's really kind of awesome. I like that. A lot.

I love books enough that I have given up the idea of living in a home where the weight and volume restrictions on stuff is severely limited.

Yes, I know, I can have them on a Kindle ... and yet, I still rely heavily on the ability to flip through a reference book. I run my fingers along the pages and watch those colors and the text go by, and mysteriously my brain connects with what I need and stops me within a few pages of exactly what I want. Also, as my vision gets worse, I depend on those larger surface areas. Yes, I can zoom in using a Kindle, but I lose the area of words, the big picture. Specifically with graphic design books and non-fiction in general, the bulk of what I read, I need to have that broader view of the book in a format that's larger than even the biggest pads I've seen. A computer screen comes the closest to the size I like. Mine is 9" high--the size I'd need to view an open spread on a 6x9 book. For larger books on art, graphic design, architecture, etc. my computer screen is much, much too small. Fiction is much more flexible. I could easily see having my whole fiction library on a Kindle or iPad with no issues. But non-fiction ....

I think that one thing that will be a challenge to future book designers will be to rethink and redesign non-fiction from the ground up so that they can present the amount of information that they now are able to transmit in a physical book. Most people aren't aware of how columns, sidebars, images, graphs, illustrations, different styles of type and white space all contribute to feeding information into the human brain. When the way all these things interact is severely space-restricted, and a full open-book spread isn't available except in a tiny size ... yeah. I don't think the answer is necessarily larger device sizes (which will affect their cost and portability.) I think a combination of the way we learn to look at books from infancy through adulthood and the way books are put together will have to change. I believe I'm too old to relearn how I glean information from the page. So for people my age, it falls to the designers to bring the mountain to us.

Already, great strides have been made in book design and information impartation. Smart phones, web site design and rich communication formats have come a long way. My own websites are sad, primitive creatures that could use some TLC from someone who knows what they're doing (and who can manipulate more complex and innovative software than I know how to use) to take advantage of everything our information age has to offer. I have some fun ideas, but I can't make them into reality, and I don't have the time or money to devote to that project (yet). Soon, maybe ....

Speaking of time, it's time to get back to work (on my day off). Some days I think about retiring ... and how much work I can get caught up on when I do. Do people ever really catch up on work?

Probably not. I know I probably won't ever catch up. My work defines who I am, and like my writing and book designs, that work keeps evolving just like the world that's evolving all around and with us.

The Trials of Marketing Part One

OMG.

I just spent all day ordering my first ever promotional postcards.

Okay, maybe not allll day.  But it felt like all day because I had to redo the postcards so that they fit within the bleed margins.  I thought I already had, but apparently not.  Also, apparently my powers of math are weak, because they weren't quite proportioned right.  After playing with resizing the existing postcard sides, I gave up and rebuilt them from scratch.

Then and only then was I able to upload them, order them, and I then find out that with the not-cheapest but not most expensive shipping, they will arrive the day before Orycon.

!!!!!!!!!!

That's a little tighter margin than I like, but I'll live.  And they are done.  Done!  For this batch, anyway.  With the heart attack moment at the end of ordering time (finding out when they'll actually arrive) I think I would have preferred to go with a local big box instead and worry about getting the cheaper price later.  Especially since the shipping was scary expensive.  The moolah I saved I basically lost to shipping.  Assuming the quality would have been the same (I'm not sure it is) I think I would have rather spare myself the heart attack and buy the cards at a higher-per price and driven them home myself.

But, having said that, now that I'm a (scarred) postcard-creating veteran, I can save buckaroos by ordering larger batches with essentially the same shipping from the same company.

Or not.  These postcards may not result in any sales.  If not, I guess I'll be out about $60, which is not devastating in the grand scheme of things.  If so, it'll be money well spent even if it only initially sells me a couple of copies.  That'll be a couple of chances for reviews, a couple more chances for the word to get out, but most importantly, a couple of chances for the writing to prove itself (or not.) 

In Representing Myself, I Have a Fool for an Artist

No Carey.  The neighbors haven't caught that cat yet, though, so there's still hope it's her.

My thoughts are turning toward OryCon.  I've been invited to be a panelist again (yay!).  I'm just hoping that by then I'll be able to officially announce which issue of a certain magazine a certain story of mine will be appearing in.  It's a very, very nice magazine, and I'm excited to be in it, but I haven't gotten the contract yet, so it's best that I muffle my enthusiasm for now.

I will have some sort of card or bookmark or something to hand out, though, which I have to design.  It's funny how I can get a job to do a book cover or a promotional poster and I just sit down and do it, but I freeze up when it's my own stuff.  Human brains can be really dumb sometimes.

I don't think it has very much to do with looking foolish, though it feels that way.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that when I'm doing something for someone else, I'm aware that if they don't like it or need changes, I just do them and I feel that I've satisfied their requirements.  When I'm working for myself, I have no one to really provide outside opinions or judgements that has a stake in the result.  I can ask opinions of friends, but other than their kind enthusiasm and hopes for my success, they don't have a dog in the fight, per se.  They can't really look at it in terms of whether it represents my work well, if that makes sense.  I also fear that they must measure their response in such a way that they can be helpful without bruising my feelings, and each one of them estimates my skin thickness and aptness to bruise differently.

Or maybe all this mental contortionist silliness is just another form of self-sabotage.

Anyway, that's my latest struggle.  The good news is that I have deadlines now, and I do really well with deadlines.

Wacom Bamboo Create Tablet Review

I've been producing a lot more art lately, thanks to the Bamboo Create.  It's an awesome tool for creating book covers.  One of the things that I found fascinating was that although this is apparently considered a non-pro art tablet, or as one reviewer put it on Amazon, a 'fun' tablet, the only limitations I ran into were the limitations of my own artistic abilities.  I would not have been able to create the covers for Masks and Confidante without the tablet.

The only features I found lacking related directly to the software I downloaded.  For example, in GIMP, there's no way that I've found to create a virtual group of color dabs that I can then mix and have several different colors on the 'bristles' of the same brush that would then behave like a brush dipped into several colors before it's applied to the canvas.  Oh how I long for that!  I'm sure it's available somewhere or somehow.  I just haven't found it yet.  Also, I haven't figured out a way to tell GIMP or any other software program to, instead of a gradient forming in stripes along a line (so that if I'm making a ribbon, the ribbon is blue then green then yellow then orange then red then violet) to make a ribbon with the gradient running across the surface.  So in my rainbow example, the center would be yellow and the edges would fade out to blue on one side and violet on the other.  I'm sure it's possible.  The way I've gotten around it is to start with a thick line of violet, then a slightly thinner line of blue on a new layer, a thinner one of green on yet another layer, red, and then yellow and carefully using the smudge and erase functions to fudge the colors so that they obliterate what I want to disappear and leave behind only the colors that I need.  Obviously, making a rainbow ribbon this way would be a huge pain.  It's much less so with a tablet then it would be a mouse, but still.  That's a lot of switching between layers, and a lot of pen strokes.

But, back to the tablet.

Whenever I needed more control over an area, I just zoomed in on it.  And I learned to be patient.  My computer isn't the fastest in the universe, and so I had to sometimes wait while the pen figured out where I was and what I was doing.  I wait less now then when I started out, because I learned how close to hold the pen so that it didn't have to reconnect with the tablet.  I also found that by pausing briefly in one place whenever I moved the pen too far away and then back into range again, I recovered more quickly than waving the pen around near the tablet trying to find my spot.  In fact, now that I've had some practice, the vast majority of the time I'm working as fast as I can without having to wait for the tablet at all.  Also, in a matter of a few days, I quickly learned how to switch between mouse, keypad, touch pad and the Bamboo Create which helped me to do things like save files, name files, move between programs and multitask.  Lots of fun.  The tablet was much easier to learn how to use than the software that I interface with when I use it.

It does burn my battery power quickly, so I learned that it's best to have my laptop plugged in while I'm using it.  The pad comes with extra tips.  I bought extra tips in addition to the ones that came-with, under the assumption that I'd burn through them quickly.  So far I haven't had to change tips yet.  When I do, I may experiment with a different kind.

I also ordered a protective cover made for the tablet, but by another company.  Initially I was disappointed.  The cover wasn't big enough to cover the entire tablet area, and it wasn't small enough to fit between the guide corners interior to the 'touch' area, so there was no tidy/pretty way to apply it.  Also, it sticks on rather than being a magnetic-style screen protector like I expected.  Maybe those don't work on tablets.  I don't know.  It bugged me to basically 'tape' it on.  But once I had it positioned I was happy with it.  I had the area on the tablet that used the most protected from the pen tip (which makes little, tiny scratches on the surface that I'm sure would have built up over time) and the cover makes a very yummy surface to work on as far as resistance to the pen tip I'm using.  (It's the one that came originally with the pen.)

Overall I give the tablet a four happy kitty review out of four happy kitties.  I expected a lot less, considering the reasonable price.  I thought I would eventually have to upgrade, but I have no plans to do so.  So far, this tablet does everything I need it to do.  I doubt I'd get more quality work done more quickly with a 'better' tablet.  If I do upgrade, though, I'll let y'all know!

Links in case you're curious ....

The nibs I got don't appear to be available anymore.  I hope there wasn't a problem with them!  Mine had a couple of felt ones in the mix.  I included a link to the 'normal' extra nibs.  Also, the center link to POSRUS is for the Bamboo Create protective cover I mentioned.  I know, it looks like another tablet ....

Extra Nibs

Cover Art--I love my tablet!

I love my Bamboo Create. It has hugely improved my ability to manipulate GIMP. And yes, btw, I didn't have to do anything special for the tablet to talk to GIMP. Essentially, the tablet and little pen thingy (I'm so technically advanced!) work just like my mouse and my pad on my laptop and all that. In fact, I can switch between them quickly and smoothly, using whichever gets me where I'm going the quickest and/or the best.

I'm never sure how effective my covers are, but this was definitely the most technically difficult project I've done. The Masks cover (which I plan to redo pretty soon) involved a lot of repetitive, detailed activity, especially with the filigree on the dark half of the mask. This cover had many, many more layers and employed some skills and tools that I simply didn't have when I did the Masks cover.

Anyway, here it is. This, btw, will be an awesome, awesome anthology. It's not available yet. I'm sure it'll be all over Facebook and stuff when it goes live.

Finished a Book, Wrote a Lot. Good Times.

I've been writing for most of the day.  This is a good thing, but it's physically demanding for someone who is accustomed to standing for the length of a working day.  It's also really, really not good for me.  I've been snacking more than I usually do, too, which does not help.

In the new stuff category, I read a really kewl book.  And yes, I know, it wasn't on my reading pile but I sometimes add to my reading pile without finishing what I've got.  (Ahem.)  And start reading the new stuff before I finish the old stuff.  (Ahem ahem.)

Highly recommended:  Food Rules:  An Eater's Manual.  One of my DH's awesome friends gave him a copy.  Don't let the mere four star out of 320 reviews fool you.  I'd give this one five stars.  And yes, I may quibble about some of the minor details, but they aren't important.  What is important is the message and the way that message is very easily digested.  Unfortunately it has more than five ingredients, but remember, moderation in all things, including moderation.

I'm working on a book cover as well.  I think I've got more than two full time jobs going here.  Will the universe kindly slow down so that I can finish some stuff and gain some ground on my to-do list?

You will!?!  Really?!!  Sweet!!

I'm going to get some work done while the getting is good!