Writing, Cover art, and Graphs

Wrote last night. Just a little but it was good. Very good. Love the quick dialogue between the brothers, Gilbert and Julian.

I learned last night that Alfred Hitchcock made a graph for each movie that showed the ups and downs he put the audience through. The script was the embodiment of the graph. I could do that with my novels. It would look sort of like a roller coaster. It would identify lags so I could fix them.

I told Dani his last design was perfect. (see Dani's portfolio at http://www.multigrade.it/). At first I thought the figure in the drawing needed to be greyed out a little because it fought for attention with the white-lettered title and my name. But when I toned the figure down in GIMP, I saw it made the whole design less dramatic. So I told him, keep it as it is. This 3rd fulfills our contract. He's expensive but worth it.

Tamara came over and I sketched out the cover idea for The Entrepreneur. A 1950s fridge and lots of shadow and I want it to look sketched, not photographic. Tamara is a versatile artist. I've seen her draw wildlife and I've seen her draw people with varying degrees of cartoonish license. She created a cast of characters, a redneck family that she writes into hilarious situations of their own making. She also writes an agony column in the guise of the family's matriarch, Meemaw Skaggs. You can see them here: http://www.theskaggs.com/index.html.