rough comp

 It doesn't feel like a productive weekend.

I've identified the things I want to edit in the new novel. Other than that, it has been a lot of poking around trying to learn about Amazon categories and font use, looking through stock image galleries, trying to work up the blurb, and so on.

The concept for the new cover is to this stage now:

Of course I still need to model, texture, and render the bit of wall that says "Nine Elms Station" in that lovely Leslie Green tile-work. And purchase assets and take the real photo with something other than 100-baht pieces.

The select-float-change tool-move-anchor layer routine of Gimp got really old for me so I've installed the (bah) membership version of PhotoShop. Which has mucked up mightily with the Adjustment Layers -- I think they still do the same things, but that simple functionality is now harder to access.

And I had Poser running for 10-12 hours rendering a single god ray for a revised and cleaned-up version of the old cover. I want to play more interesting games with the font, and I re-rendered with a new color map for the ground (and no bullets) and this time I'm doing most of the adjustments before I collapse all the layers.

And, yes, on the work list is Third Printing revisions to text of the first book.

I don't want to be doing ANY of this right now. Actually, I want to be playing Fallout. I'm burned out. 

Or writing something new. The Japan book, for instance. (Which is to be followed by the Paris Book, except that one is more of a multi-city National Treasure tour as Penny clashes with a gang who have Templar Secrets on the brain).

And then a break from Penny. I need it.

Came up with another possible project, though. Was using PublishRocket to look at the Amazon keyword and category listings and realized I was getting really tired of the Slab Beefjerky heroes. And this is one plot bunny I am keeping under my top hat -- all I will share is the tag line:

THE WEIRD WAR JUST GOT WEIRDER

***

Oh; here's the current state-of-draft of the Amazon come-on:

AN AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGIST IN LONDON. 

Penny Bright is going to be a real archaeologist. She’s not going to let tough classes, obnoxious fellow students, or her rapidly dwindling funds stop her. Nor the fact that she doesn’t, apparently, even speak the language.

Then things get interesting. Penny gets an opportunity to dig at an old Underground platform. At Nine Elms, she is drawn into the story of a young woman who sheltered there during the London Blitz. Meanwhile, a prickly and eccentric coin collector has come to her with his own mystery.

Before this is over she’ll have met mudlarkers and pantomime players, and gone from an illegal expedition into an abandoned power station to a bloody encounter on the very stage of Shakespeare’s Globe; all in search of answers about a lost love and a secret buried for over seventy years.

And when she is trapped deep under the streets of the old city and unsure of who her true enemy is, Penny is faced with the choice of becoming once again...Athena Fox.