Progress Post: Feeling Creative Again

I’ve been far more creative since my last update. I finished writing episode one of my serial, got to 10% in Matched to the Alien Captain (writing), started working on cover design for the serial and Alien Captain, and have started dabbling more with digital art.

I’m about ready to pull my hair out over the fact that the sales pages on Amazon STILL don’t have cover images for the print versions. Author Central Customer Support is useless and while the IngramSpark support was much better, it still ended with a suggestion to just wait. There is literally 0 reasons for a digital transfer of information to take a month to show up. None. It is beyond ridiculous.

Anyway, moving on to nicer things, I recently got a new tablet (12.9″ iPad) and I’m loving it. I’d been wanting to use my old iPad (which, as it turns out, is 7 years old next month) as a drawing tablet for my computer when doing cover designs, but it failed miserably and it was a constant frustration. It even tended to crash when I tried to use Procreate (a digital art app on iPad). I forgot how old the damned thing was. Anyway, so I broke down and got the big guy (keeping the old one for eBooks and puzzles and such) and I… love… it… It works pretty seamlessly with Photoshop. It froze a couple times (probably lag because I was using it wirelessly, which the other one couldn’t do at all), but it was a dream to use. Then, I decided to start leaning to use Procreate (because I was feeling really inspired at that point) and spent the last few hours of my weekend watching Procreate art tutorials on YouTube and following along on my iPad. I would LOVE it if I could someday get to the point where I could completely draw/paint my own cover designs. Would be time consuming, but so rewarding (and bonus, it would make it super easy to make super wacky-looking alien love interests). Nowhere near that yet, but it’s fun to learn.

Currently Reading

Because I haven’t actually managed to finish reading ANYTHING since last week…

Loved by the Alien Huntsman by Kate Sinner: This looks like it’s coming from a brand new author. First impressions are that they seem like a solid storyteller. I feel like the book could have used another editing pass, but I think we all have less than stellar first books, so I’m not holding that against them.

Wanting the Monster by Rena Marks: I’m struggling so much. I love this series. Tentacles, man! I’m really struggling with this book, though. I put it down for a bit because I needed a break because I’m starting to hate the main character and I’m half tempted to skip forward because the section of the book I’m in is taking too long (these are all personal pet peeves of mine and not a fault of the author, per se). The FMC just has blinders on and is stubborn beyond words and I’m in the middle of “flashback” hell. As in, the author presented what was happening, then went back several MONTHS. I can handle short bits of that, but this is just going too far and it’s fraying my nerves.

DaR by Jennifer Julie Miller: I’m loving this book. I’ve been intrigued by a lot of the books in this series, but never got around to starting it until now. Dark and sweet. But I gotta ask? I swear to God, I remember her mentioning that the FMC had grown kids, but then it seems like they’re never mentioned again? Did I hallucinate that? I mean, it’s forgivable. I don’t REALLY care, and it doesn’t detract from the book. But my pedant brain doesn’t want to let it go.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m going to go back to actually working. Until next time,

Danielle