Bits of Things

Bits of Things

(This is an image from a Tiger note card.)

Be wrapped up in music and rainbows!

quote: Think of all the writers and all the books, poems, essays, articles, song lyrics, and so on that have changed your life. What if these authors had given up? How much smaller your life would be then. Roseanne Bane

superstition: Drop two acorns into a bowl of water, if they float, our relationship is safe; if not, your relationship is sunk.

Every day omen: twigs. (After writing this I found a tiny forked twig on my car. Ha-ha, Universe!) A forked twig in your path, you know what that means...a which-way-do-you-go decision. A straight twig, you go straight, unless it crosses you, which means stop; or points to one fork or another, whereat you go in the direction of the point. In life or in your walk, or in your decisions.

gemstone: Use a garnet or garnets to keep away nightmares. Yeah, I know you can use a dream catcher, but that worked too well for me, I kept dreaming that my dreams kept getting caught in the net, so I had to take mine down! I need! my dreams, even the not so wonderful ones to keep me on my own right path.

tidbit: Over 90% of the people in the Hall of Fame are Aquarians or have Aquarius rising. Yay, Aquarians!

Sara, The Artist:

I put about 6-7 illustrations in my print books. In a series, I try to add 2 new pictures per book. Usually the pictures are portraits of characters. (Here is a photo of me in front of my wall of character portraits. the wall I sit facing when I write.)

Usually I rerun the main characters-thought sometimes they get new portraits. I want to do a new portrait of Sazzy, since she has some fun new gowns magicked for her by the Wild Fates.

E-books get less art, but I put one photo of me in and, usually a bon mot. I'm hoping to add some more art once I get comfortable doing e-books and can figure out how any pieces of art I can put in before I reach the maximum file size...

Here are a few new illustrations from the Byran Daggers series, because that is next up in the print-the-book zone.

In Case You Wondered: Large-type book used to be just enlarged from the pages that went to the printer--meaning the whole book was bigger. Hey, consider 'Gone With The Wind' as a large print book...and the wheelbarrow you'd need to carry it around in...

Now the books are reset (easy enough to change the font size in the computer) and the book size stays the same--and often the same length. Why? Because the typesetter will tweak the leading (space between the lines) and the margins to get the story to fit in the least amount of pages.

Larger publishers may also use thinner paper for large-print books, keeping the book at a manageable size. But the large-print books contain all the original story--or they would say: abridged.

Tiger print books are available in large print, but are printed in 12 point type (an easily readable size) anyway. To compare, trade paperbacks often use 10 point type...but a few I've seen in excruciatingly small type. I think one must have been 5 point or maybe 4. (One of those thousand page tomes, even with the tiny type...)

Of course with your handy e-reader, you can have any size type you want any time...

Sara, The Writer: I am still slogging through Byran’s last book. It seems to keep expanding as I write with things that must not be missed, as this is the final book in the series, a last chance to tie everything up. I am at 300 pages…

I am working on getting ‘Wishing’ into ebook form. That is just tedious checking to make sure the word processing program didn’t add some formatting when I wasn’t looking…or take some out…

Posts I enjoyed this week: Janice Hardy is doing a great month of revision blogs, giving you 31 one steps to a marvelously polished book. Not that I could keep up... Her URL is:

Merry April 1, All Fool's Day. You can play tricks till noon. Fool's Day is ruled over by the Norse God Loki, a shapechanger and prankster. May all those tricks make your day brighter.