Done, finished ... now the process begins. Hunh?!

 

I'm inspired to blog the end and the beginning of something ... the end of the writing process, the beginning of the process one hopes will end in publication of the book. Dark Is the Valley has been a long process, from the idea to the writing (140,000 words) to the editing (a four month job), and then the month-long struggle to generate a couple of synopses which are, I hope, dynamic enough to catch the attention of literary agents and, in turn, publishers...

It isn't enough, by a long shot, to simply write a good book. You have to sell the book too. When you realise you're up against ten thousand other writers, some of whom are very good indeed, and all of whom are trying to to achieve the same thing ... well, it's daunting. So I worked as long and hard on four pages' worth of synopses (a one, and a three) as on any part of the book itself -- and probably harder! Now, let's see if what I've done will get me over the first hurdle of agency representation.

The reason I'm using tourism photos of Shropshire to illustrate this post? The book is set in a Shropshire valley, on the craggier part, toward the west, where Wales isn't far away. It was enormous fun to write, but it won't get any better for sitting here staring at the manuscript! It's time to get it out there and see if we can find a publisher. First step: agent. The process begins today. 

Happy Valentine's!

 

The picture says it all ... 

Happy Valentine's!

Happy Birthday, Your Majesty ... Now we are Seven!

 

It's been a big year in the life of our resident royalty. Life's an adventure, full of explorations, and naps, and guarding the citadel, and naps, and stalking the jungle trails, and (did I mention?) naps. It all began twelve months ago, with a van in the street and a knock at the door...

Ooooh! You got me a new mattress! Wonderful! Uh, where are you going to sleep?

But of course, there's much more to life than merely taking one's leisure...

All manner of exotic creatures inhabit the jungle. Lizzie (the plaster lizard) doesn't say much...

And of course, in one's forest fastness, one enjoys intellectual pursuits...

...also dessert. Chocolate bunnies swiftly succumb to laser eyes!

But one does like to help around the house occasionally; and let's be honest, these humans can't be trusted to make beds by themselves. Leaving them to do it without supervision? Unthinkable! So --

And since we're in the mood for a little housework, let's give the peasants a hand with the vacuum cleaning...

...helping with the vacuuming is only fair, after all, when one's feline duty, recorded in a charter back in the days of Ramses II, is to shed on everything, allathe time...

And of course, chairs belong to royalty. All of them. 24/7-365 --

It's MY chair. MINE, y'understand? Now buzz off, lemme take naps!

All that sleeping charges the batteries, awakens the spirit of Lion, of Tiger, of Panther, in the breast of the feline. A stretch, a yawn, and it's time to explore, to stalk those jungle trails. Good thing the jungle begins right outside the backdoor!

On the trackless ways, in search of adventure --

Never forget ... Tiger is an ambush predator. Channelling Tiger...

Deep in the jungle, at the watering hole --

-- and if adventure should be just too hard to find, well, bark was made for rolling in!

A puddytat's adventures lead to the roof, and the neighbour's roof, (though they've ruined it with acres of solar panels: kitties don't like it so much lately), and occasionally into alien territory: the front garden, when strange creatures pass by, but seldom stop. It's important to patrol there, and be vigilant:

Always vigilance. Take notes, kids: this is how you guard the citadel!

Ah, so nice to return from the wilds. Glad to be home from the war...

Home from the wars, and -- hey, what's this? How long's this been here? You say it's been here since before I was born? Can't have been! I never saw it before -- what is it?

Its good to be home from the wars, yeah? Nothing beats being in the big, warm cave, safe in the bosom of one's family and taking one's ease...

...even if, occasionally the humans do something unspeakable. They put you in the carry case, and you take a short ride to the Puddytat Repair Shop, where they check your teeth, take your temperature, stick something sharp in the back of your neck, and pronounce you good to go for another year of adventures ... I mean, what's that about? 

Best to humour the pink monkeys, make nice and pretend the yearly physical's no biggie. We're cool. we're all cool here, man. Like, groovy. Yeah. And then just show them how kewl you are -- not to mention how divinely beautiful. Pose among the flowers ... what a good idea!

And if you're really good (or good at pretending to be good), Christmas comes early. Took you seven years to get the old cat tree shredded to purrrrfection, and what do they do? They chuck it in the bin, and this happens! Then again ... 

This is neat! It must be Christmas! Yay!

Actually, this was Christmas!

And this year, we managed to get through the whole holiday season without demolishing the entire tree, though a pretty good job was done on the lower branches. (For some reasons the humans get into a snit when the tree keels over. Why would they do that?!) This is altogether too much work. Time for naps, I believe...

So many places to nap, so little time! Anything happen when I was asleep? Hey --

-- it rained! The pavers are wet ... that's diabolical. Harrumph.  

Yes, they're not all sunny days ... but the rainy ones make the sunny ones all the brighter, and after the heat of summer, what's a few drops of water? A good shower, and the garden -- excuse me, the jungle -- blooms! Tiger is in her natural habitat...

And that's the life of the Queen of the Jungle, for another year! Easy. Nothing to it. You just look cute, take naps, let the humans think they're in charge, and ... cruise. Yeaaaaah.

And that's all, folks!

The artistic oars are back in the water!

 

The Hulk ... the new supercomputer ... might have been installed before Christmas, but I'd made myself a promise (sworn an oath). I would finish the novel before I got back into art -- meaning, I would edit it right to the end; which of course means editing about eight times. I'd hoped to finish by New Year, but "stuff" happened. It often does! In fact, I got Dark is The Valley finished on about January 10th, and am now on my break before I tackle Pet Shop Dragons, the full novelization from the screen story, which spun off the short story, LOL. 

So for the moment it's all about art, and I'm making inroads on an awful lot of learning which will have to be done before I can say the oars are 100% back in the water. At the moment, I'd give myself something like 40%. I'm functional in DAZ Studio 4.15, if you don't count dForce, which I've never even attempted. Must get into that soon. I'm far less happy with Affinity Photo, which was intended to replace Photoshop. It just doesn't have the tools to do what I need to do -- more of them are available in Krita, but then again, Krita is lacking a number of the tools available in Affinity. Grrr. So right now, I'm bouncing back and forth, round and round, using the Windows clipboard, and the images have a kinds of boomerang quality as they're passed into this prog, then that one, then the other one, to get even close to the functionality one had in Photoshop Elements 9, all those years ago. 

But yes, art is happening. At the same time, I've commenced the cataloging and reinstallation of the 3D content I've amassed since I started in 2009, and this is a monstrous job. It'll take a month or more to get everything in and accessible. I should think, by about the end of February, I'll be as productive as I used to be, and of course the quality of the work will be vastly better, because I'm using the Generation 8 figures, by and large ... and they do make a colossal difference; as does the NVIDIA Iray engine.

Happy, happy!