Tag: chapter illustrations

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Chronicles with the editors

Chronicles by the fire

I’ve finished editing Chronicles of Marsh, well until the copies come back from the editors with all the crossings out and suggestions!

Obviously I fixed all the problems I found that I mentioned in the last update. The issue with the thing happening in the wrong time was relatively easy to sort out. I had to rewrite what they’d been talking about in the retrospective, and just convince myself that it couldn’t be fitted in any earlier.

Unusually for me, I sent out two passages to people who aren’t usually involved with my books. Both dealt with situations I thought my readers could have witnessed themselves, and I hadn’t experienced first-hand. You’ll know I’m a bit sniffy about authors getting details wrong when they could check with someone who might have that experience. So for once I listened to my own advice and found a couple of friends (non-writing friends, as it happened), to read these passages. I only had to tweak the paragraphs a little, but I can now face criticism of them if there is any!

I thought you might be interested in the Chapter titles, just to pique your interest! They are of course subject to change.

Princelings 9: The Chronicles of Marsh (provisional)
Chapter 1: Overdue
Chapter 2: Fred’s Yuletide Escape
Chapter 3: A Reality Check
Chapter 4: Pirates Ahoy!
Chapter 5: Time for a breather
Chapter 6: Zephyrs
Chapter 7: A Yuletide Interview with Queen Kira of Marsh
Chapter 8: How to Uncover a Vampire
Chapter 9: Revelations
Chapter 10: A Pirate Yule
Chapter 11: Comings and Goings
Chapter 12: The Darkest Hour
Chapter 13: A Laird in training
Chapter 14: Meeting of Minds
Chapter 15: A Legend in a Lifetime
Chapter 16: Flying today
Chapter 17: Fuel Cells for sale
Chapter 18: When the going gets tough
Chapter 19: Fire at the Granary
Chapter 20: The end of the beginning

So, the editors are at work, Dani is starting some initial sketches for the cover, and I must get around to doing 20 new chapter illustrations. Well, I might be able to recycle one or two!

The book is now on pre-order at iTunes, B&N and Kobo, at a special early-bird price. You can see the blurb at Smashwords, as they only sell on the launch day. The early date, if it all comes together, is 14th November. If not, I’ll move it to late January. I can’t list it for pre-order at Amazon without a cover, but I can put up a draft cover, so watch this space!

Chronicles by the fire
Fred’s fire
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All the chapter illustrations done!

derisaig-castle-summer

As you know, I set myself the challenge of doing Inktober, one sketch a day throughout October.  Since I had, in the end, 32 new chapter illustrations to do, split evenly between Willoughby the Narrator and The Princelings of the North, it worked out well. I’ve put the last one as my header and published it today.

One thing I noticed was the style of my illustrations settled down, and possibly improved as time went on.  My trees, always a bit iffy, seemed to stop being lollipops on sticks and turn into something more like a tree.  The shading got more consistent.  I stopped worrying about any tendency to be scribbly and just went with the flow.  And I occasionally used something else for reference – Rebecca’s picture from the top of a mountain gave me just the right setting for Vexstein from the rear; the Dragon Hall, home to Writers’ Centre Norwich, has just the sort of beams I wanted for Vexstein’s Hearing hall.

I’m trying to decide whether to post all of them here, which is something I did for the early books.  But until the books are edited and ready to publish, I don’t know whether they are really going to appear or not.  Maybe I’ll just post some of my favourites from Willoughby, and some from book 8 (Dylan & Dougall) later in the month.

White Horse from the north
Willoughby’s bag
Diamond Souls
Nimrod’s apartment
Vexstein 2012
White Horse broken
Fred’s fire
Vexstein 2015

One thing I wonder, is how much of the story you can guess from the pictures and the very short descriptions I posted of them, on Facebook and Twitter, if you can’t get the Pinterest board.  Hopefully it’ll add to the intrigue.

And apart from the illustrations, I’m pleased to welcome the person who bought Bravo Victor last month – you’ll be all ready for Willoughby when he comes out in the new year.  I’ll be revealing the final cover when I get the launch date.  Watch this space!

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Chapter Illustrations for The Princelings of the North

Starting today, I move onto the chapter illustrations for The Princelings of the North, Dylan and Dougall’s tale in the Princelings of the East series (Book 8).  The Prologue shows the dastardly Lord Colman shipping Prince Kevin, the rightful heir of Castle Deeping, off to an isolated island.  Then Dylan finds a map inside a bottle washed up near his home, which is a story I wrote as far back as 2013, in the A to Z Challenge on Jemima’s blog.

The illustrations for the first two chapters re-use Castle Deeping from Talent Seekers and Castle Haunn from the free short book Dylan’s Yuletide Journey.  The rest will be new.  They’ll be published on my Pinterest site, just like the Willoughby the Narrator pictures.  You can see them all in the previous post here.

But to set you off, here is the abandoned Castle of Derisaig, where Kevin is holed up wondering if he’ll ever be rescued.

Kevin's castle
Derisaig Castle (c) J M Pett 2016

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Willoughby’s #Inktober sketches

I’m hoping this will work: Pinterest allows you to make ‘follow’ widgets showing what’s on your boards.  It should update with the new one each day, and you can scroll through them using the scrollbar on the right of the box.

I have worked out I’m only going to have half the number of illustrations needed to complete Willoughby the Narrator for Inktober.  The up side of this is: when I’ve finished Willoughby’s, I’ll be doing the ones for book 8, The Princelings of the North!