I'm on Fire

Perhaps not literal fire, but I'm making real progress on a few different things.  I've the toons Rampart and Muckman up on the website in all their graphical glory.  Muckman's not overly special (as far as the costume goes), but I wanted people to see what I generally envisioned for him.  I really like how Rampart's costume turned out.

I'm still waiting on my editors for H.E.R.O. - Dark Research.  I'm hoping that doesn't mean the novel's chock full of typos and grammatical mistakes - although I'm fairly certain they are both simply quite busy.  I'll have it out as soon as they get the results back to me (and make the changes).

That hasn't stopped me from forging ahead on the fifth novel in the series.  It'll be called H.E.R.O. - Horde, and is already nearly 50,000 words in already.  Considering a full novel is about 100,000 words, I'm nearly halfway done, depending on how the story turns out.  Some of the heroes you've barely seen in the other novels get some more face time in this novel.  Some of the notable mutants who aren't simply interested in anarchy begin to appear in the series as well (Lady Nocturne and Lady Celeste, for example).  I'm strongly tempted to do up the graphics on those two.  I'm not certain I have the graphics assets to make Lady Nocturne with her odd mutant parts, but Lady Celeste wouldn't be hard to make, methinks.

On a side note of interest, I hit 300 lbs. on my bench and decline presses recently.  I don't often speak of my weight lifting - I'm a somewhat overweight guy who hits his home gym five times a week and weight lifts hard, mixing in time on the elliptical between every weight lifting set (I like to keep my heart rate as close to or above 150 beats per minute as I can during a workout).  My weakness is food - I love bad food, and someone forgot to install the switch in me that says 'you are now full' that most others seem to have.  I'm not crying about it, however, but simply bringing up a core reason why I hit the gym hard five days a week.

'Til next time....

--Kev

New characters on website - Zonk and Big Man

I've added both Zonk and Big Man to the H.E.R.O. page of my website.  Both are bricks, although each also has an unusual power.  Big Man is more of the standard, serious hero of Metrocity.  Zonk is a clownish guy who may not be entirely (at all?) sane.

Both came out generally like I envisioned, especially Zonk - who just looks crazy.

Here's one pic of each, although there are sixteen of each on my main site:

'Til next time...

--Kev

New H.E.R.O. character on the website - Watermane

Say hello to Watermane!  This established heroine of Metrocity hangs out near the river district, and literally enjoys walks along the beach.

Sixteen renders of her have been added to http://www.kevinrau.com, along with some general information.

Her data page is http://www.kevinrau.com/HERO/Watermane.asp

Now back to working on my notes for the fifth H.E.R.O. novel....  :)

'Til next time.

--Kev

H.E.R.O. - Dark Research now has a cover

I believe I've finalized the cover for H.E.R.O. - Dark Research.  Here's a tiny pic of it:

I'm breaking from using the gradient backgrounds I did on my previous three covers, but this one seemed to work out fairly well.  I might go with this approach on future novels as well, I guess I'll have to see how the next one turns out.  Razorwing's dark wings work nicely as a backdrop here.  I'm not sure sure it'll work as well with some other character in the background.

This fourth novel in my H.E.R.O. series is in the hands of the editors right now.  With some fortune they'll finish sometime this weekend and I'll be able to get the book out for Kindle and Nook early next week.  (Paperback is always delayed due to the requirement of ordering a proof copy.)

On the Books page of my website (http://www.kevinrau.com) the cover is clickable to view a larger version of the above.

'Til next time....

--Kev

H.E.R.O. - Dark Research first draft complete

It's pretty exciting to hit this point. The fourth novel in the series is (roughly) complete. Now for the editing stages. The book should be out within a month(ish).

This book was interesting to write. It flowed out of me like a torrent. This story feels bigger. Certainly there are more heroes involved than in the prior novels. Metrocity is growing and evolving, and apparently I have a few new supers to make for my website. >;)

On the other hand, it's also kind of strange. I've been so hell-bent on this story that hitting the end almost feels like I flew off the edge of a cliff and I'm now freefalling.

Or perhaps that is just from getting sick. A cold is hitting me hard - far more rapidly than I'm used to.

Whichever, I've got a book to edit.... :)

'Til next time.

--Kev

The Heart's an amazing thing

Yesterday morning I did a pure cardio workout.  I don't do them very often - only occasionally on a Wednesday when I'm just not in the mood for a leg workout.  (I also need to burn calories pretty badly.)  Anyway, it was interesting to get the heart rate to 150-170 for the first half hour, and then kept it from 170-183 for the second half hour on the elliptical.  Not my best, but I wasn't doing all out sprints either.  (I was *attempting* to work on the HERO4, but it was pretty difficult to type at the speed I was going.)

What's really neat is that when I couldn't sleep at 2 a.m. last night for some reason, I used my heart rate monitor watch to see what my heart rate was out of curiosity.  Two samples, one showed 52 BPM, the next showed 51 BPM.

It's pretty cool to have something in us that can more than triple its speed like that.

I mentioned that video I was working on - I finished a prelim version and have it out at:
http:\\69.129.75.170\images\skellyhead04.avi  if you want to see it or download it for free.  It took my main PC over 8.5 hours to render 40 seconds of video (which I then stretched to 1 minute).  Yeesh.  And that's only at 800x600!  No wonder Pixar needs huge render farms for their movies.  It would have taken longer if there wasn't so much black space on the video as well.

Last note - HERO4 (e.g. H.E.R.O. - Dark Research) is up to 65,000 words so far.  I'm way ahead of schedule on it.  At this point I'm now hoping to be able to release it *around* December 1st, 2011.  If you are a reader of my H.E.R.O. novels, then I thank you.  Please spread the word.  :)


'Til next time....

--Kev

Darn wind

The wind really kicked up in the area and some of the tombstones in front of my house blew away.  :(  That's annoying.  On a happier note, while I do have that Halloween video I mentioned before, I've been playing with Poser Pro 2012 and some of the skeleton and demon type figures I've bought to for it.  I can make them wander around and create videos myself.  I made a quickie, but I might see if I can get something creepy going just to alternate with the other video.  Having the same one play for three hours straight might be mindbending.

H.E.R.O. - Dark Research is going really good so far.  I'm already up to 45,000 words.  I don't have an exact word count for what it'll end up at - probably 100-120k, but at least it's moving along fairly quickly.

On another note, I was speaking with one of my editors the other night and mentioned that I'd like to create more H.E.R.O. people in 3D, but hate not using them for who knows how long.  She brought up the idea that having them allowed me to at least mention them in novels even if they don't make an appearance.  Gotta love when someone helps you feed the habit.  LOL.  ;)  It's a good thing, though - I like the website having a lot of heroes on it.  Plus, when I hit 20 total I can make another 3' x 2' poster of the second set of ten.  The first one turned out amazing.  Someday I might go onto Zazzle or a similar site and make posters of some of those images for people to buy.  I don't at this point because so far I haven't heard any interest in it.  I'm a visual person, however, and do enjoy having posters of toons.  Someday if I get around to doing conventions I'm thinking about having good super high detail renders of some toons printed and make them for sale at my booth.  (Not for a ton of money, as with my books I wouldn't price them to get rich, the markup is extremely low on my books currently - so much so that I actually don't make any money at present due to the cost of the advertising and cover art.)

'Til next time....

--Kev