Monday, December 26, 2011

Multi-missile launcher....

I feel sort of like I've launched a group of missiles from a launcher, or set of launchers with Book 6 of the H.E.R.O. series (H.E.R.O. - Paragon).  The goal is for them all to hit one target in a giant explosion of a story.  That's my hope, anyway.  The story is definitely moving along.

The Christmas festivities are over.  I'm glad to be at home, typing away on a day off.  It's great to see friends and family, but it's a lot to do in a few weeks time.  I'm thinking that I may try to find a giant bag to pull over the tree and just haul it downstairs in one piece so I don't have to put it all together again next year....

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

'Til next time.

--Kev

Friday, December 23, 2011

Christmas season is busy....

I've had quite a few gatherings to attend for family and friends in the last week, and more to come this weekend. The same sort of thing is hitting my editors, so Book 5 is likely to slip into January while we wait. On a good note about that - one of my editors said that Book 4 was my best novel, and that Book 5 is even better.

It's always my goal to create an entertaining, interesting, and at times exciting story for my readers. I won't always go with the idea of having a "tight" plotline in a novel, though. After all, these are superhero novels I'm writing - these people ought to be reacting to crimes, disasters and other events occurring in the city. Also, an ongoing novel series is more akin to a television series than to most books, or even most trilogies.

With the cover for H.E.R.O. - Horde finished, I shifted my attention to my notes for Book 6. On Tuesday I began writing the novel, so the gears have begun turning on it. There is a tiny convention in Green Bay, WI that I'm debating on hosting a booth at during March 30 - April 1, 2012. My hope is to get the book out in time to have paperbacks printed to bring along.

I'm also debating putting together the art for some posters of the characters. I've got so many already that I'm not sure which ones people would want. Gah - I never thought I'd be in this position back when I began making the 3D characters.... On the other hand, time taken out to work on poster art keeps me from working on 'the next' novel after #6.

Okay, done with rambling.

'Til next time.

--Kev

Saturday, December 17, 2011

X-Mas events

I defeated Lady Rapture - I had to totally re-design the gold of her hair - but it works, and doesn't take long to render now.  The intent was to make it the same golden color as Psystar's, and since I like the new gold much more than the old I re-did Psystar's hair to match.  (Psystar was the first character I designed.)  I rendered sixteen pics of each and have those up on the website.

Now that Rapture is complete I've been working on the cover design for H.E.R.O. - Horde.  My inclination is always to throw in more and more characters on the cover to give the reader an idea of the characters within.  One of my editors and some friends thought it looked too cluttered, so I'm going with a simpler look on this one than on H.E.R.O. - Dark Research.  It does look pretty clean, though - I've got a tiny version of it on the Books page, and am waiting on a (hopefully) final render of Ladies Nocturne/Celeste/Rapture to complete to plug in.

Today is an X-Mas event for me.  Sadly, my girlfriend is stuck working all weekend, so I get to go alone to a massive extended family affair.  It should still be enjoyable, but would have been nice for her and the kids to be there.

One (rough) edit of H.E.R.O. - Horde is complete by an editor.  I'm still hoping to have it out by the end of the year.

I believe I have the core storylines for Book 6 ... H.E.R.O. - Paragon ... selected.  I'll probably begin actual work on it tomorrow.  (I don't really consider collecting notes and story ideas as part of the "work" for each novel.)

'Til next time.

--Kev

Thursday, December 15, 2011

The Ladies

I completed the graphics for Lady Celeste and Lady Nocturne - both are now on the H.E.R.O. tab of my website with pics and descriptions.

Lady Rapture is being difficult.  I finished her design, but I've had four PCs rendering images of her, and after 8 hours none have completed a single render.  Her hair is apparently a beast on the render engine.  (It's metallic.)

I still have to select the heroes (and poses) that also go on the cover for H.E.R.O. - Horde.  But, the cover is progressing.  It certainly takes a lot more to do the graphics stuff than I'd thought.

'Til next time.

--Kev

Monday, December 12, 2011

Goth & Metal

Someone clued me into Within Temptation - they are a Goth band.  Kind of a mix of celtic and metal music mixed together (and to a degree sound similar to Evanescence at times).  I like it - and kind of wish I'd heard about it before starting on H.E.R.O. - Horde, although it wouldn't have changed the novel, I suppose.  But hearing the music while writing the scenes at the Goth clubs would have been interesting at the least.

On another note, I sure wish there were an easy place to go to email new bands - heavy metal in particular at this time.  I could really use some band art (from either their t-shirts or CD cover) to put on the t-shirts of some of the Horde guys on my novel.  Sadly, I'd have to get the "legal OK" from them to use it on my work, and I suppose that would bog down using anything like that.  But it'd be cool to have.

'Til next time.

--Kev

Rawr and H.E.R.O. - Dark Research

Rawr!  Had a great chest and triceps workout this morning, hit new highs on my bench press, decline press, incline press and dips.

H.E.R.O. - Dark Research (book 4 in the series) is now available on Amazon.com for the Kindle.  I immediately enrolled it in the Amazon Prime borrowing club deal as well if you have a Amazon Prime membership.  The proof for the paperback has also been ordered (to review the layout on the paper version), so that should be on its way to me soon-ish.  Createspace seems to follow their own version of the space-time continuum for printing/shipping books.  They are great when a customer orders, but when an author orders it can be lightning fast ... or turtle slow to get it out to us.

Thanks again to my editors - Ralph Gadbois, Dan Henry and Kimi Johnson - for their hard work on the fourth book, and my apologies to them for hitting them with the fifth book just before the holiday.  I'm hoping they find time to squeeze in the edits on it amongst the other obligations the Christmas season brings with it.

Have a great day, everyone!

'Til next time.

--Kev

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Dec 10, 2011

Today's a good day.  Two of my three editors finished going through H.E.R.O. - Dark Research the other day, and I've implemented the changes requested.  The last sounds like she'll be done tomorrow, and then I can put the book out for Kindle right away.

Also, I finished my edit review of book 5 (H.E.R.O. - Horde), and sent it over to the first two editors.  Not sure of a timeline, but it is now past one more hurdle on the path to release.

On a different note, I enrolled all of my novels in Amazon's Kindle Owner's Lending Library.  If you have a Kindle device (sadly, they don't allow it with a PC, iPad, etc. running the Kindle reader - it must be an actual Kindle device) - but if you DO have one, then my books are now available for borrowing as your free monthly book to read.  The downside of this is that I had to pull them from the Barnes and Noble bookstore for at least 90 days while I try this out.  I'll see how it works for the first 90 days and decide which route to go after that, but Nook owners either buy very few books, or it's a dead platform or something.  I've sold very, very few e-books for Nook devices.

Anyway, I'm now beginning work on the cover art for H.E.R.O. - Horde.  I've got a strong idea of what I want to go with, now to see if I can actually do it and have it look decent.

'Til next time.

--Kev

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Blog on www.kevinrau.com

I'm fairly excited, I found a way to post the RSS feed from my Blogger.com site directly on my main www.kevinrau.com website.  I added a menu item at the top for ease of viewing as well.  Now people won't have to leave my website to see the blog (which I pretty much hated).

Still waiting on my editors on the fourth novel, although it sounds like the second is nearly finished.  I'll be excited to get it out there for people.

Due to the delays of the holiday season with them, I've gotten way ahead of schedule on Book 5 (H.E.R.O. - Horde).  I'm working on the final scenes now, and it's up over 102,000 words.  Depending on how fast the editing goes on that one it may be out within weeks of Book 4.

Of course, now the mind begins thinking about covers.  I'm going to go with a similar approach as with Book 4, although this one will have a horde of brick-like brutes at the bottom half (all mashed together, like they are standing in a tight space), and some heroes up in the center.  I'm debating doing up the graphics on one to three of the main Goth mutant ladies that appear in the novel as well, since one or more are likely to appear in later novels.

Sadly, the newest "cool" character to me - Borgax - may not be possible for me to do up a decent 3D graphic for.  He needs to look like a robot, or an exoskeleton in this novel, and I don't have good art assets to build that sort of thing.  (Also, while I'm fairly proud of most of my hero character images, I don't know that I'm good enough to do him justice, at least not yet.)

Well, back to finishing up the novel.  Good fortune to you all.

'Til next time.

--Kev